The day started out great, we got woken up at 5:30 am by a crazy (or pissed) man. He came passed and knocked on our door and then the next persons and ended up knocking on a whole bunch of doors, at first we thought it was the boys coming back from the bar playing knock and
run. He then came back past our cabin and knocked on it again and again. I asked Kieran what time it was. Found out it was 5:30 am and told the man to go away. He then opened the door and said “come on time to get up lets go its 7 am get up, its happy hour”. We told him he was wrong and that he had the wrong room. He then proceeded to try and get us to still come with him and to get out of bed. After which he shut the door and then went onto the next room. The next room was where the Saffas were, not 100% sure what happened there but her was trying the same thing as he had just tried with us. Duayne was telling him off and then the guy slammed the door. To which Duayne was angry hopped out of bed and ran after the guy and started to tell him off and swear at him. Nothing else happened after this. I thought it was meant o be a safe town. Which I guess it is but they forgot to mention crazy people are there as well.We fell back asleep, we weren’t going to let a crazy man rob us of our extra hour and a half of sleep. When we got up and went to breakfast we told Jaz who had never heard of that happening before. I think he was living in the park and got woken up when the others went to bed after a big one at the bar and they woke him up and he wanted revenge (or he was just really pissed and wanted some friends to drink with him) After that incident I wasn’t too sure about leaving my stuff in our room without a lock, I did it anyways he can steal my undies if he likes. It was pretty funny though (The Saffas took it pretty serious though and didn’t seem to see the funny side as much as we did…).
After breaky we had to run to catch the train up the mountain as they come each hour and we only had 10 mins to make it. We were at the front and made it easy to the train which lucky for us had waited just long enough for us to get there and hop on. I don’t know how Ashoor and Llody made it to the train, they were woken only 5 mins before we left. As we hoped on the train
so did Jaz as she needed to tell us what to do when we got off there and where we had to change trains. Unfortunately for her the train started moving, she was shouting to the train people to stop as she wasn’t coming with us and had no ticket to get up there. She was absolutely freaking because she knew it wouldn’t be a while till the next train came, had no money to buy a ticket and she had no bra no (we found that out later) which was a concern for her. While she was freaking and banging on the doors we all pissed our selves laughing at her!When the ticket inspector came she had to tell him what happened, he was nice enough to understand and allowed her to get off at the next stop, her new problem was to get back on another train fro the return trip for free other wise it would be a 2hr walk back in the cold. Lucky for her she got to go back on the train and made it back to where we were staying only an hour later.
We all traveled up on the train to the top of Europe. The views up there were amazing, no way to describe it really. The photos do not do it justice. We had to change trains half way up. This is
where we saw a real Saint Bernard with the rum barrel around his neck. Not sure why he was there I think it was a tourist thing, if people wanted photos you might have had to pay the owner some money. Awesome mountains with snow, real snow. There were really good views from the stops we had on the train as it was going through the inside of the mountain. At the stops inside the mountain they had windows where we were ale to get off and have a look. It was amazing how they built the train tracks and cut it all out of the mountain. It was a long 2 hr journey up to the top of the mountain but you didn’t even realise it took that long as you were just amazed by the views.We finally made it to the Top of Europe; it is called that as apparently it is the highest place in Europe that you can get to with out a pick and climbing equipment. When we first got out we followed the crowds but had no idea where we were going. The signs were not to clear on where you had to go for what. We finally found our way up to the top and to the outside. Walking up all the stairs to get outside made you realize how thin the air was up there and some people were feeling dizzy and short of breath, it also makes you feel tiered so you feel like a major unfit fat ass. It took a little while to adjust but after a while you were fine. I did feel a bit dizzy at the
beginning but then I was fine. We decided to go out and see all the snow. It was good and cold as snow always is. It was real good snow nice and soft powder not the kind that you get at the popular
ski slopes, but the fresh brand new stuff, the kind of snow where you can make a snowball and throw it with out causing serious damage to your victim.After spending enough time out side we went back into the warmth and decided to head down into the ice palace. We went down with Aaron, Daniel and Lloydy. Before we went down we heard stories that someone had spewed just at the bottom of the steps and some poor sucker had slipped in it hahaha “sucked in buddy that’s gross you fell in spew”. I was glad we had a heads up we knew what to expect (someone could not handle the altitude). We made our way down the steps, halfway down the smell hit us you couldn’t get past the spew smell. I was about to dry reach so I just covered my mouth and made my way down as quick as possible and past the spew (where you could see the slip mark) And then down a corridor into the ice palace where there was no more smell. Kieran was fine, I guess that’s why she is the nurse.
