This day I had a slow start again. There are two other people in the room with me. One is from the north west of United States somewhere, and the other is from the Gold Coast in Australia. The guy from the US is going to climb the Matterhorn in a little while. He is feeling a bit nervous about it. But he says that he does quite a lot of rock climbing in general so he might be alright. I think that it is classed as a fairly difficult mountain to climb. He paid $9000 for the guide to take him up, and that was at some kind of friends discount rate!
The guy from Australia spent some time in Italy at a school learning the language. He has just finished high school so is doing some travelling.
Eventually I got going to see some waterfalls. There are probably other things that I could see in this valley, for after the waterfall today, but I don't really feel like doing more long walks.
I went to see a succession of waterfalls called Trummelbachfalle. It is a series of waterfalls that are fed by melting snow from some mountains. It apparently is the sole drainage waterfall for the Eiger, Monch, and Jungfrau 'glacier defiles'. The waterfalls are all cut inside the rock of the cliffs, so you ride a lift up into the mountain then walk around some paths cut into the mountain. It's really cool. It costs 11 euros.
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| Going up through the mountain in the lift. |
I got back to the hostel and got ready for leaving the following day. It got fairly late and the two guys from my room had not yet arrived back. They were both heading up to Schilthorn today, doing something like the walk I did on the first day. Eventually the Australian got back. He was very tired. He seemed to have done the route identical to what I did. He said that the section at the end, walking through the valley, was very tiring. I thought the same thing.
After some more time, the American got back. He looked very tired. He made it up to Schilthorn and was having a great day. Then he got back to Lauterbrunnen and realised that he'd left his wallet in the revolving restaurant... at the top of Schilthorn. All his money and his passport are in his wallet. In a panic he ran up the hill all the way to Murren. That's a climb of at least 700 metres I think. It would have been very tiring after a long day. When he got to Murren, he found that one of the waitresses had found his wallet and brought it down to the cable car station in Murren. It must have been a very tiring day for him.
I was very amused to see that the Australian guy has found within the bookswap hostel library the second part of the 'Book of the New Sun' book, but that he hasn't read the first one. Despite this he is going to try to read this novel, with an attempt to just pick up what he missed out as it goes along. What makes it funny is that the greatness of the story relies on the building up of lots of seemingly arbirtrary details that turn into very significant things later on. Starting from the second is basically impossible. I told him that, and he doesn't seem to think it will be a problem. This is one of the best novels I've ever read.
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| Here's the map I drew to find my hostel in Venice for the following day. Amazingly, this map worked. |
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| Here's the map to find my hostel in Cinque Terre for after Venice. (I've heard conflicting things about whether or not there is internet in the hostel) |
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| The hostel in Lauterbrunnen gave me a present for before I left! |
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