Zermatt

Conquered on 24/03/2005 to 25/03/2005

This place I can safely say was the most beautiful place I have ever visited. Took us about 3 hours from Lausanne to get up the mountain to the mountain ski resort of Zermatt, which is also known to be the home of the world's most visible mountain, the Matterhorn. We took the main trains and changed to a mountain train to get up this lovely place. This was also probably our first contact with snow on this trip!

^ view upon arrival ^

When we first arrived in this mountain resort, all we saw were scores and scores of people with ski equipment. Wow, looked alot like a snow festival. Then again, this *IS* a ski resort. We made our way to the Tourist Information to ask our way to our hostel, and there Weili thought the receptionist was CUTE! I'm still trying to find the photo. Somewhere..

Anyway, we finally started to make our short walk to our hostel, bypassing tons of snow equipment, churches, funny looking and everything else. Chilly winds..

^ View en route to finding our hostel ^

^ god! which one was our hostel?! ^

Yes, so finally we reach our hostel, and decide to bunk in, junk our stuff into lockers before exploring the lovely town... There, we were thrown in a 6 man bunk. There was this weird looking chinese fella, who was the contentious focus of our debate if he was a she. We never found out, and well, couldn't be bother to either. We also met an Aussie and his Swiss friend, and we really hit off quite well!

^ how lovely our bunks looked! ^

After bunking, we went in search of dinner. As always, dinner was a huge huge problem. It was about 4pm in the afternoon when we stumbled upon the huge Brauhaus (or whatever it is spelt). WOW. FANTASTICALLY DELICIOUS! MUNCH MUNCH MUNCH. Dinner spoiler. There was this cute kid who was bouncing under a table fixed to a wall there. It got so hilarious when he bounced and his head hit the bottom of the table. The 3 of us almost died laughing there and then, choking. We decided to head back to the hostel at about 7 to eat the dinner provided. And what a mistake it was... CURRY RICE!

^ big...HUGE sausages! Weili's proud of his huge one ^

^ Mine as well ^

^ Allan threatening to smash me with his huge meatstick ^

^ Yucky curry rice dinner at the hostel ^

After dinner, we decided to return to the bunks, and there we found 2 nice fellow bunk mates. We had, or rather I had a rather nice long chat with the both of them, sharing experiences and jokes. Wow, they are really nice people.

^ our dear Aussie friend we met at the hostel ^

^ and his Swiss hunk friend who is also his ski buddy ^

Yes, and we retired for the night, looking forward to a fruitful long day up the Matterhorn.

^ View of the Matterhorn from the entrance of our hostel. The world's most photographed mountain ^