The ice palace was not as much of a palace as it was an ice cave where they had carved stuff out for you to look at. There were polar bears, and penguins made of ice. It was still really good. Some of the boys decided to get photos of themselves humping and riding the animals. The floor was ice and it was a challenge not to slip over as there were not too many hand rails so you had to be good on your feet. Kieran almost stacked it once. Daniel took a slip trying to be cool and majorly landed on his ass. It was all caught on film for which I am trying to get a copy.In the ice palace there were these thin passage ways to get from the end to the beginning again. It was fun going through the passages until I almost got stuck, see photo. We had finished
playing around in the ice palace and made our way back past the stink and then up to the observation deck. The observation deck was a fare hike and then to a long elevator ride to the top. The views from up there 
were amazing. Only problem for me was standing on the grated platform where you could see straight through and down the mountain not the best when you have a dislike of heights. I didn’t stay out there for too long. We ate our lunch inside where we sat down with Ashoor for some lunch. As he got up too late we gave him some of our lunch (we got to make our own lunch that morning) and then left him to sleep off his sickness on the bench like a hobo. We told him we would be back before leaving to make sure he was awake.We looked around the souvenir shop a bit and bought a few things. We decided to get the next train back. As the train leaves every hour we had a bit of time to kill so we decided to run around in the snow a bit more. Realising we had ten mins till the next train we went back down,
got lost on the way and then we only had 5 mins. I ran to get Ashoor from where we had left him, up the lift ran around. I could not find him. Back down the lift. And ran to the train, it was still sitting there we opened the gate and tried to get on but as it was 1 minute past the time it was supposed to leave the man would not let us on. We accepted this and walked back to go and wait, as we did so the Swiss man said ‘In Swiss we leave on time’. I was now angry at this guy he did not have to add that to our already shit situation. And if they were so on time why had they train not left yet huh…stupid Swiss head.So we went to sit down and wait for another hour for the next train. Sitting there angry I decided to look out the window through the binoculars, as I turned to walk back Ashoor said hello to me. I could have nearly died. I was happy to see him as he took away my anger from the man as it did not make it a waste of time us missing the train. Ashoor was thankful we had returned as there was no one else left. We hopped on the next train, still good views so you don’t notice the time going by that much.
When back in Lauterbrunner We walked around to go and get some more souvenirs and a Swiss army knife or 2 (have to get a knife when in Switzerland they invented them). We had our pile of stuff we wanted to buy, when it came time to pay. Our credit cards would not work, both mine and Kieran’s. I ran down the street to the ATM to withdraw the money. I put in my details and then waited, my money didn’t come out. I started to freak a bit. Ran back to the shop where the tour leader was and she came with Kieran and I to the machine. Where we worked out that I had not seen the screen which read ‘no connection’. We then went to the other ATM in the town. Also no luck with the connection. Hmm what could we do. We spoke to Jaz and we went back to the shop where they took euros as well as Swiss franks. We had to borrow 20 euro from Jaz. I would pay her back when we returned to camp where I had more money. It was crap there was no connection from the town to the commonwealth bank. We ended up getting our knives and Kieran’s swatch watch pheww.
The weird thing is that we still had to pay for our tip up the mountain, we paid with our credit cards and it worked at the camp site which is 10 min walk from town….freaky. We had a fondue for dinner that night and then a bunch of sausage which was really good. Had more drinks before bed to end a good and interesting day.
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