Interlacken day 3
This had to have been one of the strangest and best days of the trip thus far. It started out like any other...
I woke up Wednesday morning, got dressed up a little earner than usual, and headed down for my cereal. I was being picked up at 10:30 by Twin Paragliders, the company I was going to be paragliding with. At exactly 10:30, Peach arrived in the van to get me and bring me done the street to base camp.
They fit you out in hiking boots, for reasons I will explain later. Then you wait there for everyone else to show up. I heard one of the pilots talking to another guy like me, who was a first timer. We got to talking and turns out he is from Qatar. Then everyone starts yelling "yellah! Yellah!". Apparently the guys who were late were six friends from Saudi Arabia.
So here I am in the middle of Switzerland talking about the Middle East and shukrans and Mercis are flying all over the van on the ride up the mountain. One guy introduces all the pilots while you scale this winding road up a cliff's edge. Peach picked me, and then everyone else picked.
When you reach the top, about 880 meters high or about a half mile, you do a quick hike to the launching area. The idea behind paragliding is you and your pilot are strapped into a parachute looking thing. He controls it and you sit in front and glide slowly down. A normal flight last 10-12 minutes and if you are lucky and catch hot pockets of air you can stay up there for about a half hour.
So now I am strapped in waiting to take off. All the Arabs are running off the mountain with their pilots and catching the wind and taking off. Then on of them bails, right before me! I was nervous, but you have to pay regardless of whether you fly or not. So Peach said start running and I did. Eventually you feel your feet still running, but you are off the ground and it's amazing. The views are unbelievable and at times you swoop down among the trees or the mountain sides.
Now as most of you know, I am not very big, which helps a lot for paragliding. The lighter you are, the slower you sink to the ground. Also, Peach happen to catch some really good wind. However, when you catch these pockets of rising air, you use them to lift you up by doing 360 turns upward. Now, I never get car sick or anything, but I thought I was going to lose my frosted flakes for a little bit there. We were up so much longer than everyone else, which was awesome. But on descent we cam in faster because I was getting mad dizzy.
They take photos of you up in the air, and I got a student discount so I bought them. I also found out the answer as to why everything is so expensive in Switzerland. The salaries are ridiculously high. He says the reason a big Mac is 12 franks is because the guy making it makes about 24 franks and hour, which is about three times the US.
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That afternoon after recovering from airsickness, I headed to a local cable car. The gondolas that take you up the larger mountains are about 60-80 franks so I stuck with the cable car for 5 franks that takes you up to a restaurant at about the same altitude as paragliding. And good thing I did!
So while enjoying the views and reading my book, I overhear two guys talking about American money to these two girls. They walked past me to get something from the cafe and on their way back I asked where they were from. Turns out they both work in Boston. I almost died. Arabs and Massachusetts people all in one day - it was too much.
The girls were from Germany and it turns out they had just met today and asked me to join them. So here we are on top of a mountain, laughing about americans and such. We headed back down about two hours later and the girls headed back to Zurich. I was hungry as I still prefer to eat around 6 pm so Saban, Aaron and I stopped at a pizza restaurant. By that time, we were old friends, enjoying the local beer together and making plans to do something in Interlaken later that night. After an ice cream I gave them my email and bid farewell.
This is where things start to take a really interesting turn. I showered and changed and just put on leggings a long take top and a long sleeve shirt with a sweater. I put my flats on because the smell of my sketchers literally makes people stand five feet away from me at all times. Then I headed over to meet up with them and we were walking back to their hostel and the casino in town was all lit up.
So we go to check it out and it's a small place so its only 5 franks to get in and minimums start at 2 franks. I had never been in a casino before but this sounded pretty reasonable. We decided to head back to the hostel and hang out and potentially return. We split a bottle of malibu and played ping pong, no joke, for like an hour and a half. We were making up these stupid rules and I was half crying I was laughing so hard.
Then we headed for the casino, probably around 11:30. So I had a ten frank bill and a twenty in my wallet. I paid with the ten and got a five frank coin back. I cashed that in for one chip. Saban tried his luck on the roulette table and lost after about a half hour. Roulette didn't really appeal to me, as there is no skill involved. So The boys and I went to blackjack. I put my five piece chip down and lost it right away. Aaron spotted me five to try again and then my luck turned. The next two hands I got twenty points on each deal. Then people started betting that I would win and I kept winning. They were cleaning up house off me because they had a lot more chips so one guy gave me a five piece chip.
Well, I started getting really excited about this and the Asian guy next to me was teaching me the strategies. And everyone who knows me, knows I am ridiculously loud. So head honcho owner man in the suit told us to settle down and that there are other people in the casino. Personally I think they were all enjoying it, and there weren't that many people there. But he was scary and had a German accent so we cooled off a bit.
Finally, we had to stop playing and I was up 50 franks and could totally see why people get addicted to this stuff. That's why dad is always telling us not to gamble. I will say the whole time we played, I never bet more than the minimum, I took it easy. Which is a shame because I got blackjack like four times.
Now, not the main road, it was dead, except for The Hooters. Apparently, that was the next logical choice. So we went into Hooters, first time for Saban and I. We got curly fries and beers and were still laughing about the casino. They walked me back to the hostel afterwards and the guy was closing up the restaurant it's attached to. He gave us free sandwiches!
Today, I put my 50 franks toward my 480 frank Eurail pass that will get me through the next month. Oh what a night!
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