Mt. Titlis March 30th, 2009

Today my entire class went to Mt.Titlis.

Though over the past 3 nights I have had about 10 hours of sleep in total, I had to get up at 5:30 to shower and venture off to Mt. Titlis. 

After a brief breakfast, all 35 of us walked to the ferry to Luzern where we caught the commuter train from Luzern to Engelberg. All in all the commute took about 2 hours. Thankfully, I was so tired that I was able to sleep on the ever-so-uncomfortable trains. I didn't even need to lean on the window, I was so tired =) The train ride was pretty neat, too. The mountain was so steep that the train had the same technology that old wooden roller coasters had with the "clunkity clunk" noise. 

When we arrived in Engelberg, we were given a presentation by one of the marketing interns. Besides the fact that she was very unprofessional and was very politically incorrect, it wasn't that bad. Let's just say that I wasn't very intrigued by the information that she was giving us. 

Following that, we were all given tickets to ride up the mountain and given 6 hours to do what we pleased. To get to the top of the mountain, we had to make 4 stops. Each level of the way got more and more beautiful. We arrived to our last gondola which is what Mt.Titlis is known for and I was very exited. It is a rotating gondola, so standing among the hard-core skiiers and snow-boarders were my friends and me in our sneakers and big sunglasses. An interesting array of 80s music was also being played in the background. 

We went through the clouds and ended up at our final destination of 10,000 meters (30,000 feet) above sea level. The view was absolutely breath-taking and I really wished that I could have gone skiing!

The girls and I hopped on a chair lift and went for a scenic view of some of the daring skiiers. They were all very attractive =) We also went in a glacier cave that was cold, but really neat! 

After that, our entire group gravitated to the sledding hill. I was not very enthused about this because I was so tired, but as soon as I saw the sleds, I was amped! They had two different runs, one for tubes and one for the other various sleds. 

Everyone just went wild. It was like we were on a 5th grade field trip! There was a sled that looked a little bit like a bike that was my favorite. Thankfully, I did not get hurt, though my arm and my lower back are a bit sore now...

After about 2 hours of serious sledding, a bunch of us went to the Ice Bar that was near by. Due to the fact that we were sledding in the clouds, no one could see more than 20 feet in front of them. I felt like we were in a movie! Our heads were literally "in the clouds". 

The Ice Bar was very cool! It was an Igloo and it was completely made of ice. The music was fun and there were a bunch of Swiss men eating fondu and drinking the typical Swiss drink- very authentic Swiss experience that I had!

The way home was wet and cold! We had to take the 4 gondola's down, walk to the train station, take the train down the mountain, and then take the train from Lucern to Kustnacht, where we caught a bus back to Vitznau. 

I had dinner, wrote a paper about socialism and went to bed! A very- much needed rest!

Overall, a very exciting day!