Ok,now back in Switzerland, I managed to pull myself out of the quilt,take a quick shower and went for a quick breakfast just in time to exchange some swiss francs and board the train to Interlaken.
Interlaken, I had read on the internet, was a beautiful place where there were lot of Indians and most importantly Indian restaurants( Interlaken,here I come) and least importantly, a beautiful lake, as the very name suggests( least important now that we have already had one lake ticked against the 3-day trip ). The train journey was yet another beautiful pass through mountains and lakes. The lake at Interlaken I found was pretty significant. All the lakes I ve seen in India had been green because of the moss under water.All the lakes I had seen in Lake district were brown because of the mountain reflections and muddy base.But the lake here was blue! It was more like a sea that had flown into this city. It was supposed to be water from the glaciers of Mt.Titlis,Jungrau and a third one which I can hardly remember.I think the explanation (and the picture below)is more than enough for a city we ll just be using to connect to the next destination and which was seen from the windows of a swiss train.
The next stop was Lauterbrunnen(please excuse me for some of the spellings which may have gone haywire because of my sleep inducing afternoon session or because of the practical impossibility to pronounce some of the names of places.So lets call it lau from here) The same train split and one half went to lau and the other half to grinderwald. I was there in the first half and reached lau.. It was then we decided we should go for that glacier waterfalls inside a cave but had no clue how to get there.. asking some people here and there we managed to reach trummelbach falls..
The next hour was an amazing journey into caves to follow the falls right to its inception. It was adventurous all the way and all the way we were amazed at how they managed to convert this den into a tourist spot..Whatever,it was worth the decision to come here. Ah! Here is my favorite pic...
No.1
No.2
No.3
At around 12 30 afternoon we left this place and reached the lau station again to board the train to Jungfrau. We had to take a mountain train which travelled through tunnels almost all the way. Here's an exception..with an exceptional view!
We had stations on the way where we could get down and take a break and a few snaps from the mountain view windows there.
The higher we reached,the colder and foggier it was getting. But as we reached the peak,it was plain white outside. As if someone had covered the windows with a white screen. Almost nothing was visible from the mountain top and wind was also blowing pretty fiercely.
But still,having come a long distance to reach this point, we braved the wind and the snow and walked a few metres which was like walking on land defying gravity. The wind would have lifted me up had I been a few kilos less. Thanks to my 75+ kilo build, I could stay still like a rock( well almost!!) And then we came back to have lunch in one of the floors which had a few restaraunts..There was a ‘Bollywood Restaurant’ at the top. And why not.. when half of India is on Top of Europe! Blimey..No joke. Almost everyone there were Indians and we got the feeling we were in Shimla or some hillstation in India witnessing the sizeable Indian population there.
All of them belonged to the various package tours from India .I observed (not exactly..this friend of mine who accompanied me all through this trip,pointed it out to me)one small cute little girl in Mt.Titlis who fell in the snow and almost started to cry when her father came to her rescue to remove all the snow. I found this conversation pretty interesting and innocent.
Father:careful da, I told u no.
Daughter: What did u tell me?
Father: to be careful?
Daugher: when did u tell me?
Father: I told u ma.. you don’t remember
Daughter: No I remember you didn’t. When did u tell me?
Father: Ok leave it.Come ill take you to mama
Daughter: No you tell me when you told me first
Father: Ok ok. We ll go back
Daughter: Tell me first… when did u tell??
Father: ??(*omg*)
Seeing nothing at all except a white background,we decided to go and see the ice palace. And here we find all sorts of sculptures which were totally carvings out of ice and shining like glass. Here is a pick of the pics at Ice Palace:
The flooring was also polished ice which tempted me to skate ( like we used to do when we see a polished floor during school days) only to immediately fall with a thud (rock hard ice is painful unlike the snow) and that seemed to happen everytime I tried to get up(luckily noone was in there). After that we went to the spinx terrace trying to catch a glimpse of a good view from the top but the fog was still there. People were saying the sun had just come out for a while and the fog had disappeared for ten minutes and that was the time we were at the ice palace( now u know why everyone missed such a hard thud which kept repeating periodically with every slip of mine)
After having no luck at all for a clear view, we ultimately decided to catch the train back.It is here we broke ice ( this time figuratively) with a Punjabi couple basically settled in Malaysia who call themselves PIO( People of Indian Origin, couldn’t really make out if they were happy or sad that way).And this animated Sardharji and his wife seemed to take so much pride in having come to Switzerland and kept bloating about his high profile company Quest( ever heard of it??) and how they had sponsored their trip to Switzerland and also the world cup in germany. The company was sponsoring Brazil’s training camp and they were to have lunch with Ronaldinho. He was surprised when both of us( me and my friend) acknowledged it with a mild ‘Oh’(what else can he expect from two football duds who knew about it as much as Laloo Prasad knew databases). Not at all impressed with our reaction, he went on to explain his company and their products( the discussion on dinner with Ronaldinho was better, I hardly understood what the company actually did even after his 15 minute speech and I could see that was the same plight with my friend which was evident in his face).He rated it only next to Amazon.com in ecom business. And then both of us who were trying to put up a ‘Oh! Wow! Excellent’ expression and almost blurted out at the same time’How is the company doing now?’.Immediately the quite-witted Sardharji( Bulls eye-Its indeed an oxymoron!) said ‘We are here,aren’t we?’
‘Are kya bath hai’ was the expression this time but inside we were thinking
‘So am I, How does it mean my company is doing well????’
Thanks to the animated Sardharji and his marketing techniques( he handed over his visiting card which would only be used to note his name and then set the Junk mail filter since he took our email ids promising to send us mails about his company) which literally made us miss the remaining beauty of Switzerland on our way back.
We got down at La again for a change of train and spent the rest of the train journey discussing about the interesting sardhar we had met- all the way till Zurich
Before I go any further,the food requires special mention. All we had were burgers,burgers and burgers. If you’re a screwed up vegetarian like me, it would be worse.All Jungfrau could offer on top for vegetarians were some boiled leaf with French fries ( hows that for a combination).As a result, I ended up throwing up all the food that’s gone in all through the night and hence had to get up late the next day to visit the Rhine falls. We had to hurriedly see it,click and then immediately come back to Zurich,grab some chocolates there and then to catch our flights. We were just there at the airport at the nick of time only to see the flight was slightly delayed. And the flight journey lasted an hour for us to get back to London ending the eventful trip to Switzerland.
Switzerland is a beautiful place to be with an amazing railway connectivity with sceneries and lakes all the way wherever you go. But I still wonder how better would it be comparing with our very own paradise on earth. With half a dozen Indian movies a year having atleast a single song sequence shot in the sceneries of Interlaken or in the snow of Alps ,hardly one really captures the mind as much as a single song in Roja did. I know all I can see in Kashmir now is blood and war, but I dream to see this place before I lose the physical strength and the push within. And Why not! Not in my wildest of dreams would I have thought I would go to Switzerland for a weekend..!
There was this scene which was captured in my mind's eye.The beautiful mountain adjacent to the train route and a road between the two with a single red car that was moving parellel to our train.This is the picture that is going to remind me of Switzerland everytime i think of this place. And then slowly, we could see more and more snow cap mountains. "Pah chance ae illa!!" I remember I had exclaimed when I saw the first snow capped mountain. Beautiful it was and thats exactly what I had meant when i exclaimed. 
