Switzerland
Saturday, October 21st, 2006“You look happy,” the fellow hosteller said to me as I walked out the front door of Mountain Hostel, where Dan and I had just selected our beds and set our packs down. How could I not be?! We had left behind the cities — sometimes noisy, touristy or both — for the farm village of Gimmelwald, Switzerland in the Swiss alps. It was a clear, sunny afternoon, and the air was just cool enough to need my long-sleeve, poly-prop. pullover. The front door of our hostel opened up to a view of the 13,642-foot, snow-capped mountain named Jungfrau, which was almost directly on the other side of the gorge-like valley from which we had just ridden nearly straight up in a gondola shuttle. Nearby mountains, Monch and Eiger were just behind a shorter mountain in the foreground. The only noise here was the “cling cling, clang clang” of the cowbells hanging around the necks of the cows grazing in the nearby pastures. The normal, descriptive words like beautiful, majestic, peaceful, majestic and the like all seem cliche and undeserving of my actual experience of being in Gimmelwald on that Sunday afternoon.
We had decided fairly early in our planning that — after our month traveling and working in Britain and Ireland — we needed to make a B-line for Switzerland so that it wouldn’t be too cold or snowy to do some decent hikes in the alps. After ferrying over to the mainland of Europe, we would visit a couple cities in Belgium and, then, zip down to Bern, Switzerland to spend a couple nights before heading to Gimmelwald. As it turns out, the decision was a good one, and the weather could not have been more perfect: just great hiking weather — clear and cool!
The travel day from Antwerp, Belgium to Bern was a long one (about nine hours on four different trains), but it was comfortable and we made each of the quick transfers to new trains — YEA! We checked into our hostel and, then, went about finding something cheap to eat. Yea, right… not in Switzerland. We settled for fast food, and even that was expensive — 24 Swiss Franks, or about 18 US dollars for the two of us! So, first thing on the agenda for tomorrow: go to the store to buy groceries so we can make our own meals at the hostel, which had a decent kitchen. But, even before then, I wanted to find some cough medicine because I wasn’t feeling well — congested, with some coughing. We went to the drug store (De Apotheek) at the train station; all the others had closed by 6 pm that evening. The first woman who was going to help us had us wait for a second woman who could speak English– sort of. I described what I was looking for, and she grabbed the Swiss version of Nyquil — perfect! It took a couple days for me to shake off whatever I had caught, and I feel fine now.
Dan and I wandered around town — including down to a bridge that overlooks the Aare River and the area of town that sits at river level — under the light of a full moon.
The next day we walked around town and stopped at a few churches, including the grand Bern Cathedral. The House of Parliament was closed on Saturday and was wrapped in scaffolding for renovations in progress.
Many of the buildings in the “downtown” area are connected, with the sidewalks running under the buildings’ street fronts, which are supported by massive stone arches. Blocks are long, but outdoor corridors run under and through the buildings at several mid-block points. Shops line both the covered sidewalks as well as the corridors, creating virtual shopping malls on each block. In addition, cellar-like doors with descending stairs provide access to “basements” containing shops, cafes and bars. And, the geraniums… they can be found in nearly every window box in the downtown area and seemed to still be in perfect bloom despite the seemingly lateness — from this Minnesotan’s perspective — of the season.
We returned to the hostel and, while I was typing in a blog entry, Dan met our new roommates, Heine and Rachael, who are currently living and working in London, but are originally from South Africa and Australia, respectively. They room together in London with four (I think) other women. Heine and Rachael are not a couple, but have more of a “Will and Grace”-type relationship. We chatted for a while at the hostel and decided to go out together that evening. Rachael’s goal was to go to five different bars. We only made it to three, but had a great time with them. And, we owe them two more bars — possibly when we return to London to fly home in March.
The next day, we took two trains, a bus and the gondola to Mountain Hostel in Gimmelwald. The nearest grocery store to the hostel is a 30-minute walk uphill to the nearby tourist-town of Murren and is closed on Sunday. So, we picked up some groceries in Interlaken. During our three-night stay here, we supplemented these few groceries with fresh bread, yogurt, cheese and salami — all made right in town — from the farm shop just across the street from our hostel. Now, when I say “street,” think of a strip of pavement just wide enough for one car, but more often used by a tractor, walkers or bicyclists. We would have also had eggs from the farm shop, but one of the hens had apparently died recently and the others weren’t keeping up with demand. So we picked up some eggs in Murren.
Gimmelwald, with its 100 residents, its single street that switches back to reach the “upper” town, and its stacks and stacks of firewood for heat in the winter, provided us the perfect setting for taking a break from our recent schedule of visiting museums, galleries, castles and churches and working on organic farms.
We spent most of Monday — our first full day — hiking to the top of Schilthorn — featured in the James Bond thriller “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” — and back. With the Schilthornbahn (a continuation of the gondola we rode up to Gimmelwald) costing at least 60 Swiss Franks per person, we decided instead to try hiking to the 9748-foot summit, where the Piz Gloria — with its restaurant, shop and panorama terrace — sits. Gimmelwald is at an elevation of 4593 feet, so we’d cover an increase of 5155 ft. We made it to the top in about four and a half hours, and the last bit of the hike was through some snow and ice. We stopped many times on our way up — both to take rest/water/snack breaks and to enjoy and photograph the continually new and awesome views at every turn. Once we were at the top, we checked out the 360-degree views of Switzerland, rested and ate our packed lunch of salami, cheese, crackers, carrots and cookies. It took us nearly as long to hike down as up since we used a different route (to the south) and hiked to — and under — a waterfall named Sprutz.
When we returned to the hostel, we showered, made and ate supper with a beer and, later, soaked our sore muscles in the wood-heated hot-tub outside, staying in until the moon rose above the mountains to the east.
The following afternoon, Heine and Rachael — the folks we had met in Bern — showed up at Mountain Hostel. After hearing that we were spending a few nights there and seeing the brochure with the hot-tub amidst the alps, they decided to spend a couple nights there, as well. It was fun to see them again, and we hiked with them up to the waterfalls Dan and I had seen yesterday. Rachael was able to talk only me into joining her for a very quick — and cold — “shower” under the falls. Then, we all hiked to Murren to have a beer and pick up a few groceries. Once back at the hostel, Dan and I treated ourselves to a pizza made by the hostel staff and, later, used the hot-tub again. This night, though, we didn’t stay up for the moon.
The next morning, we would take the gondola back down to the valley floor, leaving behind our temporary mountain home, Gimmelwald, where a hosteller has been quoted as saying, “If heaven isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, send me back to Gimmelwald.”
Tim
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