Well, the TMB was fabulous and everything but all that climbing was a lot of work – time for a break! Luckily the magical land of Switzerland is right next door, where all the hiking has been replaced by chair lifts and, instead of a smelly backpack, there’s shopping for high end fashion accessories and complicated folding knives. So hold onto your butts and get your credit cards out, we’re going to the land of Neutrality!
First stop is the famous little town of Interlaken. There’s no direct route to Interlaken from Chamonix so to get there we started with a bus to Geneva. Going from Chamonix to Geneva is kind of like going from a resort town to a resort capital. Both are exclusive, expensive, and everything looks like either a bank or ski lodge, Geneva is just bigger. We only spent a few hours in downtown Geneva, which has a pretty harbor with a well placed fountain. We also had lunch at some Swiss hipster cafe with two sandwiches for $40. Yes, $40. This is our life now. After our overpriced lunch we headed for the train station and on to Interlaken.
To our regret we found out the hard way that the Swiss do train tickets the same way we do airline tickets – they just make up the price based on demand. Which explains how we managed to pay $160 for 2 tickets from Geneva to Interlaken. When I balked at the price the woman at the counter just said “Trains are expensive in Switzerland”, and shrugged, and we didn’t discover our error until later. One beautiful train ride later we were spending all our money in Interlaken.
After checking in and dropping our stuff at the campground – only $40 a night to pitch a tent in the yard! – we walked into downtown Interlaken to grab some dinner. Still reeling from the cost of everything, we grabbed some take-away sandwiches from the Coop and ate by the river. Luckily everywhere in Interlaken has a view, even the busted park bench by the river. By the end of that first night it was obvious that what Interlaken doesn’t have is even one remaining scrap of Swiss cultural anything, be it historic sights or any semblance of a small Alpine village. But what it does have is two high mountain lakes and more gigantic mountains looming over it than you can shake a Toblerone at.
The next morning we bought more ludicrously expensive train tickets to the famous Lauterbrunnen valley. The valley is famous not only for the mountains, which are about as common as bankers in Switzerland, but also for it’s many waterfalls cascading down the valley walls. There are 72 in total if you believe the tourist brochure. To take it all in, we took the “hike” along the valley floor to then end. I say “hike” because it is absolutely obscenely easy and flat given the incredible scenery on display. It honestly is better paved than most Atlanta sidewalks. At the end of the valley we somehow we gathered up enough strength to take the cable car up to the little cliffside village of Murren.
We spent the afternoon in Murren shopping for touristy crap (keep that credit card handy!) and looking for a coffee shop with a good view. Eventually we found an absolutely smashing one and we sat for quite some time marveling at the mountains and sipping our $6 Americanos. It is so stupidly beautiful that we found ourselves judging the valley based on both quality and quantity of waterfalls in order to find any faults. Like at Mont Blanc, we were treated to endless entertainment watching paragliders swoop around the valley. Personally I think I would still paraglide at Mont Blanc, but Lauterbrunnen would be a close second. After all that hard work we just hopped back on the cable car and took the train back to Interlaken.
The next day we decided to take a break from “hiking” and rent some bikes for the day. When we conceived on biking we imagined it would be just as easy as Lauterbrunnen – a casual cruise around the lake just soaking up views with no effort at all – only this time on bikes instead of on foot. What we actually got was a brutal slog around the lake, completely unlike the restful recovery we planned. The hills around the eastern lake proved to be both tall and steep, and our bikes proved to be both heavy and shitty. Even better, the majestic lake views we imagined were obscured by low clouds. At least it wasn’t too hot?
Hours and miles later we stopped for lunch at Brienz at the far end of the eastern lake. By then things were actually starting to clear up and we decided to try and salvage the day by taking the train back to Interlaken and biking around the western lake instead. Unfortunately, by then my butt was hurting really bad from the cheap rental bike seat and the track around the western lake was in large part along the interstate. Fortunately the little town of Spiez, where we finally called it quits, was totally radical. After a brief walk around Spiez we took the train, once again, back to Interlaken and returned the bikes. That night Jon treated us to one of his signature pasta and salad dinners.
Day four Interlaken we hopped back on the cograil and headed south again, this time down Lauterbrunnen’s sister valley of Grindelwald. The city of Grindelwald itself is yet another cute Swiss resort town without a soul – there must be a city ordinance requiring every building in town to have baskets of red flowers under all the windows. It all looks a bit rustic but it’s no more real than the boats at Venice – it’s all a show for the tourists. It’s a fabulous show though, and what Grindelwald lacks for authenticity it makes up for in location. As usual in Switzerland you can barely keep your eye balls in their sockets.
