Weekend #3 of European Living: Visit with Juan Jose, Stefan and Renee

Weekend Adventures: Brienz and Grindelwald, Switzerland

(June 25-27, 2010)

Preston and I met at the train station in Geneva for our 4:45pm train to Brienz (the trip was only about three and a half hours but we took four trains to get there via Spiez, Bern and Interlocken). Our official 1/2 price Swiss cards (with mug-shot like photos -- no smiling on Swiss official documents!) were ready as well which was exciting as we are that much more "real" Swiss residents. Of course the only train that was problematic/delayed of the four we took was the Italian!

Juan Jose and Stefan met us at the train station in Brienz and we walked back to Stefan and Renee's new vacation chalet, an amazingly beautiful home overlooking Brienzersee, a glacial lake just north of the Alps, part of the Berne Canton.

Stefan grilled us a delicious vegetable, fish and meat skewer dinner and we enjoyed a few bottles of Swiss wine. We had the most restful sleep, as we're sure you can imagine given the photo below was taken from our room at the chalet!

Saturday morning we took the train to Interlocken and made our connection to Grindelwald for an afternoon of fun. The four of us had lunch with amazing views (we enjoyed watching the paragliders, helicopters flying above the valley and the locals working their hay fields) while waiting for Renee and Finney, our host puppy, to meet us.

For our first adventure we took a gondola to Jungfraubahnen and took the "First Flieger" zip line down the mountain to Schreckfeld. This is a photo of Stefan, Preston, Juan Jose and I "pre-flight;" we had some jitters but we were able to take deep breaths of clean Swiss air to calm down a bit!

Preston and I rode "the flier" down together and Renee, Finney, Stefan and Juan were there to meet us. Here's the video of the experience: 

We were so excited after the rush of the zip line (the line is visible if you look really hard in the photo above) that we signed up to "Trotti" down the remainder of the mountain. 

Stefan had taken Juan to experience Trotti at a different spot Friday and after hearing about how much fun it was, how could we pass up the opportunity?! Trotti is essentially a razor scooter equipped for downhill mountain terrain - a lot of fun. Renee, Juan, Preston and I had a great time and we didn't even take out any mountain goats!

We all took the train back to Brienz and had an Italian dinner while we watched the U.S. Worldcup match against Ghana. It was an overtime heartbreak of a loss (and a bit painful to listen to the American students studying in Geneva bickering at the table next to us!) but we wish Ghana well.

Sunday we took a 1:38pm train from Brienz to Geneva (Juan joined us for some of the trip as he was taking the train to Brussels for his Microsoft conference) and arrived at about 5pm. We decided to embrace our new city and explore swimming in the Lake. We found "Geneve Plage," a beautiful swim center with a pool, slide and entrance to swim in the Lake; all with views of the Jet D'eau. For only CHF 7 you can spend the day -- perhaps some Expedia meetings should take place there?

En route to dinner we ran into a few Expedia colleagues, Ming, Brian, Andy and Andy's wife, Cindy and enjoyed a nice Sunday evening meal together. Another adventure-filled and memorable Swiss weekend ... the only thing missing was Krystal Perez.

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Weekend Trip to Brienz

Dates:

Friday – Sunday, June 25-27, 2010

Excursions:

• Saturday zip line: took the Jungfrau Railway to the top of Schrekfeld for our "First Flieger" experience
• Saturday trotti: rented trotti bikes to "scoot" down Schrekfeld to the Grindelwald valley
• Sunday visit to "Geneva plage"

Where we stayed:

Stefan and Renee's Swiss chalet in Brienz (chalet name TBD!)

The Walls' Review:

Hotel/accomodations review: Amazing views, incredible hosts ... we highly recommend friending Stefan and Renee (and their havanese puppy, Finney, too!)!

Other comments: The Canton of Berne is German-speaking. It's amazing such a small country has so many different "primary" languages. The beauty of the lakes and the mountains continue to amaze us. We look forward to visiting Interlacken again and scheduling some more fun activities.