12 Hours in Davos

by Albert Mangkujaya (Indonesia)

A leap into the unknown Switzerland

“ In the end, we only regret the chances we did not take “ and I admit that it is true. I was sitting in the living room scrolling through Instagram when I came across a post about winning a two weeks trip in the Caribbean, all expense covered and a chance to learn from a pro, What can be better? I clicked on the link and applied right away. I filled all the informations needed and here I am writing my 700 words long travel story. A little background, I am a 21 years old guy who were born in Indonesia and this topic brought me back to my first solo adventure back in 2018. I have never bought a train ticket, or even took a train by myself before. I have never traveled apart from my family during a trip, so at that moment it was a kind of big deal. The idea of traveling by myself got me anxious, scared and I even tried to make an excuse to not go. Another friend who was going to join us, Dave, convinced me to go and the story begins. My alarm went on at 9pm. I got ready and took a cab to the station. The air was so really cold, and it did not take long for me to find the train. I took a deep breath, hopped in and let go my fears. Sat down by the window, I looked out as the train slowly moved and.. wait, is it too detail? Okay, I’ll cut it short. I met Dave when I changed train and we selected a random empty cabin and I told him that we only had 12 hours in Davos, let us made the best of it. We arrived in Davos an hour later and my friend, Viona, was already there. Walking through the night, we arrived in her apartment, lied our bags and explored the rooftops. Accompanied by Viona’s friend, Hanny, we walked for a mile in the middle of the night, across mountains of snow to have our dinner. We entered the only open pub who sold pizza, chips and hot dogs, so that was it. Ordered some foods, dance to the local music and our stomach was full. Along the walk, we made a plan for sunrise. Searching though Instagram, I found Lake Davos to be really interesting. We had 3 hours to sunrise so we decided to have an hour sleep, which turned out to be 2 hours long. Woke up panic, we rushed all the way to the bus stop. After 30 minutes, my friend told us to come down as we have arrived, so we did. My jaw dropped, not that I was amazed by the view already but because the steps to the lake were all covered by the snow. It was literally all snow and we were not wearing a winter boots. Nothing to lose, we walked across it. The sun was slowly rising as we approached the lake. All of our shoes and trousers were wet but the view made my jaw dropped. The view was amazing. There is no word could describe it. Th sky was so clear and there was a mountain behind the lake, covered with snow and there were little houses with smokes coming out from their chimney. The lake was really huge and it reflected all the beautiful scenery in it. We met some locals and their dogs, they were having their morning run. We sat down, tried to absorb all its beauty. 2 hours after that we were sipping hot chocolate in a nearby cafe. We sipped it empty and took a ride back afterwards. Viona and Hanny could not join us for the rest of the trip so it was back to only me and Dave. We had a pretty cool story from taking a cable car up a mountain, enjoyed Switzerland’s local dish “Rosti”, sledged down the mountain in an epic way, broke my camera, lost my lens cover to missed a train back and so many more, but unfortunately I right now I exceed my 700 words max. Wish to continue the story in another day? Cheers.