Yodel-eh- Hee-hooooo!

Day 103: Switzerland via Paris over night.



Kill us. A LONG day is an understatement. 8am on board the bus. 10:30pm arrival in Paris. Not much happened in between. A rainy start to the morning, then it got hot, then cold again. The weather could not make up its mind. We donated our copy of Grown Ups for the bus to enjoy – it killed a couple of hours.


Once we arrived in Paris we were grateful to get off the bus and stretch our legs, to shower, and to be able to lie in our dorm and enjoy the silence and the comfy bed. During the night it got a little chilly – so it was nice to curl up under the doona. This may seem like the normal thing to do, but it’s funny, because when we woke up in the morning, Totti informed me that she had been so cold that she took the pillowcase off her pillow and used that as a blanket. I found this extremely odd, and then I laughed. “You do realise the doona was folded under your pillow” The look on her face was priceless, she could have poked my eyes out, having discovered that she could have had a very warm and comfortable night’s sleep. I have done and said some pretty retarded things, it’s nice to know she’s human too :p


Day 104:


Another day on the bus...we were ready to throw punches at this stage. Two days of consecutive cramped travel is not fun. Conversations get about as interesting as informing each other of our various aches and pains, and the need to use the loo desperately. Basically its whinging, but it’s the general bus conversation, besides the occasional knowing look I get from Totti, followed by her scrunching up her nose to inform me that I need to pinch mine, as she has farted. Again. I can’t bring myself to stretch over the seat and punch her, so I satisfy myself with burying my face in my hoodie waiting for the smell to waft on. The bus rides do suck, but they are the most convenient and inexpensive way to get around.


We stopped briefly in Bern and admired the bear cubs strolling along the river before hopping back on the bus towards Lauterbrunnen, to camp JungFrau (A thankyou!). It was a beautiful sunny afternoon and we got to admire the snow on the alps and the forest surrounding our campsite on the drive in. It looks like something out of a fairytale – little gingerbread houses dotted the green hills, there were waterfalls, cliff faces and it was really green.


We got ourselves checked in and dumped our stuff in our room. We claimed the two top bunks – the bottom one had been occupied by someone already, but they weren’t there. By this time we were well hungry and keen to try some of the local food called Rosti – basically it’s just a potato bake, and they make it with all different stuff; we opted for the cheese and tomato one, and also ordered a Schnitty to share, YUMO!.


With full stomachs, we wondered back to our little cottage hostel and settled in for the night. A couple of good solid hours of sleep before our rowdy housemate enters the room drunk – now we’ve all been here. Drunk and disorderly, stinking of alcohol, babbling shit a bit louder than you really think – as it happens, Ela and I were awoken by our fellow hosteller, however, we were expecting only 1 voice. Enter male voice.....WTF....Ela and I sit quietly pretending to be asleep. WTF. Male and female enter bottom bunk bed and begin making out. WTF. Meanwhile, Ela and I stay completely still. WTF. Heavy breathing, some slurpy sounds (no longer just making out sounds), really heavy breathing. Skanky girl: “We probably shouldn’t be doing this....I don’t know these people”. Male and female: Laughter. Ela & Kate’s minds: NOT FUNNY. YOU SKANK, WE DON’T KNOW YOU EITHER! .........1hr later........some nasty comments were made by skanky girl (inappropriate for parental viewing). The end of the story is that the two drunk people were having an amazing time on the bottom bunk whilst Ela and I lay in shock. They finally leave the room to have a “shower” – also known as Round 2. Totti: “Ela....are you awake?” Ela: “YES. OMG. WTF dude.” We both laughed pretty hard before drifting off back into our sleep...hopefully without nightmares.


Day 105:


We couldn’t help but smirk at each other as we woke the next morning. We finally caught a glimpse of our pornstar roomie, sprawled on her bunk, naked underneath her blankets. How did we know she was naked? Her STI infested g-banger was draped nicely over Totti’s thongs. LOL! Her thongs probably had Chlamydia. Lucky she showered her thongs on.....now she just probably has Tinea (forgive the spelling).


