Interlaken-Milan

As I haven't really posted anything substantial since St Patrick's day, I suppose I ought to let you all know what I have been up to in the last few weeks. Well, I can't really remember. Maybe if I just start writing it will come back to me. I sort of fell into a routine for a couple weeks there. Work, cook, run, sleep. Go out with coworkers Friday nights and flatmates Saturday night. Then I just started going out all the time. I would look tired all the time so everyone thought I was, when I really wasn't. It is still well cold here. Infact, I think it is colder here than in the TC, go figure. Maybe the Atlantic current has shut down, everyone run for the hills! Long story short, I was in a bit of a lull, not doing anything spectacular, saving my money. Fun huh? I had my various wanderings around London but not much out of the ordinary: markets, pubs and new parts of London.

Last Thursday(6th April) my dad was in town so I met him at bricklane for some Curry and a few pints, and then it was off to the Swan, a pub on Hyde park for another pint as well as being the place I had my first proper Fish and Chips about 11 years ago. Nice to have another visitor, especially one that knows London just about better than I. No tourist crap, just curry and pints. Went home around whatever time to pack, iron out my passport so it looked more presentable to immigration controllers around Europe and kill time til I once again caught my 3:30 train to Luton airport (remember Amsterdam?). I met Adam and JP in Interlaken (look at a map) this weekend (8th April) to go skydiving! I flew into Milan and took the train from there. I had enough time to walk to the Duomo (biggest Gothic Cathedral in Europe) look at it for a minute or two and turn right around to catch my train. I couldn't even find gelato! The train ride was absolutely amazing as it was a bright and beautiful day. It took me past Lake Maggiore in northern Italy, this lake that has Islands where extremely large palace-like houses sit. They appear to be floating on water because the house is as big as the island itself. Posh. After what seemed like forever in a dark tunnel I emerged in Switzerland with the alps towering above me. No wonder rail in Switzerland is so bloody expensive: a gorgeous ride, trains that are never late and tracks that plow through the alps like the autobahn plows through Germany.

I was the first to arrive in Interlaken so I checked in at the hostel and met Adam shortly after. After travelling along for three weeks he had loads to talk about; I let him go for a while because after being in so many different language environments where you have to keep everything to yourself, it all comes out at once to the first person you see. I am the same way. We walked out into the country and watched the sun set over the mountains. After a crappy dinner and a wonderful nights sleep, as I hadn't slept since Wednesday night and it was now Friday night, we managed to get out of bed before our noon taxi took us to the airfield. Fourteen hours of planes trains and buses make for an exhausting trip.

Training for the dive consisted of lying on our stomachs and getting our hands, feet and legs in the right place. That was it. Flight suit and harness on, 12 of us were shoved into a tiny little airplane and away we went. At one point I figured we would be high enough, but were only half way to 15,000 feet. Adam was the first to jump. His camera man monkeyed around the outside of the airplane so he could follow him out. It was nuts. Adam disappeared. 7 seconds later the Frenchman disappeared. 7 seconds later I followed suit (I am seriously having an adrenaline rush and big smile just writing about it!) and another 7 seconds, JP was last to dive. My dive partner (Roland, from Thun, CH - just up the road) decided it would be fun to barrel roll, flip and spin as we left the plane. I was able to see for a second the plane from which we jumped. The first chute comes out immediately and slows us down to 120mph. Arched back, knees bent and hands out. Sit back and enjoy the scenery! What a fucking rush! The sky was bright and blue, the mountains had snow capped peaks and the valleys were green below. Everything looked so tiny!. I could see Adam below me. It's just getting past the initial plunge, then it is weightlessness. A minute or so later I tucked in and the parachute deployed. Loosened up the harness so that it acted as a seat and we took a roller coaster ride down to the ground. The whole experience was much less violent than I expected. Now I want to do it again, because I know what to expect this time. Well I suppose we will have to save it for the Keys in a few years. We three have plans to meet up and go diving every so often now. I spent a lot of money that weekend but every penny was worth it!

We hung out with the skydiver chaps til about 6 oclock that night and took another beautiful taxi ride over the mountain back to Interlaken. Dinner was to be much better than the crap grocery store food we had the previous night. We started with a traditional cheese fondue in one restaurant, and moved to an Italian joint and all had a big load of pasta, foreshadowing Adam and I's arrival in Milan.

Taking the train from Interlaken was a bit odd. The entire journey to the Italian border was quite nice. After we came out of the tunnel on the Italian side, it was crap and only turned to shit as we rolled into Milan. All of northern Italy looked like a dump in the crummy and dreary weather. Hardly the best first impression to have when arriving in a new city and country for the first time. After getting completely lost (yeah, I admit I get lost in Europe. I get lost 4 blocks from my house in Brent!) on the metro and its many (read, three) lines we found our hostel in a rather, well, I dunno section of Milan. For 10 Euro a night we didn't care, I have a few pictures but forgot to save the check-in sheet we received. There were some rules and procedures and the intro went something like this:

If you are racist, homophobic, sexist, a nazi, politician policia or associated with military in any way. We do not want you here.

It went on to list things about buying stuff for the kitchen to share, and alerted us there would be bands and hippies all night long outside in the courtyard. We came in knowing that this place puts up hobos in its extra beds. It was actually pretty nice, but for some reason there were a lot of shoes hanging from a giant pole outside our bathroom window.

A beeline was made for the gelato stand and for the next 24 hours Adam and I splurged on pizzas, pasta and more gelato. Did the usual sightseeing and had the hardest time finding dinner anywhere before 19h30, which caused a bit of a problem because I had to be on a coach back to the airport by at least 20H30. After delicious pasta carbonara and wine, we hit up some gelato and watched it rain. I didn't feel like walking to the train station in the rain so said fuck it and sat there some more. I finally got off my butt and realised I would most likely end up missing my plane but walked through the rain in hopes of finding a coach to Bergamo. After the 20 or so minute walk I looked at the coach schedule that I had tickets for. Next bus, not for another 45 minutes. I was sure to miss my plane. I saw another company that also went to the airport I flew out of and looked at their schedule. The next one for them didn't leave for hours! But there was a driver standing outside his coach with passengers on it, so I babbled at him in broken Italian and that, along with a nice old man who helped translate a bit, got me on the coach and we were off within five minutes. I have no idea how this happened because there wasn't even supposed to be a bus going to the airport at that time!!! It ended up not mattering if I'd have been late or not as my flight was well delayed (I'm now avoiding Ryan Air at all costs as I've always had a better experience with Easy Jet). After being drenched for the entire flight back to London -we had to walk out to the plane on the tarmac in torrential rainfall- I finally got home at about 2 that morning.

Up five hours later to get to work. What a fantastic weekend!

And the first sentence of this post is a bit misleading; I started righting this quite a while ago and wrote all the other posts before I even finished this. Cheers to you for still reading!