And so finally we come to the last leg of the tour. At this stage, everyone is getting tired and run down and we all know the end is near. After just over 40 days of camping and sight-seeing in a new country almost every day, the tour is finally starting to take it's toll on us all. Just as we thought we'd seen it all, we were to head through Switzerland alongside the majestic Swiss Alps.
Shortly before we made it to the Switzerland border though, we stopped in the 22nd smallest country in the world that is between Germany and Switzerland and uses both of the languages - Liechtenstein. For lunch, we were dropped off in the capital, Vaduz, which is probably the smallest capital city I've ever seen. It looked like a little village kind of thing and I think everyone would have known each other. While we were eating some schnitzel sandwiches, we noticed outside there was a massive marching band. Apparently this little capital city is mega-religious too, because following the marching band were a heap of little chaps dressed in suits and stuff, I'm guessing it must have been their first communion or something, because there was this mad-dog priest following the entire parade. I think it would be awesome living in this sort of smallish kind of town where everyone knows each other.
Jumping back on the coach, we passed through the border and before long the mountains began to emerge and oh how life changing it was. The pictures I'm providing serve it no justice, it was bloody gorgeous, and I don't think I've ever been so gobsmacked in my life. There's no point in sitting here explaining it, because I'll just get frustrated with myself, so I'll just throw a few pictures up and you can knock yourself out.
Before we made it to the campsite, we stopped by the beautiful alpine town of Lucerne. This little gem had awesome wooden bridges scattered all over with a beautiful river running through it full of swans and all sorts of other little birds. Cobblestones filled the streets and the little houses and buildings were also pretty cute. Here was home to a little shop that Contiki probably gets commission off by taking us there, but the people were friendly enough and seeing as it was the only bloody thing open being a Sunday, we decided to make a few purchases anyway. They sold watches and Swiss army knives. Apart from chocolate, what more can Switzerland offer? The watches were hideously priced, and I hate them anyway, so I bought myself a knife. The knives came in almost every kind of possibility of tools and some of the knives were so ridiculously full of gadgets, it wouldn’t fit in your pocket. That being said, they were essentially a whole tool box in the form of one contraption. I decided that I wanted a knife that had a screw driver and a corkscrew (Contiki taught me how useful a corkscrew can actually be). Every knife either had a corkscrew OR a screwdriver, but only one in the entire shop that had both. This one also had a magnifying glass and a hook which has a purpose unknown to me as well as all the other bloody things attached on the standard knives. The magnifying glass and hook were useless, but if I wanted both the screwdriver AND corkscrew, I had to just suck it up.
There are two animals in the following picture, can you see them?
Giving a pass to the whole Swiss chocolate idea, we jumped on the bus and made our way to the alpine heights of Lauterbrunnen. On arrival we’d struck gold. As previously mentioned, everyone had a job on Contiki. I was a coach packer, which meant I unloaded the coach on arrival to a campsite, and packed it up just before departure. A pretty crappy job I have to admit. Ben was part of Team Erection, which involved setting up the cook tent which apparently isn’t that easy either. This camp site had a permanent cook tent and therefore all I had to get out of the coach were the bags and tents, which meant no bloody poles, tarps, tables or chairs. Yesssssss!
Naturally, in celebration, we all ran off to the nearest convenience store and all grabbed some bottles of cheap nasty wine. Half of the group played a game most commonly known as “wine hands” which involves taping a bottle of wine to each hand, and therefore you can’t use that hand until you’ve finished that bottle of wine. A ridiculous and irresponsible game, the only kind Contiki groups are interested in playing. This was pretty good fun to spectate when we were served burgers for dinner…A lot of them had to be fed by someone not playing the game, where others were too stubborn and somehow managed to eat it without hands. This campsite was host to all the popular tour companies such as bus-a-bout, Top Deck tours and of course Contiki, so while we were here, another 4 bus loads of groups were also present. Socialise!
I should definitely mention the area we were in. Looking up, all we could see were massive mountains and cliffs, all capped with snow and with cascading water falls. It was probably the most beautiful landscape I’ve ever seen. This was the most ideal location in Europe I could think of to get a picture with The Moocher. Of course though, everyone had heard about The Moocher by now, and all loved it, so when they saw it being pulled out, the chaps decided they all wanted to be in the photo. I thought it was a brilliant shot.
A mass night of drinking took place and due to the amount of new, fresh and clean people, who all happened to have cabins, half of our Contiki group decided to have ‘Sleep overs’ with them. Apparently all these rich kids wanted to go back to the tents to be a little more exciting, but after the experiences already had in the tents, our group definitely did not want to spend another night in a cold, wet and uncomfortable tent. I think the reason most of them hooked up with the new people was just because of the luxury of having a bed.
