As the summer leading into my Senior year of high school began, I packed as many duffles as I could carry and buckled my seat belt on the plane for a 10-hour flight across the world. Although our trip consisted of Paris and London, just like most trips to Europe do, one stop in particular surprisingly stole my heart.
A week into our trip as we hopped on a bus in Paris, we began to zoom past mountains greener and lusher than any I had ever seen in my suburban town of Missouri. We were arriving in Engelberg, Switzerland.
I had no high expectations for this stop in the trip, simply because I had never heard of anyone or seen any photos of trips to such a place. I expected I would be bored out of my mind during our two-day stay here, but I was completely wrong.
Arriving at our hotel, sitting high up in the Appalachian mountains, I entered the quaintest and calmest place I had ever been. All of our windows looked straight up to the haze covered mountains, in which no picture can do them justice.
Luckily for me, our first trek outside of the lodge styled hotel filled my wanderlust of this new scenery completely. Getting into groups, we climbed into cable cars and made our way up Mt. Titles, stoping 3'020 meters above sea level. Reaching the top, it was unlike anything we had ever seen. Gone was the fog that we saw from our hotel windows and in its place, a special like that of Christmas in July. Once we had taken a moment to bask in the world below us, where our resort was nothing but a speck among the greenery, we began to make our way back down the mountain on foot.
I never expected to come across multiple lakes, cafes, and waterfalls so high up from where I looked out my window that morning.
We stopped multiple times as we hiked down, where we performed a mock "Polar Plunge" in a giant lake and had lunch sitting on the rocks of a waterfall. Spending an entire day with no cell service and really being able to take in all these new and incredible sights, I wondered why I had ever dreaded having to leave Paris and spend time there.
The sights you see in such a unique and serene place such as Switzerland can never be fully captured into words, or even photographs. If my brief explanation of this beautiful place encourages or interests you in the slightest, I strongly encourage you to see it for yourself one day. I myself plan to make it back to Engelberg, Switzerland, or as I view it, a Heaven on Earth.
