The Top of Europe

Yesterday the Mullivans were joined by Peter for an epic trip into the Alps. We decided to do the whole trip in one day, so it was an intense one. We took a total of 8 different trains over the course of the day, beginning at 8:00 in the morning from Basel to Interlaken, which took about 2 hours. From there we transferred to much smaller trains that led us up the Jungfraujoch, a totally touristy but awesome journey to the highest railway station in the world. The first train led from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen (more on that town later), the next went to Kleine Scheidegg, and the final went right to the top. Here are some pictures from the journey up:

This is a shot from Kleine Scheidegg, where we transferred to the final train to the top.

From left to right: Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau. If you look closely in the dip between the Monch and the Jungfrau, you can see the building we went up to. This is a better close-up:

Most of the journey on the final train happens in this tunnel, which is kind of lame. But they stop the train twice at picturesque lookout points, which is great. This is the view from the first one:

And the second, with an underlit Patrick in front:

Here we are at the top!

The incredible views:

This is the view down towards Interlaken.

Mullivans on a glacier! Or in front of a glacier, or in some way near a glacier at least. It was difficult to tell where the glacier was exactly, but it's somewhere under all that snow.

At the top we were amused to find:

Apparently the Alps are hugely popular in India, especially this particular spot. We did not try the restaurant, but it looked like plenty of other people were enjoying it!

One of the attractions was this weird ice cave, which is supposedly carved out of a really slowly moving section of glacier. Most of it was really kitschy (i.e. carved penguins) but it was fun nonetheless, with plenty of tourist-friendly photo-ops:

We couldn't take a picture of me in that spot, since I am way too short! I did fit nicely in this spot, however:

On the way back down the mountain we decided to stop off in Lauterbrunnen for awhile, which is a really cute and tiny town in a deep valley:

We walked through town and climbed a path that led behind the waterfall.

On the way we saw some goats!

We also smelled the goats, unfortunately. We saw lots of goats yesterday, but not too many cows.

Patrick took advantage of the fields of wildflowers to do some frolicking:

We ended up down in Interlaken and walked along the main drag. It is a huge contrast from tiny Lauterbrunnen and relatively un-touristed Basel. Parts of the town are really pretty, like this big park with people flying above it:

Some parts are not so pretty:

Interlaken also features a conveniently located sex shop:

Now, this seems to imply that one would find another sex shop on the mountain, but as far as we could tell, this was not the case.

Despite weirdly commercialized Interlaken, the trip was incredible. We would love to go back and stay for a much longer period of time so we could explore the other mountains and hidden towns. Maybe one day? Or we might just run off and stay there and never go home...

Celebrating in Freiburg

Yesterday the Mullivans celebrated our -1 year anniversary, meaning that in a year we'll be married. Going to Germany and drinking in a Biergarten seemed like the appropriate way to mark the occasion. We took a train for 45 minutes to Freiburg im Breisgau, which is one of approximately 37 Freiburgs in the vicinity. This confused us considerably when we tried to buy our tickets at the automated machine at the train station. Finally, after missing our intended train, someone explained that we had to buy tickets to anywhere outside Switzerland from an actual person. This made sense to us, since we figured they had to check our passports or something. Nope! No one checked our passports or train tickets at all yesterday, go figure.

Freiburg was a really cute town. We had no particular itinerary in mind so we just wandered. Here are some pictures:

And when you get closer to that gate, you can see:

Behind it is a Subway, and to the right was a Burger King. We were tempted by the Subway until we realized the potential perils involved with communicating all our sandwich choices in German. We did, however, partake of the new McDonalds Veggie Burger on our way out of town:

It consists of a veggie patty that was surprisingly spicy, some lettuce, American cheese and tons of mayo. Not necessarily something we'd ever buy again, but for only 1.10 Euros, we couldn't pass it up.

We also ate a lot of ice cream.

And we saw Liza's personal heaven:

One of the highlights of the town was the system of miniature canals that run along the streets:

You can let your dog or child play in them! (We saw both)

I also really liked the decorative cobblestones.

We climbed two things in town: the cathedral tower and a big hill.

A view of the latter from the former:

The view from the hill:

On the hill, we went to a Biergarten. It's that building on the top right.

We drank a decent amount of beer, including "One of the Best Beers in the World."We thought it looked like Bud Light but since it made such a bold claim, we had to try it. We decided it tasted like Corona with lemon but better.

It's not too surprising that we wanted a McDonalds Veggie Burger after all that beer. We also had more ice cream.

The Best Sticker of the Day award goes to one we saw while climbing the hill:

Hooray for Freiburg!

Lucerne

On Saturday Patrick and I took advantage of the gorgeous weather (a rarity around here, we've learned) and spent the day in Lucerne! The city is really beautiful, as apparently everyone else in the world already knows, since they were all there to enjoy it with us. The quaintness of the city is brought down a little by the hordes of tour groups and the bus parking lot they've installed in the middle of it all, but hey, who are we to complain? We used Lucerne as a jumping-off point to go into the "pre-Alps" and went up a mountain called Pilatus. It was a great day trip, and only an hour from Basel!

Here's some pictures from downtown Lucerne. We decided the riverfront area is slightly better than Basel's, but only because the river is narrower and there many more bridges spanning it so it's easier to keep going back and forth. Plus, there are cute pedestrian bridges, some of which are made from wood and are centuries old - or, they used to be centuries old, then burned down sometime in the 1990s and got rebuilt in the same style.

This is the view across the lake (the downtown spans the point where the lake narrows into a river):

This is a fun building from the old city:

Patrick with bridges:

Patrick needs more cowbell!

We took a train from Lucerne to the town of Alpnachstadt, which is at the base of Pilatus.

From there we took the steepest cog-wheel railway in the world up the side of the mountain, which took about a half hour and gave us some awesome views.

It was really cloudy when we got to the top, so we couldn't see much.

We went walking around on the hiking trails anyway, because it was still pretty cool to be up there.

I call that one "Window Without a View."

Look at that poor bastard! Hiking up the mountain when there's a perfectly nice railway to take!

All that walking can really get tiring. Good thing there are some handy chairs to nap in.

At the request of my mom, we purchased and ate a candy bar on the top of the mountain in a recreation of her ascent of the same mountain 40 years ago. We made sure to get a Swiss one.

Just as we were about to go back down, the clouds cleared! The view was pretty amazing.

We went down the opposite side of the mountain on a pair of gondolas. The first one was really large and they pack a ton of people into it, so that wasn't so fun.

Then we transfered to a way smaller gondola in this mini town.

We got to travel the rest of the way alone, so that was great.

The gondola left us in a town called Kriens, which is basically a suburb of Lucerne, and we took a bus back to downtown. We walked around some more until we felt like we saw all that the city had to offer and then we hopped a train back to Basel. Overall, we had a great day.