Interlaken, Switzerland

on the day after i last wrote/typed we visited the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel in rome. one of the things i learned there is that the painting on the ceiling of the chapel is the most racist painting ever. in a whole room of paintings(all the walls and the ceiling) there is not a single black person. apart from that the paintings were spectacular, but i still find it hard to believe that it took 1 man 4 years to paint it all.
the next day we went to the Pantheon(a big circular church) and another church full of monk bones. the bones were aranged into patterns. it was also weird seeing childrens bones in the last room. in the whole thing there were thousands of bones. some of the skeletons were still inside their robes. The Pantheon used to be a temple for the roman gods, before a pope turned it into a Catholic church. most of the Brass and precious metals were stripped off and used on other buildings like St Peters Church.
the next day we flew to from Rome to Geneva, in Switzerland. then by train on to Bern and then Interlaken. when we got off we took the bus to our Youth Hostel and dumped our stuff. i think that Switzerland has reminded me most of home so far because of all the farming land, mountains and forest.
then yesterday we didnt do much until the afternoon when we caught the bus to the other side of the lake to a town called Iseltvalde. even though its summer the water in the lake was freezing because it had come down from the glaciers.
Today we went up a huge mountain. it is called Schilthorn and is about 3000ft shorter than Mt Cook but it still felt high enough.on the mountain there were lots of cable cars. they all traveled dangerously high above the ground on very flimsy looking cables. especially the last one where we went off a 1000ft drop and shot down until the brakes caught up.