Zermatt

Some people travel to Switzerland just to hike the infamous Matterhorn. We, however, were just passing through this town for one night on our way to Italy. We both have the same memory of this beautiful, quaint mountain town. It's not what you'd expect. It's not a memory of beauty and wonder and nature. No. We remembered the puking man. But I'll get to that in a minute.

We took a train from Interlaken to Zermatt and the views along the way were spectacular to say the least.

My eyes were glued to the window as we wound our way through the valleys and passed incredible waterfalls and mountain peaks along the way. Trent enjoyed the views too:

We were told that it is a rare treat to actually see the Matterhorn since it usually is hidden beneath the clouds. So we were pleasantly surprised after hiking a painful mile straight uphill to finally find our hostel with this view:

Hiking the beast never even crossed our minds since we only had a few hours here and our legs were still screaming from yesterday's hike in the Alps. Plus, we both had worked up a sweat just getting to the hostel.

Switzerland turned out to be the most naturally beautiful country we visited but also the most expensive. Trent is a born penny-pincher and I think he died a little every time I convinced him to open his wallet and buy just one more chocolate bar. Thus, eating out was never even an option. I'm sure the town offers plenty of fun activities but Trent and I found all the "free fun" the town had to offer. You may recall that we skipped rocks for a good hour in the Czech Republic. It doesn't take much to entertain us.

I think we spent a total of about 10 dollars in this town. After we plopped our gear down in our room and checked our MySpace accounts (because yes, this trip was that long ago), we headed to the kitchen to see what we had to work with to make for dinner. A water heater. That was all. No cooking utensils or bowls or any utensils period. I noticed Trent eating some cheese and with a grumbling stomach, I demanded to know when he had bought it. He laughed and opened the fridge to reveal several individually wrapped cheese wheels. It was a moral dilemna. I was starving and overpriced food was a good 30 minute hike away. And here was free cheese wrapped in pretty red, wax paper, staring me in the face. I'm not proud to admit it, but I too stole cheese from some fellow backpackers. Desperate times, people. Despite my guilt, the cheese was delicious.

We spent the day wandering through the mountain town, drinking in the fresh mountain air.

During our self-guided tour of the town we discovered a really cool, really old church with a graveyard housing some really old bones.

We passed shops selling ridiculous hats.

And we saw other tourists who must have entertained me quite a bit since I took their picture as they snapped pictures.

These folks are standing on a bridge that we passed later and left in pain from laughing so hard. After we had purchased a giant bag of tortellinis to cook for dinner, we made the trek back up to our hostel. Right as we passed a man on this bridge, he leaned over and blew chunks everywhere. I'm guessing it was due to altitude sickness and this poor man was losing his lunch in a major way. Trent has a bit of a gag reflex and had to cover his own mouth, fearful that he was about to lose it as well. This poor man continued to heave for a very long time. Trent was trying to walk away quickly so he wouldn't barf too but I was struggling to walk because I was laughing so hard. I know. It seems cruel that I would get so much pleasure from another man's pain but if you could have heard how violently he was throwing up, I think you would have laughed too. We stumbled up to our hostel in hysterics. Just when we thought it was over and we could hear the birds chirping again, that poor man lost it again, Trent covered his mouth, and I bent over laughing so hard it hurt. When I think of Zermatt, I don't think of this beautiful mountain:

I think of the puking man on the bridge.

That night, we cooked the tortillinis using the water heater. I'm still not sure how it worked but I remember feeling quite proud of my resourceful, albeit cheap and thieving, brother as we devoured our cheap dinner. We watched Germany beat Turkey on a tiny tv in the kitchen with one other pair of backpackers who didn't care to frequent the bars at night.

Waking up the next morning, I rolled over in my bunk bed and was met with another sunny day and clear skies revealing the glorious mountain peaks. We strapped on our bags and headed to the train station but not before snapping a few pictures of the town:

and the famous mountain:

This would be a long day of travel. We began this day breathing the cool, mountain air beneath the Matterhorn and would spend hours in hot, dirty, frustrating trains. We left the beautiful, clean, efficient country that is Switzerland and entered a whole new world. Italy.