Now comes the part of the story which I regret most about my entire Contiki trip, and probably my entire time in Europe. Another one of these ‘Optional Activities’ was to get a Cog rail train up to the top of Jungfrau mountain, one of the popular spots in the area. Most of the people who come to Lauterbrunnen only come to go to Jungfrau. This optional activity was about AUD$200 and I think was mainly aimed at those who had never seen snow before. Benjamin and myself were the only people on the trip who had never really seen snow. Of course it snowed in Belfast, but it melted before it hit the ground. I weighed up my situation and decided to not go on the trip to the top. If I’m going to be spending another year in Europe, I’ll be going through winter, and hopefully see A LOT of snow. I’d always planned on making a return trip to Switzerland again also. This is not my regret. When everyone went to the mountain top, there were only a handful of us left. When I awoke though, no-one was at the campsite, and I decided to have a day off before we reached Heidelburg and more importantly, Amsterdam. If I was going to smash these two, I wanted to be refreshed. This is my regret. By staying at the campsite all day, and not exploring the area and visiting the waterfalls, I didn’t really make the most of my time in Lauterbrunnen. When everyone returned, they proceeded to tell me that this was probably the highlight of the entire trip and everything was the coolest thing they’d seen. That’s pretty much exactly what I wanted to hear…However, every time I have a regret about something on the trip, I say to myself “I have an excuse to come back” and I definitely plan to use that excuse.
Over the border again and into Germany again, we arrive in Heidelburg, an awesome little university town which I would very much like to visit again. Only spending two hours here, I quite obviously felt as if I hadn’t seen it properly…Or at all. The people we came across, although looking questioningly at our thongs and board shorts, were incredibly nice people and seemed to enjoy our presence. With a lack of Australian presence, maybe this is why I liked the place so much. There was an incredible amount of things we didn’t get around to doing here, but I still loved my couple of hours walking around the massive streets. Remembering we’d consumed all our alcohol, we went to a small supermarket and stocked up for the night. I saw a cool looking bottle and saw it was only 4 euro. After another glance and seeing it was 40%, I didn’t care what it was and just grabbed it. In the case of it tasting terrible, I also grabbed a cheap bottle of red for a back-up/top-up. With a few finishing touches to our costumes for the party that evening, we were off again and made our way to the campsite.
Before long, people were starting to have showers and one by one, everyone started walking out in their costumes. Because of the lack of theme, the things that came out were bizarre and varied a lot. There was a muu-muu, a cat, plenty of 80’s clothes, a tennis coach and plenty of random pieces of weird clothing just put together to make some monstrosity. One of the chaps decided to dress up as a female cheerleader…And decided on having no underwear. Good lord it was a fright when he sat down. I walked out in my little number and it seemed to be a success, everyone enjoyed it.
Another chap came out wearing only a 3 year old girls shirt and a head wrap which covered most of his genitals and not much of his buttocks. I think it was fair to say he was the winner.
I finally decided to pop the cork on my bottle and took a swig. Of all the alcohol I’ve ever consumed in my life, this was probably the worst. Surely I should have known by looking at the price tag. I thought the word ‘Grappa’ was just a brand name or something, but it turns out it’s an actual type of alcohol. It tasted a little bit like the crappy, rotten bits of grape blended up with a bit of poison and petrol. I wouldn’t be surprised if it actually was that. It almost blew my head off, but I was persistent that maybe if I just kept going, it would start to not be so bad. It just got worse, and every time I smelt it, I felt like crying knowing I still had some in there. I passed it around and no-one liked it, but paying the 4 euro was worth seeing the reaction alone of some people. Those who drink cordial flavoured vodka-pops and spirits drowned in coke were hit pretty hard by the looks of it. I’m pretty happy I bought the wine too. Although we got rid of it eventually, it took a few of us to get through.
The rest of the night progressed and a couple people went out into the city to see if there was anything open to see the night life. I don’t know how well they went, but I stayed back with everyone and played with glow sticks and cameras. The Moocher made another appearance and this time it had a picture with all the girls.
After smashing some sleep, we again left the campsite and made our way to the border. On the way, we stopped off at a lovely little place called St. Goar, home to a lovely street full of awesome shops full of cuckoo clocks and steins. We had about an hour and a half to play with to buy our stuff and leave again and I spent about an hour and 29 minutes pacing the inside of the stein shop looking for something. I wanted about 50 of the things in there, but I would have had no money left. I came to the conclusion that I would probably never actually use the thing, seeing as I have no beer tap at home, so I decided to rule out practicality and just pick one that looked cool. I also came to the conclusion that if I didn’t make up my mind soon, I have be leaving the town with no stein at all and therefore made a reckless decision. I made away with a lovely pewter stein, complete with lid to ‘keep out the flies’ that so many Germans seem to be worried about. If I can remember correctly, my stein has many of the popular and historic German cities engraved all over it.
On the bus again, we finally made it to what Tara called “The Damage”, better known to us as Amsterdam. In my experience with Dutch people that I‘ve met along my travels, I gather them as being generally awesome people, pretty cruisy about everything. I would go so far as to say that they’re more laid back than Australians. With only 10 minutes to unload the bus, set up camp, get changed and leave, we somehow managed to do it, most of us just getting changed on the bus on the way back into town. Our campsite was an hour away from the city which made things an absolute bitch. On arrival though, it was so worth it.
To be continued…
(If you didn't see the two animals in the picture earlier, one was a lion, the other was a pig, go on, have another look.)
oh love that would of cained.love the outfit by the way.suits you and your masculine figure.lol.renae xx
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