Switzerland has been a fantastic blur so far, and tonight I finally have some time to recap events. Before coming here it seemed that the pictures of sweeping mountains and cute cabins told the entire story, but the reality of the place has still struck me like a semi truck.
After the first evening in Geneva, I woke up early to see the city. My hostel sat close to the headquarters of the International Red Cross and the UN, and so I walked about forty minutes to reach them. The UN had surprisingly few visitors, and so I was able to get a few pictures of the big UN sign, modern art in the square outside of it, and rows of national flags leading up to the main structure. Surprisingly, even after the killing of Osama Bin Laden, security seemed to have no issues with any number of pictures. Across the street from the UN, a small but very vocal demonstration of Iranians called for a permanent UN monitoring force to be deployed to Iran. After checking out the Ghandi statue, and discovering that a UN tour wasn't happening with my trusty traveling companion, my bulky Osprey pack, I called it a day for that part of Geneva.
Another famous feature of the city is its enormous water jet at the base of Lake Geneva. I went to check it out, and was impressed, then continued to the rail station. Now would be an appropriate time to describe in brief the rail system, since railcars may see the most of me during this vacation. The entire country is latticed with railways between all the major towns, and in many regions it appears that inter-town traffic occurs more often by train than car, bus, and boat combined. The fleet is modern, and the soft felt textured chairs of second class cabins nestle against huge windows overlooking Switzerland's scenery. I have yet to encounter a wait longer than 15 minutes for any individual connection, and I have yet to see a train substantially late.
I headed out of town along the breath taking Northern side of Lake Geneva next. The train ride cruises through grassy hills and wineries above the lake, and offers a magnificent view of the water and terrain rolling away from the shore.
After parting vision with the glassy waters of the lake, I continued on towards Bern and stopped to find lodging in Fribourg, a smaller town. The last night had been a nearly sleepless one due to roudy French youngsters, so I opted for the solace of a bed and breakfast. This turned out to be a night in someone's suburban house. My host was an engaging Czech woman who spoke six languages and promised one hell of a tasty breakfast. To finish the day, I strolled through the suburbs attracting strange looks from the residents (imagine an unshaven stranger with a large bag wandering through your peaceful, infrequently visited neighborhood). It tickled me a bit to respond to the quizzical gawks with a big wave and smile.
At one point I came across a mysterious looking trail heading off into the woods, and of course took it. It ended above a reservoir where I read my excellent fantasy novel "The Name of the Wind". After a few hundred pages I packed it in, went to sleep in the perfectly supine comfort of a freshly made bed and absence of other house guests, and awoke well rested the next day. The breakfast was as fantastic as promised, and I left the neighborhood in Fribourg quite pleased with my selection.
The only problem was that I had yet to see any mountains, and was in Switzerland!
With this in mind, the next destination was meant to be the Berner Oberland area, but mild confusion with trains and an overly fascinating book saw me continuing past my mark slightly before Bern, and onto Lucerne. There I spoke with the enormously helpful staff at a Swiss information desk who clued me into the concept that there are huts, as they called them, scattered throughout the high country in the alps.
With the image of a rugged night spent with the four planked walls, the howling wind, and my manly fortitude in mind, I headed zealously to the nearest open one in Englesburg. The hike up to the hut was surprisingly rigorous (my flat-lander lungs are wimpy on flat land, much less in thin alpine air and with a fat pack tagging along). It may have been my loopy head from mild elevation sickness, but the moment I got higher up into the hike and saw the huge mountains and snowy caps spread before me, I started laughing to myself. It was a perfect day with clear, cold air, and flowers swaying in the sun and wind, and I had tasty orange juice, my camera, and all the time I cared to take.
After passing a childrens' slide of several hundred meters in length, the grass around which was mowed by goats, I came to a cabin which would have completely satisfied my desire to be in nature. It was situated high up on the sleep, had a commanding view, and sat in a sweeping field of wild flowers and vivid green grass. This cabin was however boarded up, and after checking my map I continued.
What I found thirty minutes later defied and surpassed my expectations. Evidently growing tourism in Switzerland has made many of the originally spartan alpine cabins into more of bed and breakfast type joints than cabins. Mine lay on top of a stone foundation set into the slope, and could house as many as forty people for the night. At the door I was greeted by a triplet of giggling Swiss girls who informed me that I should swap my climbing shoes for gators. Gators! How comfortable they were, and how great of an idea that is. Guests get more comfortable footwear, the hut never needs to clean the floors. It's all about the little things right?
For dinner (The huts, high in the Alps, serve dinner, what?) I had a large beer, appetizers of salad and soup, and chicken curry, all of which were well prepared and delicious. After dinner I went outside and worked on the book some more, then passed out in one of five bedrolls, arranged like sardines, and empty except for me. This time of year evidently is a low point for tourism. I see this as a huge win. The climate is warm, the snow is melting, the flowers are blooming, and all of this is for the sparse few who come.
The next morning I got up relatively early for a breakfast of lower end specialty cheeses and bread, and then headed out to hike for the day. I took one path for about two hours until I came to a snowy impasse (Deep snow with no footprints over it, signifying that no one had come this way yet, over meltoff rivers. This seemed like a bad idea.) There I stopped to finish my book and eat a lunch of a breadloaf I had brought with my from Engleburg. My perch was above a massive cliff falling off several hundred feet, and I could see the caps of three mountains from where I sat. Up from the valley below the wind slapped across my face, and that day was equally as sunny and clear as the others.
