On our way into Switzerland we read on a blog that the Swiss seem to milk three things really well: cows, goats and tourists.
Compared to the French alps, we discovered that mountain cheese cost more and couldn't be bought raw (*sigh*) and that the car toll sticker for Switzerland cost 40 Swiss francs - whether or not you were there for a day, a month or a year. But staying in the Swiss alps was absolutely worth it!!
We had booked well in advance for a great youth hostel in the small but spectacular valley town 'Lauterbrunnen'. This was the view from our room:
On one side, base jumpers could be seen floating down off cliffs from the higher pastures in their parachutes, and on the other a committed little train made trips up and down between the towns that seemed almost layered on top of each other. In between, and tucked in everywhere, there were waterfalls. If you are a fan of the movie 'Up' you would be tempted to call this place 'Paradise Falls' due to the waterfall view we had from our balcony.
...and 'Up' we did a lot of, marvelling at Swiss engineering the whole time... ...!
The popular adventure brand 'The North Face' is named for a treacherous looking slope on Mt Jungfrau - the tallest mountain in the area. We caught the expensive-but-worth-it train up (and up...and up) and walked the base of the north face. It was initially quite nerve wracking starting out as it looked like bad weather was coming in! But Jahda was very keen to do the walk and it turned out to be a great walk with an imposing rocky slope on one side and far-reaching views of green pastures and picturesque Swiss villages on the other.
The next day we decided to go 'all the way to the top, to Jungfraujoch' on Europe's highest rail line. Imagine a rail track that, for the last hour or so, winds up through a steep rocky tunnel to conclude just inside the top of a very tall mountain... This was built by an engineer with vision!
High on the 3550m (approx) mountain you can go outside and stand on what feels like the top of the world, while inside there is an ice sculptured cave.
Walking further outside the complex that was situated at the top of the mountain, we headed up a path on the snow to a hikers hut (with a small homely cafe) looking out over the origin of two glaciers. You could see the massive flows of ice spilling out to where they would cling to the cliffs on the other side of the mountain (which we saw from the train much lower down). Somehow the precariously positioned hut manages to not get blown off the mountain to become glacier food...
[Jahda: Amanda is not exaggerating, the weather turned bad as we arrived and nearly blew us off the mountain!]
The high altitude made things slow going on the way up to the hut (by the end, I was so physically 'finished' I was forced to wait in the cafe for a quite a while. It actually became a bit of an issue when the weather started turning and we didn't know if we would make it back safely in our/my condition on the windy, poorly marked trail) but there was an awesome view to enjoy as well as some shenanigans going on that kept our attention.
An Topdeck tour with lots of Aussies on board (similar to the tour we went on earlier around eastern Europe - see earlier blogs) was in the region and a group of those girls decided to take some once in a lifetime photos at the top of the Jung Frau Joch. Some American boys had taken some photos earlier with their shirts off and then the girls took the opportunity to brave the winds with their shirts off also. It escalated to only underwear, then finally, mooning the camera... ...ah, Aussie class! The young American men were very willing to keep taking pictures as the girls stripped off and some asian tourists also enjoyed the view as they passed by.The excitement of it all must have warmed the girls a bit because otherwise I don't know how they coped in the amount of time they were exposed to the wind! The icy wind was not a friend that day!
The train pass was good for three days so we continued to wind our way up and down the various high mountain pastures. One place which seemed to attract a lot of Chinese visitors was Grimmalwald. This is where we went on possibly the most amazing cable car ride we have ever been on... or, at least it was right up there... with two glaciers, rolling green hills, alpine flowers, evergreen trees, paragliders, and just the two of us joking about making out in our little sky borne capsule.
To keep costs low we added wild edible greens to our meals to pad them out (just the safe standard ones I recognised) and took boiled eggs to eat as a hurried breakfast on the early train.. ... pity about the smell.
We came across powerful waterfalls inside mountains and elsewhere walked up behind watery veils gushing down off mountains.
We also started listening to a free audio book titled 'fairy tales of Charles Perrault' because I figured we were soon entering into fairy tale territory and it might be fun. [Side note: we recently won a bottle of bubbly at a trivia game because we knew of this author! Curious chance!]
So with stories of castles and princesses in our imaginations we drove through the mountains to near Zurich, Switzerland to stay with my relatives before experiencing the Romantic Road in Bavaria...to end at the famed castle Neuschwanstein built by the 'fairy tale king' and made famous by Walt Disney!
We will leave you with peaceful pictures of alpine scenery.
Aufwiedersen (goodbye)!
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