Submitted by Carolyn Jones on the 2013 fall semester exchange program with the Swiss School of Tourism and Hospitality…
Due to our dwindling budget and lack of sleep this week, my friends and I used the weekend to hike the Swiss Alps with two of our teachers. Since our school is so small, we are able to get to know our teachers on a very personal level. (We even refer to them as our Swiss Mom and Dad.) Apparently this hiking trip is an annual tradition, which is why I originally expected it to be a relaxing and casual hike. I finally realized what I had gotten myself into when we were hiking up what can only be described as a vertical wall, feeling like I was going to pass out from the altitude and wake up as Heidi herself. We were fortunate though, because the higher we went and the more our legs and lungs burned, the more beautiful the view of Switzerland became. So after a long two and a half hours, we eventually reached the top where we stopped for a reassuring pat on the back and a much needed lunch break. 2,100 meters up and feeling very accomplished, we started our hike back down the mountain completely distracted by the overwhelmingly beautiful backdrop. A few slips and falls later, we landed at a tiny restaurant about a third of the way down the mountain where we stopped for coffee. It probably should have occurred to us that we would have to order in German considering that we were out with our German teacher (and we have an oral exam about ordering tomorrow), but it still managed to take us by surprise as we ordered in a slew of German, English, Spanish and French…I guess we can thank all of our past foreign language teachers for that. The struggle was worth it–I am unsure if I can say the same for our waiter–because the caffeine was just what we needed to finish our journey. I am unsure how in order to get down a mountain, you have to walk up, but that is exactly what we did. Exhausted and discouraged, we finally arrived at the chair lift that would lead us to the final legs of our journey. Before we started our descent down, we had a casual conversation with the woman working the chair lift. As it turns out, she is a University of Delaware Alum. I don’t know how most people would react if they found a graduate from their University on the top of a mountain in Switzerland working an abandoned looking chair lift, but we completely flipped out. Once we exchanged information and calmed down enough to not fall off the chair lift, we continued down the mountain. After a gondola, train, and bus ride, we arrived back in Chur exhausted and in need of a shower. It was another perfect day.