After reading for a few hours, having gained a new appreciation for the fiction work of Patrick Rothfuss and suddenly desiring his sequel books, I started back to the hut. Two hours later I made it in, ate another fantastic dinner while talking to a pair of Austrian tourists about Switzerland, television, food, and their life in general. A new employee of the hut had showed up as well. He was a short, stocky man with one of the most savage beards I have seen in a long time. He spoke little to no English, and his demeanor towards the two Austrian women and myself at lest appeared to be practically bristling.
Another more jovial worker explained quietly that the huts being made accessible by lifts, and then commercialized was a subject of much debate in Switzerland. The had been initially intended only for real mountaineers. I took this to be an apologetic explanation for his friends seeming stance.
After the Austrian women finished eating and left to sleep, I kept talking to the other employee for a while. His English was not fantastic, but it functioned, and with the help of my trusty laptop and Google Translator (Yes, the mountain hut also had fast wireless internet...) we are able to talk a bit, and I was able to learn a smattering of German.
The next day I ate another great breakfast and headed by train to Interlaken, situated near several of the most noted and Rick Steve'd (Praise be to his flawless word in all manners travel related) mountain ranges in the nation. I found a hostel for relatively cheap, booked it for the next, and started in on my next book "The Death Instinct" about intrigue surrounding a 1920 terrorist attack on the New York Stock Exchange.
The next morning (today) I got up and headed for the train station with a map of the areas mountains in hand. I wanted to take a lift if possible. It was a cloudy day, so not ideal for going high, and in this light I picked a route that my already purchased Swiss Pass would render free. The train ride up to the mountain town of Lautbrennder threaded through verdant dales and past sweeping waterfalls, and on arrival I hopped out already amazed by the views to be had.
I may have been too amazed, because suddenly I was very dizzy and my head hurt, or in other words I had myself some nice elevation sickness. I stopped the skipping and running around I had been doing, and set to a slow walk. A nearby cafe/supermarket was open, and I stopped in to grab some tasty chocolate and water, just in case the dizziness was dehydration. The next leg of the journey up was by bus, and so I sat outside waiting with mingled other tourists.
One guy had a Barcelona FC shirt, so I chatted with him a bit. He was with a group of Americans from the Midwest, who appeared equally as excited to be in Switzerland as I was. The bus pulled up and I reached for my pocket to get my pass anndd.... realized my Swiss pass was missing and probably left on the train. This was bad. I had been in town for nearly an hour, and the Swiss pass would cost several hundred Francs to replace. Without it every minor train or bus trip would cost 5-10 dollars at the least.
Said train on which the pass may or may not have been left had been scheduled to leave in two minutes, so I hopped on and frantically tried to search it, not finishing my task before it left my mountain town.
I asked the conductor about possibly having seen anything, and he had seen nothing. I decided to just search the sucker myself, despite the fact that it would retrace my entire earlier journey if I didn't get off. My search yielded nothing, as did the lost and found in the starting town, and the next train out. I chatted to an employee on the next train who informed me that there were four trains on the route I was on that ran during the day. Since I had been in town an hour, I realized it could be on almost any of them depending on how rotations worked. I decided to wait in the mountain end town to check each.
Fortunately I had the presence of mind to retrace my steps and realize that the pass may have fallen out of my passport where I kept it in the town, and not on the train. It had in fact, and with joy I picked it up out of a dubiously brown, and slightly smelly mud puddle. If not for the filth I would have kissed it. I celebrated with some inexpensive cheese and a small Swiss beer while waiting for my bus.
The bus came, I hopped on and talked to the German/English speaking driver for a bit before we left. The passengers all got off fifteen minutes later by the operating center for the lift to take us up higher into the mountains. Five minutes later we boarded the cubicle glass structure, and it floated away on huge steel pulleys. WE gained about 500 meters of height and went maybe a mile in the thing as it swayed back in forth in the wind. Some of the passengers looked like the might be getting sick. I myself was fascinated with the huge cliffs sprouting up all around us, and the mountains looming in the distance.
We transferred again onto another lift, this one taking us higher and over a ravine straddled only by a thin steel bridge. The bridge had a walking ramp of about two feet width, and two steel cable handholds. It was maybe 150 feet long, and stretched across a chasm that stopped at least 300 feet below the bridge. I resolved to come back the next day and cross that sucker to see what it was like. (There might/ almost definitely is a harness mandate; I shall see tomorrow.)
The second lift took us up to a tourist town with many hotels and restaurants. I eyed the plates of a few patrons, which looked ok but not fantastic. Humorously the prices per entree were around 35 Francs, or $43. The summit of the next cable car trip was entirely foggy on the summit came, so I opted instead to hike high above the tourist town. I considered making the eight mile hike up to the summit out of sheer youthful brashness, but as it was late, cloudy, and getting rainy, I thought better of it, headed back to my hostel, read my action thriller a bit, wrote this, and am now going to sleep.
This country is a unique and breathtaking place,
Tim
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