A sweet taste of Swiss alps (paragliding in Lauterbrunnen)

Switzerland has always been my favorite country. Its beautiful views have never failed to make me amazed whenever I was in any city in this country.

Last year, I took some days off out of my business trip to Baden, Switzerland. I went to Lauterbrunnen, a small town in Bernese Oberlend region, approx. 3 hours by train from Zurich Airport. I arrived around mid day and spent the rest of afternoon by strolling around the city and took short trip to Interlaken.

Let me skip the details about this amazingly beautiful city of Lauterbrunnen (I'll spare my story separately) and take you to another story of my adventure here where I decided to take another leap of faith - jumping off the cliff!

Paragliding.

I took the service from Airtime Paragliding, cost approx. CHF170 (approx. Rp 2,5 million), a bit pricey for me, but they're professional and I was confident with the safety. I was picked up at my hotel and taken to cable car station where I had to buy one way ticket to the top of the hill. Ticket was not included in the package and make sure you clearly mention to the ticket officer that you would do paragliding, otherwise they would give you return ticket which you don't need because you would be flying down on a parachute! :-)

There were two other girls from US, first timers too like me, so we were consoling each other "Aah... we'll be fine. Nothing will go wrong. It will be super fun." hahaha... but deep down, I think we all knew, it was kindda a nerve racking experience for us.

In the beginning I was affraid I would be makin mistakes, but I carefully followed the instruction to run down the hills, hold on the the ropes, and let the wind take over. And when we were really flying, I was screaming so loud... "whohooooooo.... YEAAAAYY!!" hahaha... I hope my tandem master would be so understanding of my excitement.

I was paragliding over the Lauterbrunnen's thunderous waterfalls, the towering steep of rock walls and the Alp's magical charms. It was simply amazing. The magical view that wow-ed me on the ground has been mutiplied hundreds of time when I have it from above.

We landed smoothly at the landing zone (next to the cable car station) and they dropped off at one of the local cafes where I redeemed my free gift of one drink (a choice of wine, beer, coffee or other drinks). I enjoyed my cup of hot latte while cooling down and enjoying another spectacular view in front of me. Aaah... life is so beautiful. Thank you, Lord..

It was surely different from skydiving I had a couple of years back in New Zealand, but the adrenalin rush remained the same. And I super loved it! And I'm happy I have it in one of the beautiful contries in the world.

Dancing with Aurora Borealis

I was left totally speechless when finally got the chance to see the dancing northern lights, Aurora Borealis, live in front of my eyes.

It was freezing cold night on October 14, 2017, 30 minutes driving from Reykjavik, Iceland, when Aurora started very delicately, with barely visible greenish or whitish glow. Soon it started to move across the sky, very quickly, swirled and danced. The beauty was simply beyond words!! I was amazed... speechless..

My biggest regret was that I forgot to bring tripod. If only I browsed enough information, I would have loved to bring one. I forgot that for such low speed setting on the camera, it should have a steady and firm stand for the camera to capture solid photo, not a blurry one. And one lesson to learn, it is nearly impossible to capture Aurora with your mobie phone (I tried with my iPhone 7, didn't work).

Big thanks to Time Tours Iceland for making this possible, for making us like storm chasers, moving from one spot to another to catch the Aurora. It was really super fun! I was lucky that we managed to catch it at two out of three spots that we visited. 

Luck is one of the things we need to see Aurora, other than the clear sky on the right spot. Don't forget to wear very warm outfit and good camera (I used Canon D3100) with tripod. 

For now, I'm content that one dream is fulfiled. Let's run to another on my list. :-)