Since I only have one full day in Bern, I decide to take a four-hour iPod tour of the city (my blog on the tour for Soci@lByte here). The tour is incredibly well done and lets you pause the tour to take detours as you wish.

I decide to take one detour when I see people lining outside The Münster, their largest Cathedral, for what is a free military concert. I was thrilled to land there at exactly the right time. As the doors open, I rush in and grab a seat at nearly the front minus a dozen rows saved for the actual Swiss military. I live for these moments of kismet, when I just happen upon a choir singing Christmas carols or a giant Nativity scene in a courtyard.

As the drum and flag procession begins, my excitement diminishes. I realize that I’m not actually at a military concert but that I’m actually I appear to be at a military graduation. And that I’m one of the few in jeans and definitely the only one in Chucks. And I’m sitting practically front row surrounded by proud picture-snapping parents and snazzily dressed Swiss military men.

The only thing more boring than listening to some pompous graduate telling you to soar high like an Eagle is listening to that same speech in German. I make it through two speeches before I make my escape, keeping my head low to avoid the stares I know I’m receiving. Glares are a universal language.

Kismet is awesome, isn’t it?

My posts are completely out of order at this point. Here are the places I’ve visited in order, Reykjavik, Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Istanbul, Athens, Barcelona, Vienna, Salzburg, Munich and Interlaken.

I don’t remember always being a worrier. A stress case, sure. But the worrying came sometime after my parents got divorced, and my Mom was diagnosed with an incurable type of cancer. The hyper worrying came sometime after losing both my parents within six weeks of each other.

I became overly cautious. If they can’t save your Dad after he has a heart attack in the emergency room, what chance do the rest of us have? In my mind, why take the extra and unnecessary risks that sometimes pop up in the form of adventure?

Which is a horrible way to live. Always looking over your shoulder waiting for life to throw you another loophole. Terminally waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Interlaken, Switzerland wasn’t about pretty lakes or mountains or even chocolate and cheese. Interlaken was about reclaiming my sense of adventure. About proving something to myself. Interlaken was about running down and jumping off a slippery, wet mountain with an Australian named Bernie while praying to God a piece of fabric held together by metal spikes kept us from smashing to pieces in the Swiss Alps. Interlaken was about hang gliding.

When Bernie and his lovely wife Malinda pick me up, I am confident in my choice of hang gliding. Which slowly starts to waver the higher we get. And when I discover I have to run. Down the hill. The snow covered hill. In tandem with Bernie. And I can not fall.

Bernie and Malinda assure me that I won’t fall. That no one has ever fallen down. I don’t think this is a good time to relay the story about how I once broke my leg while walking home from class as a freshman. Sober even.

They lay carpet down the hill, and Bernie and I practice running in tandem. And then we run for real. And I do not fall.

And then we are flying over the mountain.

It was amazing. Freezing, but amazing. The trees are perfectly sprinkled with snow. You can see the town of Interlaken and both of the lakes. Twenty-five minutes of adventure I wouldn’t have enjoyed had I been looking over my shoulder waiting for life to throw me a loophole.

In life, we tend to sort ourselves into columns of things that we are and we aren’t. I’m not an athlete, a singer, a dancer or an adventurer. Sometimes it’s fun to shake up those columns.