This time we headed for Switzerland's biggest city, Zürich. The trip from Interlaken to Zürich was a beautiful sight! Maybe even more spectacular than the one in Austria.  Big blue and green lakes, and around the lakes, small villages with the classical Tirolhouses. The road was quite narrow at many places as we climbed up and down mountains, and through tunnels with our golden car. This was still our shortest drive whole summer, but one of he most breathtaking.

We didn't have many expectations to Zürich. We arrived quite early at Hotel Sternen Oerlikon in the northern part of the city. There we met a very cute and friendly girl in the reception who helped us with everything we wanted. Our Megane was placed in a parkinghouse for the next two nights before we headed into the center of Zürich.


Zurich is a charming city, we got a nice view from the top of the church tower.

The city itself is quite beautiful. It has an old and a new town center. The two centers are split by a emeraldgreen river called Limmat. On the river lots of white swans swims quietly. In the street the people were strolling around. On a corner three people played lovely classical music with their oboe, violin and cello. Around them people sat and listened with their eyes shut in appreciation.


The music set a very nice mood for the quiet pedestrian square. People were sitting around drinking coffee and having ice cream, listening to the music and relaxing in the sun.

We went to a church in the city. Inside there was a man playing organmusic. We could see some rally old paintings in a crypt. After that we went into a tower in the church so we could take a look at Zürich from above. The sight didn't disappoint us. In Zürich we went to another movie, this time we saw the fifth Harry Potter movie. The movie was bit of a disappointment. The cinema on the other hand was a little impressive. We wandered around old town, and had a few very expensive beers at a bar. Also we stumbled across ana arcade, and got to play some of Fire's favorite games, shoot-em-ups!



After Zürich we set our course toward Berlin. We were going to stop in Leipzig at a hostel. After eight hours of driving we arrived at the right address. No signs of a hostel was there. We looked at some doorbells and found one that had the right name on it. A few seconds after the button was pushed, the lock opened, and we went in by ourselves. There was nothing at all that looked like a place that rented out rooms to travelers. No staff met us in the hall, so we went up some stairs that was there. At third floor a man sticked his head out of a door, wondering if we were the norwegian guys. He then ordered Dice to tie his shoelace, told us that they were overbooked, stuck 6 euros into our hands, and told us to go somewhere else.

Not long after, we were on our way to another hotel, the B&B hotel. It was really ordinary, but the free parking and a good breakfast was a huge bonus. The closest diningplace to the hotel was McDonald's, so for the third time this roadtrip we had some good fast food. It tasted surprisingly good.

Two hours after the breakfast at the hotel, we sat our feet in Berlin. The smells and sights were familiar. We had been here before. We knew our way around in this town. It almost felt like home!

Get us our freakin' room already!
The hostel we were going to sleep at was closed when we arrived. A note sent us to a cafè close by, so we walked there. They only sent us back to the hostel wich now was open. There this guy told us to go to another place, because we were going to stay at a guesthouse that cooperated with the hostel. At the guesthouse a woman met us, looking confused and trying to communicate in German. She didn't have a booking from us, but a man that came ten minutes later knew of us. To him we had to pay 20 euros before we could be shown the room. This sent us for a long walk o the nearest ATM. After that we went back to the guy who needed the cash. After this we had to go for another walk to the room that was in a completely different building. We spent almost two hours just getting into the freaking room! We had expected another hostelexperience as well, but we ended up by ourselves in a completely different building than the others. We were very disappointed!


Berlin has got plenty of beach bars by the river! It's great hanging out there, a very relaxing atmosphere.

Funky berlin
The last two days in Berlin didn't disappoint us. At evening we sat in a beach bar in beach chairs and drank Becks beer.We also had a trip downtown to see if there was any good places to have a drink. The mood on the town was great. It was a fun and relaxing experience. Next day we spent a few hours in a park. We didn't get much sleep since we had to leave the room before 9 in the morning. That guesthouse really was the worst sleepover experience ever. Because of this we tried to sleep a bit in the park. Parks are great for hangovers and relaxing.


The East Side Gallery is a 2 km stretch of the Berlin wall, which graffiti artist have been invited to decorate. This Spawn painting was very cool!

Kurfürstendamm is one of the biggest shoppingstreet in Europe. After the park went there to get a feeling of that part of Berlin. The street was wide and huge. At the beginning of the street what used to be a big church stood. It probably had been bombed during World War II, so it was more like a ruin. The clocktower still stood so it was still an impressive sight. The rest of the streets was filled with different shops and cafès. All the sidestreets were similar. Unlucky for us, bad weather hit us, so we went back on the subway and got to the car.

