Parasailing in the Swiss Alps

Today I went PARASAILING. On a very slightly smaller note, I found my first and hopefully not last European boyfriend. Dominik, my "pilot" was so cute!! I'll talk more of him later.

I tried to sleep in but couldn't because of noisy roommates. My parasailing reservation was at 10:45. I was picked up and taken to a nearby hotel where we picked up three girls. One of the girls had a reservation at 12:45, but wanted to go with her two friends. Because there were only three pilots, she couldn't go. Since I was alone, I gave her my spot and took her 12:45 slot. All three girls were so grateful. I was happy to make someone's day :)

I had two hours to kill so I went exploring. I wandered to the train station where I reserved my tickets to Italy tomorrow. All Italian trains need reservations. On the way back, I found a lovely chocolate shop and spent 20 Swiss francs (about 25 US dollars) on chocolate to take home. Y'all better love me and hope like heck it survives. :) I did try one piece and it was so good I wish I hadn't done it. There were TONS of watch shops and I window shopped for quite a while at those. I want a nice watch. I have the one I want picked out in my head. I won't be buying one here though. There are also lots of Swiss army knives, but those were easy for me to stay away from. :)

My pick up time came and off we went. I was with two other girls from Ohio and Virginia, students at University of South Carolina studying in Florence. Why can't I be rich enough to do that?? The whole time they were talking about their parents sending them money and what not. Spoiled brats. "Hey dad, I need $1000 so I can go to Interlaken this weekend." "Okay, honey." What a life. Besides a million Asians, there have been many American girls, like them, studying abroad in Europe visiting Interlaken for the weekend. To be quite honest, they all seem like idiots. Like really, just stupid girls. Anyway...

We took the van up the mountain to a little town. We then hiked five minutes to an empty hill and waited while our pilots set up the chutes and other gear. My pilot, Dominik, was young and cute an ah! I was in love with his adorable English. He's a native Swiss (?), and speaks Swiss-German first, English second. So he had the cutest accent. I totally stared at him the whole drive up, and then we had to randomly draw our pilots name and of course I got him!! Happy day! He let me borrow his stunnas for the ride down.

Okay, out of teenage love land and back to paragliding. We waited for the wind to be good before we ran down the hill and flew up into the air. We were flying!!! Paragliding is not scary at all...especially after having been skydiving before. It's just a beautiful birds eye view of the scenery and towns. It was amazing!! My hands and face totally froze, but I had a great flight and loved it all. We went right up next to a cliff side and then spun over Interlaken after I requested Dominik be "crazy." He used a camera on a stick to get the great pictures. We soared down over the park just across from my hostel, and gracefully landed in it. It was so fun!

I hurried back to my hostel after changing out of the ugly, fat red pants. I immediately got a cup of hot chocolate and thawed out.

I tried to upload my pictures using one of the computers at my hostel, but it wouldn't work because it blocked it or whatever. So I asked the front desk guy if he knew if it was possible for me to do it. He graciously offered me his laptop, and I used that to get the pictures off my camera!! I was so grateful because that meant I could delete them to make room for more!

Enjoy my paragliding pictures of me, Dominik, the Swiss Alps, and Interlaken: