Alps Day 1 (or: On the Dangers of Trusting Google)

Despite my best efforts to lead us to "Mountain Hostel" in a nearby, similarly named town (Grindelwald) we successfully found Mountain Hostel in the tiny Alp town of Gimmelwald.  The trip was amazingly scenic, if somewhat complex to execute.  It also covered some impressive terrain and nearly the entire breadth of Switzerland, as evidenced by the map approximating our route.

The first leg of the journey from Geneva to Luassane was not particularly pretty; most of the sites were suburbs or industrial buildings, though there were some vineyards and what appeared to be orchards of tiny lemon trees, though I would not think the climate particularly suited to citrus.  Once passed Luassane, which appeared to be quite an industrial city, the landscape became an almost disgustingly pretty pastoral vista of farmhouses, small fields of wheat and maize, and pastures picturesquely interwoven with woodlands.

Not long after that, we found ourselves looking across a lake at our first Alpine peaks.  Yes, both of us; Emily was awake the entire trip, which I believe is a record for her.  Also interesting to me: when we pulled into Bern the ads in the station where suddenly in German instead of French.  The train announcements where kindly given in French, German and English throughout.

Bern appeared to be a nice town, even if the canals where a color I'd expect of the ocean around a south-Pacific tropical paradise, the kind that only exists in movies and daydreams.  We only had about six minutes to change trains, so I couldn't get a photo that does it justice, but picture the water color around this island on a backdrop of classic Bavarian/Alpine style buildings (down to the window boxes) and cloud-robed jagged peaks and you may understand my confusion.

The Bern-Interlaken train took us by another pristine lake dotted with sailboats and surrounded by increasingly rugged mountains.  The Interlaken train station kindly provided a picturesque map showing just what we were getting ourselves into.  I recommend clicking the photo to see the detail.

The time is ripe to illuminate the subtitle of this post.  Those of you that have looked carefully at the map will notice the town of Grindelwald high in the mountains on the left side, and the town of Gimmelwald high in the mountains on the right side.  When first investigating our current lodging, I googled "mountain hostel gimmelwald", as Gimmelwald is the location on the hostel's website, but at some point was offered by Google directions to Mountain Hostel Grindelwald.  I assumed, as I usually do, that Google knows what I want to ask better than I do and figured that Grimmelwald was probably some local variant of the name Grindelwald. (Perhaps something like Geneva being the foreign name for Geneve, and likewise with us calling Muenchen Munich?)  Well, no sooner had I purchased tickets from Interlaken to Grindelwald than Emily, very fortunately, brought the map and the fact that it contained both a Grindelwald and a Gimmelwald to my attention.  Sure enough, I was wrong and would have taken us at least an hour and a good chunk of Swiss Francs out of our way.  Emily however saw through the decoy mountain town and successfully exchanged our tickets and kept us on track.  Well, not exactly on track.

The train only goes partway to Gimmelwald, taking us across a broad, fertile valley guarded by imposing crags.  I think you can see some imposing crags lurking in the background here.  Before long, the mountain loom closer, and the train leaves us in the tender mercy of a bus (the only bus in the town of Lauterbrunnen, which we are to ride to the end of the line) before beating a hasty retreat from huge piles of rock that could now be called intimidating.  So it was that the cheerfully orange PostAuto bus (apparently associated  with Le Post; I can see how it makes sense to associate mail delivery and public transit in remote places) took us to Stechelberg.

Stechelberg seemed to consist of little other than a name I find amusing to say -- there seems to be an inverse function at work between the size of the peaks and the population of towns.  It could also be that the towns get smaller as the slice of open sky above the valley decreases, as the mountains continued to close as we went up the Lauterbrunnen valley to the point that they cow any form of wheeled transport, so that the final leg of our journey to Gimmelwald consisted of riding a gondola up approximately 1500 feet of cliff.  This is something I consider normal at ski resorts, not as part of a commute.  Unless, you know, you work on the top of a ski resort, but Gimmelwald is a far cry from a resort.

With time to kill before getting on the gondola, we walked over to a small festival happening across from the station.  There was a band in leiderhosen, and quite possibly the coolest way of making a grilled-cheese-esque meal I will ever see.  After a sufficient amount of cheese is softened, the cook simply slide the entire block out from under the heater, scrapes the gooey, melted layer onto a slab of bread with a knife, and pushes the whole block of cheese drawer back under the heat turning a small crank to raise the cheese block closer to the heat as necessary.  All I can say is that I want one.

The festival also afforded me an opportunity to buy some local sausage and cheese which will be the entirety of my food supply tomorrow.  You see, Gimmelwald has no grocery store; the nearest is almost an hour's walk, closes early on Saturdays, and is not open Sundays.  The hostel has some basics, like pasta, for purchase, but I need my protein so finding the food was a lucky break.  Emily saved by butt for the second time today by pointing out that this festival was my best chance at dinner.

We also saw some people paragliding, which looks amazing.  We hope to go before we move on if we can find enough slack in our budget to afford it comfortably.  After all, when else can one expect to do aerial acrobatics in the Swiss Alps?

I will leave the details of the hostel itself for tomorrow, but so far I really like it here.  Despite having grown up in the mountains, I find these rather novel.  I think it has to do with the color of the rock, and also the greater intensity and variety of green.  The Eastern Sierras are in a rain shadow, and so where there is forest it tends to be very uniform and coniferous, whereas the Alps' profusion of deciduous trees and impossibly steep verdant meadows gives the mountains colors I've never seen in such a context.