Day Twelve ~ Tuesday, May 7

What a glorious wake-up view! I woke up, looked out the window and bam! The swiss Alps with all their glory right in my face. Not a cloud to be seen.
Today was Grindelwald attempt two. We got up for a continental breakfast and a fairly early start to the day. We took a direct travel route: trains, cable car and Bergbahn to Grindelwald.
The view was amazing: the sun was out, and you could even see the ice glistening at the peaks, distinct from the snow.
We could see distinct mountains: the Eiger, Mönch, the Jungfrau. It was really cool to see the infamous “Nordwand” of the Eiger, which I had learned so much about in German class sophomore year.
Anyway, with lots of leisurely stops to get awesome photos with the mountains as backdrops, we slowly made our way down to Gimmelwald.
On the way down, our group got separated, and so we sat down to wait for them. After about 40 minutes, Christina and Sean J. went up to see if they could find them but after 15 minutes, they didn’t and so came back down. As it turned out, there were a number of paths one could have taken, and they must have assumed we took the shortest path (which we had not).
So we got back on our feet and continued on to Gimmelwald. It turns out they were there, and had been for a while. Long enough Hollis had bought them a tea/coffee/HC. Then we joined them and had lunch. We were stopped at a Youth Hostel. The cool thing about this one was it had a playground. A playground with a long, metal tube-slide that sent you down dangerously fast. Most people just got shot out and landed on their butts.
Lunch was the usual sandwich options, and I bought myself a cup of Green tea. They put sugar on the side, and I tried it. The result was a lightly sweetened green tea that was actually quite good.
After lunch, we made our way down through both walking and cable cars, to the Lauterbrunnen valley. It was so beautiful. Tall mountains, lush with green and capped with snow. Waterfalls poured down the mountains periodically. A river flowed by on the right side the same idyllic turquoise blue. Cows rested on the hillsides just below the mountains – some had bells.
It took us a little over an hour to go through this hike. After it, we made our way back to the Chalet. I took a 50 minute nap, played solitaire, wrote in my personal journal, and made my way over to dinner.
Evening program was “10 things.” You write down 10 things that make you happy. You write down the last time you did each of them. Then you draw a smiley face if it requires other people, a clock face if it requires time and a dollar sign if it requires money. It can be one, any combo or none of those three symbols. And then the Trip Leader runs a discussion about it. And that was it.

-Joseph Bruner