It is very easy to let the days slide by here in Gimmelwald. So easy it's now been five days since I promised an update "tomorrow". So easy that our original 3-night reservation here at Mountain Hostel has turned into a two week stay ending October 11th. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if it ended up getting longer; planning the next leg of the journey is so much work, and staying here is so easy.
So, the update:
The hostel couldn't have been easier to find, it's about 20 yards from the gondola station. Even if it was it, we wouldn't have had a hard time finding it as the town provides sign posts at every intersection pointing the direction to anywhere one would want to go. Not that a sign would even be necessary, everything of interest in Gimmelwald is within sight of anything else in town. The hostel itself is warm and welcoming. The kitchen is large, clean, and well-equipped. There's a large common area with many tables for eating and socializing. Better yet, there's a free pool table and free internet. I still wonder at the fact that a tiny town in the Alps with no road connection manages to have much better internet connectivity than the place in California where I grew up!
On our first day, we wandered the town some. Gimmelwald's main industries are tourism, small-scale dairy farming, and tourism, so town consists of a mix of houses, pastures, and barns. Walking down the road, we encountered many four-legged locals: cows wearing the traditional trychel, formidable-looking sheep relaxing in the shade, and many cats. I imagine the cats are very useful for controlling rodents in the hay lofts, but the ones we saw were off-duty or something. Two appeared to be herding chickens, and two more, pictured, competed for our attention as we went down the road. We later found the black one asleep on my bed, happy to snuggle. It turns out his name is Shadow, and he owns the people that own the hostel. When they're out of town, as they have been since we got here, he tends to hang out at the hostel. So far, he's been warming the bed every night but one.
As previously mentioned, the nearest grocery store is some 50 minutes away in Murren. The walk, while not easy, is certainly worthwhile for the views and for the food I get for completing it. It's funny how the thought of not having dinner can motivate one to slog up a hill at high altitude. The mountain living is good for us though; I've shed absolutely all the bodyfat I built up with the help of sleep deprivation, stress and gym abandment over the last semester, and every time we go to Murren we get there just a bit faster.
On our first Murren run, we stopped to look at a small waterfall some distance below the path. Seeing how it sprayed out from the rock wall to form a rather inviting shower, and having already discovered that the hostel charges for showers --not much, but it's about the principle--commented that I'd like to jump in it. Emily agreed, so after some brief route planning we were scrambling cross-country to reach what we now call "our waterfall".
By the end of our third, and ostensibly last, day here, we both agreed that we'd barely scratched the surface of what this place has to offer, so we booked a fourth night. We ended up meeting some folks who've been coming here for years, and told them that we might stay longer, so they suggested we ask about getting a longer-term rate. We simply asked at reception what they could do if we wanted to stay until October 11th, and Veronika at reception told us we could take over cleaning from the regulars we'd talked to, starting tomorrow, and that beds would be free. So there you have it, we clean from 9:30 - 11:00 every morning in return for free lodging and even a hefty discount on draft beers. At 2 francs for .4L of delicious dunkel I have a viable backup source of calories if we ever don't manage to make it up to Murren for my dinner.
Coming soon eventually: tales of hay production, midnight hikes, and maybe even specific people we've met. I still need to fill in the last several months too, but blogging is just less fun than the alternative activities, so I tend to put it off and do it when I'm about to fall asleep. It's now 2:34am here, and the hostel won't be vacuuming itself in 7 hours.
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