From Grindelwald we took another cable car (don’t judge us, we were sore from biking!) up to the hills above the city at Bort, where we ate our turkey and pesto sandwiches with a view. We also learned an important lesson about splitting up when buying the tickets – when we got to the booth for lift tickets the line looked really long so I went outside to check out the automated machine while Jon waited in line. Inevitably, we both bought the same lift tickets at the same time and then got mad at eachother for each being so stupid. After some confused, multi-lingual haggling, the lift operated took pity on our poor tourist souls and let us take the lift back down without re-paying (the tickets were $40 each way, so we were quite thankful).
That evening the skies were actually mostly clear and we were treated to a great sunset in Interlaken. We spent a couple hours enjoying more take-away food by the park watching paragliders land in the field next to town. I don’t think I’ll be able to talk Jon out of paragliding if we ever go back to the Alps.
On our final day, still worn out from the TMB and our “relaxing” bike ride, we took a break. Jon spent a few hours doing some easy sightseeing at Thun, just a short trip on the train from Interlaken, and that looked mighty nice. For me, my right big toe (which was injured in heroic action against a flip flop in Chamonix) was bothering me a lot, so I stayed at the campground and schemed by hiking schemes. It’s worth noting that this is when I made several planning decisions that would later turn out to be blunders, namely choosing the Westweg over the Via Alpina and fixing our start date for the Kungsleden in Sweden. Oh well, that’s hindsight for you.
Early the next morning we were headed to Stuttgart. By then we had finally figured out the train pricing system and booked our tickets online in advance, making leaving probably the cheapest thing we did in all of Switzerland. It was a real shock to be suddenly be back in reality after the fantasy resort world of Interlaken. In Stuttgart there are no giant mountains, no high end watch stores, and nobody but German locals in sight. It was great! We had lunch for a reasonable price and actually did some gear shopping, which we could never afford in Switzerland. I bought my (in)famous bright orange Jack Wolfskin button up and Jon bought his exploding pair of On Clouds. That evening we were lounging around in luxury at our friends apartment and catching up. Somehow we even ended up at an event for the Stuttgart Jazz Festival with our friends. The Jazz was excellent but the crowd was pretty reserved, which I think is just how the Germans do it. Joanne was kind enough to give us a midnight tour of the Stuttgart square and we got to learn a bit of Germany’s rather eventful history in the middle of the night.
The following morning we slept in and didn’t have a firm plan until Joann suddenly gave us one – she had magically scored us free passes to go zip lining in the Black Forest through Hirschgrund zipline as part of a work function. Thankfully the Germans apparently know how to do ziplining better than those chumps in Chattanooga, GA, and we had an excellent day ziping around Black Forest with our friends. The longest line was a full 570m long and 80m above the ground. Tyler handled the heavy responsibility of the radio to the endless tune of “Taylor, sail is free” all day, and Jon heroically hauled our guide and a stranded zip-liner back after a rescue mission. What a man!
From ziplining, we drove to the lovely little village of Triberg, deep in the German countryside. Triberg is of course known for the tallest waterfall in Germany, the world’s largest cuckoo clock, and delicious Black Forest-style sweets. Well, somehow we missed the clock, and the “tallest” waterfall was apparently calculated by adding up all the terraces together and counting it as one fall. Further, I’m not certain that “Spaghetti Ice Cream” counts as a traditional Black Forest dessert but it was delicious. Anyway, if you count the ice cream we went 2 for 3 in Triberg. We ended up going back again to the ziplining place to get Joann’s lost cell phone and then we were on our way back home.
Tyler introduced Jon and I to a board game we had actually never played before called Spirit Island and we got to satisfy some of our board game cravings with a few rousing games. We also enjoyed a healthy amount of unbelievably cheap and tasty German beer. The price of beer at the grocery store is actually incredible – they sell mix-and-match individual .5L bottles in a huge variety for between 1-1.5 euros each, meaning you can get 6 beers (a total of 3 liters!), for 6 – 9 euros. And that’s not even the cheap stuff, that’s for the good bottles! It’s a wonder they aren’t plastered 24/7.
Early the next day we headed back out to the German countryside to visit Hohenzollern Castle. It’s a lovely Prussian castle built in the 19th century perched, as all German castles are perched, a top a pretty hill. Apparently the Hohenzollern family never actually lived there and they built it as a show piece to demonstrate their grand sensibilities, which I must report it adequately demonstrates. I’m certain it would be a great place for a German Baron to sit and watch the peasants toil in the endless farm country below.
Last but not least, Tyler took us to America! Or, at least, a little piece of it on an American military base built to look exactly like a rural midwest WalMart. It was really surreal to be suddenly transported back to the land of exces but we took advantage of it and bought various bulk items that apparently only Americans prefer, like floss sticks, Claritin, sunscreen, and PopTarts. It’s funny the things you miss having. After a night of yet more Spirit Island we went to bed late and slept in. Our friend’s had to work but that freed up the day for Jon and I to go food and gear shopping for our upcoming hike on the Westweg.
The next day it was off to Hausach and the Westweg. See you on the trail!
Another great adventure and hilarious commentary!!! ?