Monday and Tuesday were our travel days home. Monday started with our last breakfast at Our Chalet and had groups departing at different times during the morning so there were lots of good byes. Our departure time was about 10 am. We loaded the van with our suitcases and endured lots of comments from Christoph about how heavy they were. He told us if we wanted to leave the chocolate that we purchased behind, he would take care of it. Then we set off for our last walk down the mountain to the bus stop. Shortly after we arrived, Christoph brought our luggage down the mountain. We had to wait a few minutes for the bus, with trailer attached, and then when it arrived loaded our luggage and we were off down the mountain to Frutigen to catch our train. From Frutigen we caught a train to Spietz where we caught another train to Zurich that went through Bern.
It is amazing at how well our connections went because we did not have any troubles getting where we needed to be. Once we arrived in Zurich it took us a little while to figure out how to get to the hostel where we were spending the night. We knew what tram to get on and found a stop for it. The biggest hurdle was getting the tickets to ride the tram. But thanks to Brittany and I, we solved the problem rode the tram to the hostel. The hostel must be well known because a gentleman on the tram helped us with directions once we arrived at the Morgental stop and we were soon there and ensconced in our rooms.
Since we were hungry from traveling, we dropped off our stuff and headed back downtown to Neiderdorfstrasse (a street in the old part of Zurich with shops and restaurants) for dinner and some shopping. While there Angela C and some of the girls ran into our pilots for the plane the next day. They saw our Kansas shirts and our pilot commented on it because he is from Abilene. They then asked when our group was leaving and discovered that we were going on the plane that they were flying. After a couple of hours shopping and eating, we met to go back to the hostel to pack and get some sleep before our long travel day on Tuesday.
Tuesday morning we awoke, had breakfast at the hostel and some ran to a nearby grocery store to purchase some last minute chocolate. Then we caught a bus near the hostel to a train station and took the train to the airport. We arrived at the airport to get our boarding passes and check luggage and then walked to our gate going through customs on the way. Once we arrived at the gate we got on the plane for our 9 hour flight back to the US. The captain when he came over the loud speaker, welcomed the "Kansas Heartland Girl Scout group on the flight that was returning home after spending 20 days in Europe", so that was a nice touch.
We arrived at Washington D.C. Dulles airport and did not have a lot of extra time. So we went through the entry point, grabbed our suitcases, went through customs and loaded the suitcases back onto the plane. We arrived at our gate just as our plane was loading. So we loaded there and then headed on our 2.5 hour flight back to KC and home. It was good to see familiar faces at the airport when we arrived in KC. We had a great trip, a great experience and it was good to be back home. I think that each of us will have pictures and memories to last a lifetime.
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