Easter Weekend Trip to Interlaken, Switzerland

What an Easter Weekend!! A couple friends and I decided that we would go to Interlaken, Switzerland for Easter Weekend this year. I'll get straight to the point. Our main mission and reason for this trip was to go skydiving in the Swiss Alps! That's correct. Throwing ourselves at the earth from a perfectly good airplane :)



We could not all fit in the plane at the same time, so Hannah and Adair went first while I stayed at the drop zone to watch them come in. That was a lot of time to ponder what I was about to do. Adair and Hannah's jump went just fine. They came back so excited. Now it was my turn! The guy in the picture above was my tandem partner, meaning that we were strapped in together for obvious safety reasons.This picture above is the view from right around 3800 meters. My jump would be up at 4300 or so, which means over 14,000 feet from ground level! The weather that day was unbelievably perfect. I couldn't have scripted something better. The sun was completely out, the Alps were not shrouded in haze or clouds, it was incredible.This picture does not need much for an explanation. We had around 35 seconds of free fall, in which time everything happened so fast, it's just a blur. But that's exactly why I have a video of it all!! It should be on youtube soon, but if not, I have a DVD :)

After the parachute deployed, it was about 3-4 minutes until we landed. What a BLAST!! I certainly will not forget this for some time. Oh, and did I mention that no one knew I was doing this?? Not my parents, friends, no one but the people here in Freiburg! I'm a little proud that I kept it under wraps. Now that it is over, I can announce it to all, since I am back safely in my apartment in Freiburg.The rest of the weekend was amazing too. Our weather held the next day (Saturday) too. We hiked for 5 1/2 hours along lake Thunersee next to Interlaken. Soooo beautiful. Sunday (Easter) we went to a church service spoken in Swiss German (incredibly hard to understand, even for Germans!). But it was good. After that Hannah and Adair headed back to Freiburg, but I stayed and hiked 500 meters up a nearby small mountain. The views in this city are spectacular and I hope to post some more pics. Alas, my time is short, I have an Easter Skype call with my parents coming up right now and they still don't know what I've been up to...

Happy Easter!