After making good time to Milan ( 130-140kph the whole way ) and successfully dropping the car off we made a decision. It turned out our accommodation was (like the Barcelona experience) not where we believed it was. We could see no point in staying this far out for the night, so we cancelled our accommodation and headed straight for the central train station to stand in front of the board and decide where to head next. With Switzerland only a couple of hours from here we decided to head there for a few days, so we activated our Eurail passes and reserved a seat on the 6:28pm train bound for Interlaken. A short time later, after finding a WiFi friendly cafe, we'd booked a hostel and had somewhere to sleep tonight, always a good thing.

Our train out of Milan took us to Spiez, from here we then had to change to a regional service (just on the other platform) which had us in Interlaken 20mins later. While waiting at the station for the connecting train, we got talking to two Australian couples from Adelaide who were off on a month long trip spending their kids inheritance. After chatting about the footy and our respective travels we discovered they were staying right next door to our hostel and being 9:30pm by now it made the dark walk from the station a simple case of "follow the leader".

The "Happy Inn Hostel" is magnificent, our private room is huge and the staff are amazingly friendly and helpful, not always the case at hostels. We're on the third floor and downstairs is a functioning bar and restaurant frequented by the locals. A hostel above a pub with the hospitality and atmosphere to make you feel like you're staying in someone's home. With snowcapped peaks waiting to reveal themselves out or window at sunrise, things are pretty much perfect here.


We'll head back into Italy later in the week to visit Rome, Florence and Venice but it just made sense to get into Switzerland while we were so close. Our aim is to base ourselves here in Interlaken to explore this beautiful area and then head up Jungfroujoch, one of the main summits in the Jungfrou region of the Bernese Alps so we'll need at least 3-4 days here to manage it all.