Interlaken: My New Home

I spent most of my 4th of July in Bern, Switzerland... not a bad place to be! I arrived early in the morning, the streets were still quiet and deserted, shopkeepers were slowly getting their stores and cafes ready for the day. While there was no yolding in the streets it was clear I was no longer in Spain and I was now in a traditional Switzerland city. Since it was the July 4th I set out to find the US Embassy in hopes of taking my picture with the American flag. To my dissapointment it was well hidden behind a large steal fence.
Interlaken was a quick train ride from Bern and the most beautiful ride I have taken while being in Europe. I happened to meet 2 girls from the UK while waiting for the ferry to Iseltwald (a small town of a couple hundred, 30mins from Interlaken, set on Lake Brienze) where I was stazing for the next 3 nights. We ended up becoming instant friends and spent most of the next couple of days together. We were slightly thrown when we wlked into our rooms at the hostle to fin the "bunk beds" were actually small pads on the floor seperated by planks of wood (you are literally about a foot away from your neighbor)... needless to say it was an interesting few nights!
The 3 of us took teh ferry into Interlaken the next day in hopes of catching some of the Nissan Outdoor Games. It is a 5 day event in which 5 teams comprised of the top extreme sports athletes and video production crews (including photographers, videographers, editors...) compete to create a 5 minute video of 5 extreme sports (base jumping, rock climbing, mtn biking, hang gliding, and kayaking)... talk about intense shooting and editing!!! We didn't actually get to see any of the extreme sports take place (we went to the wrong area of town), we did watch the many thrillseeking tourist paraglide into the park was ate lunch in.
Later that evening we finally found the main stage of the Outdoor Games, just in time to catch a white German rapper doing his rendition of "I'm Bringin Sexy Back," followed by German rap songs... priceless! After the "amazing" performance the videos that the teams made were showcased to the audience, they were incredible!!! I'm going to try and find a link so everyone can see these videos cause there are no words to describe them, I had chillls the whole time I watched them. I found out later that normally the athletes recieve awards for their performance but due to a horrible accident during the base jumping portion in which the wind turned on one of the guys and threw him in the cliff killing him, the other athletes decided to continue with making the vidoes but opted out of the awards portion.
I fullfilled my thrillseeking by going canyoning the next day (it a combination of repelling, jumping, sliding, and walking your way through canyons)... it was AMAZING!!! I came out with a couple bumps and bruises but nothing to keep me from doing it again.
I'm in Zurich at the moment and (as long as there are no more train strikes) I'll be heading to Pisa, Italy tomorrow.

Guten Tag!

p.s. the computer I am using has different keys for the "z" and "y" so I appologize if some of this is misspelled!