We got to the airport and delivered the car. We were very nervous, and then very relieved when they told us the insurance would cover all the damage, and we didn't have to pay anything! Satisfied, we got on the plane, and headed home to Bodø, Norway.

Fire was on his way into the shower at the hotel in Interlaken, while Dice had a little nap after rafting. We had agreed to meet the Australian couple at a restaurant not very long after. Dice woke up from the shouting of Fire. “Holy crap! It’s raining like hell outside! Take a look!”

It was like the end of the world
A bit puzzled, Dice tried to peek outside. It really was raining, and the raindrops were huge, like small water bombs. He could barely make out the buildings across the street because of the intense downpour. A small river had already started to form on the road outside the hotel.

And soon the waterdrops from the sky was going to freeze.

“It’s hail!” Fire sounded like he was seeing something he had never seen before. It took Dice a quarter of a second to realize that this was actually something very few had seen before. He ran for his camera and hit the play button.


The hailstorm was terrifying. Huge pieces like this one was crashing down from the sky!

At first it was an incredible and impressive sight. Hail as big as golf balls were crashing to the ground and on the balcony outside the hotel room. The small river outside had grown large in only a small minute. Panic-like laughter filled the hotel room. But soon the laughter dissipated, as they both realized something really disturbing.

Damage and destruction everywhere
“The car won’t survive this! People are probably getting hurt out there!” As Dice spoke the words, the hail smashed the back window of a white station wagon across the street. We hoped that none of the huge hails had broken the roof of our car, which mainly was made of glass.

As soon as the bad weather had started, it was gone. The hailstorm had lasted only 3 or 4 minutes. Dice ran down to the stairs and out the front door. He picked up the first hail that he saw, one of many that had gone straight through the plastic roof above the front door of the hotel. It was the size of an egg.


Poor Ursula at the hotel, her lovely rose bushes were torn apart by the hail.

Continuing towards the car, Dice had to jump over and cross huge piles of golf ball sized hail. At first glance the car looked all right, the roof was in one piece. But the hood and the side of the car was filled with maybe 100 small dents, and the taillight was also broken!

One simple word slipped from Dices mouth. FUCK!

After this, we had to call around to insurance companies and car rental companies to see if we were going to suffer from this economically. The answer to that is still unknown.


The hailstorm did terrible damage to Interlaken, the leaves had been torn off the trees, traffic was jammed, and sirens could be heard from every direction.

We went to meet the Australians, but of course we arrived way to late. On the way we got to see what effect the storm had done on the environment. All gardens were ruined. Windows on houses was broken. Cars were filled with dents. Leaves were ripped of the trees. Around us firetrucks, ambulances and police cars were driving in all directions. We’re hoping nobody was seriously hurt by the hailstorm.

Between the two lakes of Thunersee and Briezensee is the small town of Interlaken. It's famous for being a backpacker's mecca with it's access to extreme sports, mountain hiking, and good parties at the huge hostels. We stayed at a guesthouse called Rugenpark Hotel, and the people there were super nice and helpful. Their tips and advice made our Interlaken experience truly great, and they were very friendly and talkative as well.

Aiming for Gemmenalpenhorn
We drove up to a small mountain town called Beatenberg. From there we took a cable car up to the peak of Niederhorn. After a quick meal we started walking towards along the ridge towards another peak called Gemmenalpenhorn. The nature sights were stunning! On one side of the trail we had cliffs and crazy rockformations. On the other we had green swiss alplandscape.


Fire climbed out on the edge of one cliff, to have a closer look at the amazing rock formations below.

At some places we walked, or crawled to the edges of the cliffs and peeked into the valley below. We had to fight our own fears sometimes, but the views and sceneries we saw were really worth the climbing. The valley below held some small tirolhouses and a narrow dirt road between them. At most we were about 500 meters over the valley.

Lizards and fog
Suddenly the keen eyes of Mr. Dice saw a movement under a rock. Soon a small lizard appeared from under the rock. We chased it around a bit, and watched how it would try and hide from us beneath small rocks and in the grass. Playing with animals is good fun! Right after the lizard, fog poured over the ridge we were walking on. It was quite intimidating, and we considered going back, but in the end we decided to go through it because we still had some visibility.


Dice on one of the rock formations. He struggled with his fear of heights a bit, but finally got to the top of it!

We didn't see the Gemmealpenhorn before we suddenly were right on top of it, because of the heavy fog. 2063 meter over the sea was a record for both Dice and Fire, so we were quite pleased. And what we saw beneath us was more interesting. A narrow trail leading down to one of the special rock formations. We climbed down there and a bit out on the rock. Again we had to overcome our own fears a bit, but it was well worth the effort.


3 capricorn goats up ahead. Right after this picture, they ran down the mountain side below us. It's amazing how they can move in these steep slopes!