We booked ourselves in to do a ropes course for the day, so we waited at the entrance of the campsite and watched the paragliders land on the hills while we waited for our bus to take us to Seilpark. We got harnessed up and were given a quick rundown of the do’s and don’ts and we were off. We decided to start with the medium level course to get ourselves accustomed to being active again. 4 months on inactivity does catch up on you, but we did surprisingly well for our first go and decided to try something a little harder. We zip lined and climbed and made Tarzan noises in the forest, yelled at inanimate obstacles for making us feel physically inferior. We then tried the black run, the hardest course to choose from. It literally took us about an hour to get through this one. It was killer. The fist obstacle was a single wire to walk across while holding onto a green barrel. FML. It was the most physically challenging thing we have both attempted in a very long time. The black course was held up in the trees 30 metres above the ground. There is no instructors with us – we were on our own, just us and our harnesses. The hardest obstacle on this course was a set of horse shoe rings tied to wire about 5 metres long that we had to get across. Pulled groins, cramping, blistered hands we finally made it across. The next obstacle (also one of the hardest ones) was a bunch of swinging logs which ascended into a stair case – this really hurt our upper body as we had to pull ourselves up the logs. It was a great achievement to finish this course – we were well pleased with ourselves and a lot of the other ropers were congratulating us.


We finished all 6 of the courses in 5 hours. Pretty impressive, however our bodies didn’t think so! We caught the train back to camp and cooked up a storm in the company of our fellow bus-about travellers and skanky girl....who turned out to be pretty nice, bless her!


We decided we really needed to do some washing so we gathered our clothes and headed to the laundry room. We stole some washing powder off someone who had left theirs lying around and we were just about to load our clothes in the washed when a polite Aussie man said “Oi, ya know you can do a cheaper load of washing around the corner for 3 swiss franks rather than 5 swiss franks here?” oooo we love cheaper stuff. So us being the tight arses that we are opted for the cheap wash. FAIL. The machines were seriously from the Roman times. We decided not to judge the well loved machines and give them a go. 45 minutes later....we went to check on our washing. Well....they were washed, but they were dripping wet. Stupid machine didn’t have a frickin spin cycle. FML. So we decided to just eff it and put them in the dryer and hope for the best. 45 minutes later....we went to check on our clothes but all the dryer had done was steam our clothes in a stinky wet clunk of clothes. BOOOO... Fuck our clothes...we took them out and dumped them on the floor and decided we’d deal with them in the morning.


Zzzzzzz.....






Day 106:


We woke to a rainy Swiss day and felt as if we had climbed Mt Everest yesterday. The need for two bacon and egg rolls was required, so we wobbled to the market and got some supplies. Mmmm delicious. We were now prepared to take on the rainy day. What to do...what to do? Well....we started with fixing our washing. We ditched the old machines and used the new ones....they came with a spin cycle! Yeyah! The rain didn’t stop us doing activities....we did a brief hike up to the main waterfall near the campsite – it was pretty. After our hike we wandered into town to take some photos...we stopped at a little cafe which also took bookings for activities – we love activities. The list read something like this: Skydive, Canyoning, Rafting, Bungee jump, Paragliding, HORSE TREKKING. We both turned to each other and said “HORSE TREKKING...YUP!” So within minutes we were booked in on a horse trek through the Swiss Alps so we dashed back to our campsite – dumped our clean and dry washing and ran to the train station.


We arrived at the horse stables keen to get riding. I’d never ridden a horse before, so I was lucky enough to ride along behind the instructor with a rope connecting my horse to hers. Totti trotted along like a pro next to me, exclaiming “Nice training wheels”. Nice. The turd. After a while I got to ride alone, woo. The scenery was amazing – we rode past open fields at the base of the alps, through forest, up mountains, past a huge golf course, through farm land and finally came to stop at the edge of a huge lake which reflected the mountains above. Spectacular. Instead of taking photos of this lovely view, Totti filmed her horse drinking....I suggested she might like to take some photos of the lake.......might be an idea....LOL! She was mighty proud of this little video, a cinematic masterpiece.


We trotted our way back to the stables just in time – the rain started falling thick and fast, we were grateful to be on the train, discussing our sore bums and the fact that we smelled of horse. Yummy! This added to our already stiff and bruised bodies and we were looking forward to having a hot shower before dinner. We were over tomatoes in general, so we decided to try and make our next plate of pasta a little more interesting. We bought a bag of frozen veggies and decided to fry them up with some garlic, chilli, olive oil and wine. In theory it tastes delicious – but apparently frozen veggies all taste the same; like NOTHING. So our dinner disappointed and we retired back to our rooms, packed our bags for another long bus ride in the morning, and relaxed while watching Shrek 4. Do the ROAR! Bless 5 euro pirated dvd’s :) We were zonked and didn’t even make it an hr into the movie. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Yodel a hi to your dad for us!
Love Kate & Ela xxxxxx