John:  We safely descended the pass and are now in magnificent Grindelwald with a incredible view here at the hostel.  On the porch, actually.  Where in front of us is... well, a wall of mountains.  A sheer wall.  Three in a row.  And over there... yet another glacier on the slope of yet another beautiful valley.

Grindelwald is twelve miles uphill from Interlakken.  This hostel is so popular that you have to arrive before 11AM to get a slot on the waiting list for available beds for the night.

Dick:  The view makes it.

John:  It's like... we're an audience to the mountains.  There are three, wall to wall, towering above us. The Jungfrau, the Monch, and the Eiger.  Is that one there the Jungfrau?

Dick:  On the left?  No, I believe that is the Jungfrau over there.

John:  But the postcards seemed to indicate that one was the Monch.

Dick:  No. That's the Jungfrau right there.

John:  There's some controversy over which mountain is which. 

So, here we are at a "Jugende Herberge".  That's German for Youth Hostel.  In French, "Auberge de Jeunesse".  They're inexpensive and available.  However, hostels can be a pain due to the damn curfews.

This is our most scenic spot so far. Would you say so, Dick?

Dick:  Perhaps.  We've got a little waterfall in back of us.  Surrounding us are pine trees and high meadows, wild flowers.  It is quite scenic.

John:  Last night, a 10:30 curfew.  It just so happened, that it was the semi-finals of the World Cup with Germany playing.  These German guys were freaking pissed off because the "housefather", the warden who runs the place, forced them to turn off their radio and go to bed without hearing the rest of the game.

Dick:  I thought they were going to throw the radio at him.

John:  The guy literally turned the lights off.  Then, he insisted that there must be completely silence.  Radio off.  They complained, in German.  He said, "You know that game will go on for at least another half hour or 45 minutes.  There must be complete silence."  So, the lights and radio went off.  Those guys were super pissed.

Then out the window, I heard this guy I had met in the afternoon.  We hear, "Richard?  Richard."  Richard was his friend.  But the hostel father heard and said, "What do you want?"  The guy said, "Come on, open up the door."  He said, "No, it's past curfew."  I guess it was about a quarter to eleven then.  The kid said, "What do I have to do to get in?"  He said, "You can't get in.  It's past the curfew.  Go down and stay in town at a hotel."  "But, I don't have any money."  "Well, you should have thought of that at 10:30."  "Isn't there anything I can do?"  "Well, there is one thing."  "What?"  "You've got to wash all the dishes, tomorrow morning after breakfast."  There was a pause.  "All of them?"  "Yes, all of them." There was another pause. "All right."

So, this morning he washed all the dishes.

Lucerne, Switzerland - Friday, July 9
Location:  AT A CAMPGROUND

John:  Hello, hello... are you there? You know Dick, after a while I'm not too sure anyone is listening to me talking into this tape recorder.

Dick:  What?

John:  I'm not sure anyone is listening.

Dick:  What?

John:  Very funny. Well, I'll assume the listeners are listening, I guess, and will continue.

Anyway, I want to give the... what, the record of the day... before I get too blitzed on this Carlsberg beer which apparently is very very strong.  Carlsberg it is, from Copenhagen.  I'm only on my fifth bottle. But that is quite enough.

Dick:  Sixth, you've had six.

John:  Oh... Today?  Yeah, we did something... what did we do?

Dick:  We rode our bicycles through Switzerland.

John:  Yeah, that's right.  Today was Switzerland.  I wanted to get my daily spiel down... do you know that "spiel" is German for game?  Just an interesting little aside.

So, we went 61 miles over a mountain pass called Frugel Pass, which we didn't even know was going to be there.  The road just kept going up.  It just sort of popped up on our direct route.  Not even on the map.  This is the master plan to cut through... where... Switzerland and save some mileage by taking the Lucerne bypass route.

Dick:  I'm sure that's clear now.

John:  Well... let me put it another way.  We were going to go one way, then looked at the map and now we're going a way that we think is shorter but there was a pass there.

Dick:  Well done.

John:  We're in this strange campground surrounded by, I guess, Germans and Netherlands people.

Dick:  Dutch.

John:  A different type of human stock.  Mostly blondes.  There aren't too many dark, Italian type people around here anymore.  We're in one row with tent after tent after tent after tent.  People are still coming in.  It's so crowded, we're hogging two spots so we've got more room.  But, I think these people are going to setup next to us in one of our two spots.  Wait... no, they went to the next row.

Here's my Swiss insightful observation of the day. I get these sudden pangs of knowledge once in a while. Not that this is astounding...

Dick:  You're rambling.

John:  Oh... yeah, okay. All day long the Swiss farmers hang out in their fields and flip hay over with a pitchfork.  You see, they cut down hay and it sits out in the fields until one day they just come with a pitchfork and turn it over.  And they spend all day doing this.  All day they turn it over.

Dick:  That's your insightful observation?

John:  Yeah.

Dick:  Well, the reason they turn hay is to let the sun dry out the other side and then they can feed it to their cows.

John:  The cows are up, all summer, in the mountains and they come down in the winter.  Weren't you talking to that guy, Stew?

Dick:  Stew?  The guy with the glasses who you borrowed the paper from.  Oh, I thought his name was Steve.  What about him?

John:  He got a job turning hay.  He did it all day today.  He's trying to stretch out his travel by earning a little cash on the side.  He asked his hay boss how long he could stay at the job figuring the longer the better.  And, the guy said, "as long as you want".  He quit at the end of the day.  He was just sitting around thinking, "Wow, I spent all day turning hay."  He said one Canadian girl had been there for months turning hay. But, he said, she had no personality.