interlaken is apparently in between lakes...

let's say that you have an open weekend coming up and aren't sure what to do. what should you do??? well, mom d and i answered that question by booking a hotel room in interlaken, a few hours drive from zurich. so as we're researching things to do up there, we notice that there is a Harley Owners Group festival that weekend. ahhhhhhh........... bikes, burgers and... brats (what?!?! did you think i was gonna say somethin else???) what an american weekend. to be honest, it was kinda refreshing seein as how we were up there for the weekend of the 4th (well, friday night at least). we embark on our expedition shortly after lunch on friday afternoon, with a plan to stop off at luzern on the way up (it's about halfway there and only has a few things to look at). so we jump in the car and make our way outta the city. after goin all over the mountainside (apparently sally - the GPS - wanted us to avoid some alleged traffic back up) we finally end up on a country highway in the correct direction. sooooo, we get to luzern and it's beautiful out. we find an underground parking structure, by the time we get to street level it's pouring rain. well, we didn't really have much invested in this city, so we jumped back in the car and took off to interlaken.

for those of you that know mom d, she doesn't get along too well with narrow mountain roads that have little or no guardrail stopping you from a 300ft drop. so after noticing that she's a little more than nervous, i relieve her of her chauffering duties and take over (for those keeping score at home, that's 2 countries i've driven in so far, 2 sides of the road and two cars) for the remaining 90min. well, when we get to interlaken (by the by, we might have forgotten to inform rico that there was this HOG festival that weekend) the whole city is packed. streets are blocked off, made gettin to the hotel quite difficult. but we did prevail.

so we spent the night waltzing around the main square (it was more like a 2 block grass field) lookin at all the variants of the american classic lined up and painted in great detail. they had red ones, blue ones, short ones, tall ones, fat ones, loud ones, and... and.. pink ones??? really, pink??? that's not too biker-ish in my mind, but who am i to question this... so it was pretty cool to walk around all this americana in europe. we even found a place that had a decent american burger. so what if it was a hooters, we were in the mood for american style burgers and they had them gosh darn it. anyway, pretty cool atmosphere in the streets. live band playing at one end of the town. apparently it was a rammstein cover band... yea, rammstein as in the late 90s classic violent anthem "du hast"... apparently they're too busy these days producing.... well, i really couldn't tell you what they'd be doin right now, but they're big enough where they have a cover band playin a harley festival. needless to say, we didn't quite fit in with the crowd. so once we were done people watchin, we retired to our hotel.

the next morning brought beautiful sunshine and an early morning walk throughout the city. it was a lot more quiet considering the main participants prolly hadn't awoken just yet. we made our way over to where a funicular takes people up 750m to the peak of a nearby mount. well, we had nothin else to do so we bought tix and headed on up. just a quaint 8min ride and we were at the peak lookin out over the entire valley. which is where we saw two lakes with the city in between them, ahhhhhhhh..... somethin clicked. the city was in between (or inter) the lakes = interlaken.... GENIUS! anyway, we spent a bit of time up there observing the oodles of paragliders landing in the main park (we couldn't quite figure out exactly where they were departing, but got sidetracked from that question quickly). after a while, we saw this group of high school kids (we figure it's an american school from somewhere in the region) walk up the other side of the restaurant than where we came from. so we asksd them how they got up there. turns out that they left from the funicular station at the bottom and walked up in an hour. it was gettin about time to leave, and rico and i wanted to get some exercise. so we figure that if these kids could walk up the mountain in an hour, then we should be able to walk down in an hour. mom d and li'l miss molly jumped on the funicular down whilst rico and i made our way along the path. to make a long story short, it took us an hour and a half and we were EXHAUSTED! looks like we just fit our cardio in for the next 3 weeks. talk about burnin in the front quads...painful! lucky for us that we had a 2hr drive directly ahead of us and didn't need to use our legs for a while.

seein as how it was saturday, july 4th. we decided to head to a 4th of july party held by one of my frat brothers from undergrad who's workin in zurich as an expat. although i'm not quite sure i'd call him an expat, he grew up in frankenmuth. that's pretty much the same thing as switzerland, right??? i'll have to say it is. anyway, we headed over to jared's for some brats, american music, euchre and people who don't speak with funny accents. ahhhhhhh... such an enjoyable time.

sunday brought out an hour's worth of a tiny motorboat on lake zurich (yea, we were on a boat again. i just can't get rid of the t-pain jokes!). took in some sun, helped out some damsels in distress, grabbed dinner and made our way home. what a relaxing way to end a holiday weekend.

next up.... back to the city of my youth, zaragoza. more reports once i get back into zurich.