The capricorn goats
Right after the rock, Dice activated his incredible supersight powers again. This time he saw three capricorns in the mountain side directly above us. The animals looked really great standing there in their own inhabitat. Much better than any zoo. Before we got to the top we saw a total of 10 capricorns. The closest we got to them was 6 meters. It was really cool to watch them jump and run down the insanely steep mountainside.


The beautiful capricorn goats were not afraid of us at all, probably because of Dice's friendly charms.

On the way down we saw some deertracks, pigs, rabbits and a fine fox. We went to another restaurant along the cablecartline. There we had a terrible meal before going home. When we got back home to the megane, it had been an awesome day and we were very excited.

Whitewater rafting
What could we do to match the day before? We had a choice between canyoning and rafting. After advice from the staff at the hotel, we ended up with rafting. We thought we looked really hot in those tight wetsuits, and was excited to conquer the river!

Captain Carol, the two of us, two from Scotland, two from Australia and two from Canada made the rafting group. Only the Canadians had done this before, so they had to get in front, poor guys! We all promised each others to try and save each others lives in emergency situations. And with that and some safety precautions we set sail on the gray river. Dice got a special task from Carol, to use his booming voice and repeat her orders so the guys in front could hear.



To the left, Fire is paddling for all he's worth. Meanwhile on the right, Dice is paddling and yelling commands.
 
Crashing down the river
The river immediately took a grip of the boat and sent us crashing down the rapids. The group was a bit poorly distributed in the boat, with two girls and two guys on one side, and four guys on the other side. This made the boat turn around when we paddled, so suddenly our behinds went down the river first! Going down the river backwards was kinda scary, so Carol had us stop in a quiet area to make a few switches. Then we went back into the rapids.

Carol kept screaming 'forward', And further ahead Dice yelled 'FOOORWAAAARRDD!'. We almost hit a bridge at one point, but with Dice's creaming in everyone's ears, we paddled all we could an just steered clear of it. Right after that the scariest words we knew were yelled out: "HOLD ON! GET DOWN!" We jumped down into the boat and held on as tight as we could. The river seemed like it would eat us alive at these occations, but we managed to get through it without anyone falling out, or the boat flipping over.



HOLD ON! Finally we steered clear of the bridge, and was heading down through the waves.

We soon got the hang of it and started to work as a real group. The Australian girl had a couple of close calls down the river, she almost fell into the water when some big waves crashed into the boat on her side. Both Fire and Dice lost their grips somewhere, but luckily they fell into the boat, not out of it. Still the Canadians in front had the hardest time, in the fastest part if the rapids, they were instructed to not stop paddling, even when the biggest waves crashed over the front of the boat. We saw them bowing their heads and not seeing anything ahead, but they always kept on paddling when told to. Brave Canadians!


HOLD ON! GET DOWN! In the worst parts of the river, we had to focus on staying inside the boat!

All the time water was splashing into our faces. The water was only about 4 degrees because it came from the glaciers by the Jungfrauhorn at 4000 meters height. The wetsuits took away most of the coldness, but it still was breathtaking getting soaked on the way down. Despite this we decided to jump into a calm part of the river and just stay in the water for a bit, floating along the boat. It felt good just letting yourself float there.

About Interlaken:

The Place:
There are only 13000 inhabitants in Interlaken. It lays between two huge lakes and many gigantic mountains, so there aren't any room for many more houses. Green rivers run through the center of the city. At one plave, they had built a parkinghouse on top of the river. Looked quite nice. The center is filled with touriststores, selling watches, painted cows and swiss army knives. The scenery around this city is stunning. Really beautiful. Words cannot describe it. You have to see it yourself.

The food:
We had some terrible meals in Interlaken. To much melted cheese! They had cheese on everything. Some places you could only order stuff that had cheese in it. Last day we found a restaurant that sold ostrich meat served on searing hot stones, so we could decide for ourself how long it should cook. This was an awesome meal that almost made us forget all the other ones.

The people:
This place mostly had backpackers in it. Lot's of Koreans, Australians and Americans. All locals spoke good English, which is a huge plus, and they were all very friendly. The couple who owned the Hotel was the most friendly hotel staff we've ever met. They were talkative and helpful with everything.

The girls:
Lot's of difference here. Most girls we saw were backpackers. So telling to much about the local girls will be unfair to them. The backpacker girls were as usual very beautiful.

Dice's tip number 1:
Order a place to sleep at least two days beforehand. If you do this, you won't have to change rooms all three nights at a hotel.

Dice's tip number 2:
Put your keys somewhere you'll remember! The hotelstaff actually needs them when you are done with your room. Forgetting where you put your keys every single day of a three-day stay will make evil travel mates laugh and and make fun of you!