Monday 6 August 2007

In Love with Lauterbrunnen


The high light of my trip to Western Europe – Lauterbrunnen – a little village, emerging out of an impossibly beautiful..no..breathtakingly picturesque..no..simply STUNNING landscape! Probably the most beautiful place all over Switzerland!

Even though we spent just 3 days there, we managed to fit in quite a lot but enjoy some leisure time all the same.

Imagine jumping out of a pane at 11,000 feet! Yup, skydiving, - I flew - with all the equipment and a tandem flight pilot of course!

(Did I mention that we saw Michael Schumacher..yehhhh!!!)

Something I noticed – Switzerland has a place called Grindelwald. It is also the name of one of the characters in J.K Rowling’s last Harry Potter series! He was Dumbledore’s friend in his teen years and a great wizard who later lost a famous duel with him. (Wonder whether she just made it up – coincidence or she actually incorporated the name from this place!)

I must mention the Rosti – a local dish made of potato, fried onions, with loads of veges or meat of your choice – yummm!! Ofcourse our friend Marc the Mac had a mouthwatering time here too(all over Europe actually!)

Also, the train station from Lauterbrunnen is a junction point for the trip to the highest point in Europe – Jungfraujoch. (I finally got the pronunciation right – it’s actually pronounced as Ungfrau!) But since I am not much of a snow person, I decided to go rafting in Switzerland’s glacial waters instead.

So, on the second day, we set off to Interlaken again (centre for skydiving and loads of other adventure sports) for our rafting adventure. After zipping into waterproof gear and being informed (read frightened) by our instructor, we set of on what was definitely the best rafting experience of my life!

Now before I continue to describe further, you must know that Interlaken gets its name because of the two lakes in the heart of the Bernese Oberland – the Thunersee and the Brienzersee. The first leg of the trip was awesome no doubt, what with freezing cold water welcoming us at every rapid and every turn of the raft! As we reached the last leg in the raft, what lay ahead of us was more striking, beautiful, and breathtaking than anything I had ever seen! Straight ahead, the silver glacial stream we were in right now merged into this vast expanse of clear torquish blue! You have to see it to believe it!

As we crossed from the stream into the lake, it magically changed from freezing silver to warm blue!


Talking about water, another nature’s beauty that we visited were the Trummelbach Falls.

The pamphlet read, “10 glacial waterfalls inside the mountain made accessible by tunnel-lift and illuminated. The Trummelbach alone drains the mighty glacier defiles of Eiger(3970m), Monk (1099m) and Jungfrau (4158m) and carries 20200 tons of boulder detritus per year. Its drainage area is 24sqkm, half of it is covered by snow and glaciers. Up to 20,000 liters of water per second. The only glacier-waterfalls in Europe inside the mountain and still accessible.” Beautiful!

Its funny you know – at the end of my trip to Europe, on our way to Paris airport, one of my friends Ashutosh said, “Deepti, you need to improvise your vocabulary a little.” When I asked why, he said, “The only thing that comes to your mind when you think of Lauterbrunnen or Europe for that matter is – Beautiful!!”

5 comments:

Cecilia said...

hey girl,

you got one thing wrong, it is not
"Michel Shumaker" it is Michael Schumacher hheheh

CC

vandana said...

Loved your article! Will definately stop at Lauterbrunnen on my next trip to Switzerland!

Neil said...

Hey Depi, that was a fantastic description of the entire journey of Europe, I surely missed the bus ride. I could just relive as to what fun you guys had and how adventurous it must had been, especially that sky diving experience of yours. Bravo my girl!! Next time we shall go along... it'll be great fun… Beautiful pictures!!!! Good work. Keep it up.

KUNG said...

Hey DJ, read nearly the whole of your blog including the Sri Lankan trip. You write beautifully. I could literally picture the events unfolding right befeor my eyes such is your description. Quite surreal really - your choice of pictures at just the right places is par excellence. keep writing :-)

Dii said...

Thanks Kung! Feels great to get such awesome feedback! Cheers!