Swiss Skydiving

The day after school ended for summer holidays my friend Sarah and I didn’t waste any time getting out of the UK – on Saturday June 24th we were off to Geneva, Switzerland to start our European adventure! Our first full day there we spent our time wandering around Geneva since, unfortunately, there was not much touristy stuff to do there. Actually, scratch that – there was absolutely NO touristy stuff to do there. And even if there had been we wouldn’t have been able to afford any of it. Man, Switzerland is expensive! I’m talking the equivalent of TEN Canadian dollars for a hotdog! Yup, ground up animal leftovers cost as much as one third of my weekly groceries. Ridiculous. Oh, but just the wiener is only $5.00, so I guess that’s okay. After being kept awake all night long by the restaurant right outside our hotel room window, though, we needed a pick-me-up; we bit the bullet and spent an outstanding $7.00 for a tea at Starbucks. Gulp, indeed.
Even though there wasn’t much to do, it was a beautiful day, so we walked around for most of it, and even rented paddle boats for an hour and paddled around the water. Unfortunately nearing the end of the day we stumbled upon a beach, right in the middle of the city! That would have been good to know earlier in the day. Oh well.

The next day we were off to Interlaken via train; it didn’t take very long to get there, and after we found our hostel, and wandered around for a bit, we decided we had better have a drink. An hour later we were surrounded by two groups of guys, one local, one from Manchester, who seemed to be battling for our attention. Both groups were buying us drinks (what a shame), and I was even given a white rose by my German admirer, Eric, who, bless him, struggled to speak English so that we could have a conversation. It was a really fun night – an old drunk man named Peter (totally harmless by the way) taught me a song that we sang for hours: “There are nine million bicycles in Beijing. It’s a fact that you cannot deny; it’s a fact I will love you till I die.” Ever heard of it? Didn’t think so. I am not entirely convinced that it’s a real song – I must remember to look it up.

As we became bored with the pub our Manchester friends invited us back to their campground for more booze, and who are we to pass that up?! Off we went in a taxi to god-knows-where, just in time for a massive rainstorm. We drank in their porches and drunkenly accepted the fact that we would have to stay in their tents – it was pouring rain and we had no idea where we were. Kindly the guys offered us one of their tents and we spent the night in it, shivering in the cold and laughing hysterically every time one of us fell off the twin-size blow-up mattress, which was about every 45 seconds. It was an interesting night, and we took off early to try and catch a few winks before our skydiving adventure. Um, yes, you read that correctly: we went skydiving after a night of no sleep and with an ever-so mild hangover.

Let me concentrate on the skydiving though. We went with a company called Skydive Switzerland; they picked us up at our hostel at noon and drove us to their building where we got dressed in our jumpsuits and were given the 10 minute training on what to do when we jump. I decided to jump first as I didn’t think I would be able to watch Sarah fall through the sky without passing out.

As we rose into the air in the helicopter, attached to our jumping partner, and I watched all the houses and things get smaller and smaller, I started to wonder what the hell I was thinking. But there wasn’t much time to second-guess my decision as before I knew it Hank, my jumping partner, told me to open the helicopter door and stand on the ledge. I thought I would throw up but off I went and did as I was told. I held on to my harness, arched my back, rested my head on Hank’s shoulder as instructed, and closed my eyes. Thankfully Hank didn’t count to three or anything stressful like that; I simply felt myself no longer on the ledge and flipping through the air. Almost immediately Hank was tapping my shoulders which meant that I could let go of the harness and enjoy the free-fall. I opened my eyes and couldn’t believe it – the sights were unbelievable and I really cannot describe how I felt as I was falling through the sky overtop the Swiss Alps. It was actually kind of hard to breathe – you’re just falling so fast and the air is going into your mouth as you try to scream, which is also impossible. After the 45 second free-fall Hank tapped my shoulders again which told me it was time for the parachute to be opened. I grabbed hold of my harness again and felt a pretty intense jerk as the chute opened (thank GOD).

For the next 8 minutes I gracefully floated to the ground and came to a rather abrupt stop on the grass, landing onto top of Hank (don’t worry, he’s used to it). Sarah landed less than a minute after me and almost the first thing we did was call our parents. I woke my mom up (kind of forgot what time it was in Canada) with my news, and both she and my dad called me crazy a number of times. For the rest of the day though, I just had the most amazing feeling. The jump gave me such a tremendous adrenaline rush and I forgot that I hadn’t slept at all the night before. Sarah and I celebrated by travelling 10 minutes on a bus to this beautiful lake and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening swimming and relaxing on the grass.

The next morning we took a journey to Trummelbach Falls, the only accessible, mountain-interior glacier falls in Europe - meaning they are the only water falls that are located inside a set of caves.  The tour consisted of seeing ten different glacier waterfalls tumbling within a mountain and which you could only access via a tunnel-lift.  It was very cold inside those caves, and the pictures didn't turn out very good because it was so dark, but it was a pretty amazing sight to see.  We then took the cable cars to Schilthorn, home of the second highest mountain in Switzerland.  We should have been able to see the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau mountains from there, but unfortunately it was so cloudy that when we reached the top nearly the only thing we could see was an endless skyline of white.  It was really disappointing as I'm sure the views would have been absolutely breathtaking.  But alas, we froze our buts off for no reason (it was less than 6 degrees at the top and we were in our summer clothes!).  Oh well.  We laughed about our bad luck and took a picture of our sandled feet in a pile of frozen snow and made our way back down to the warmth of the land.  The next morning we woke up and made our way to the train station, ready and anxiously awaiting our arrival in Munich, Germany, for the next stop on our journey.