Into the Alps

I used a prepositional phrase title just for John Krakauer. Krakauer is an alpinist (mountain climber) who writes books with prepositional phrase titles like Into Thin Air, Into the Wild, Under the Banner of Heaven. He wrote a book about Eiger, the famous Swiss mountain that challenges (and kills) so many climbers, and - haha - it's not titled with a prepositional phrase. It's called Eiger Dreams.

Anyway, the morning after our palace/garden adventure, we walked to the lakeshore and caught a boat for Switzerland. The boat was a hydrofoil, which pleased the Total Package very much. Here is the dock at Baveno, with all the metal signs listing our stops along the way. At Locarno, Switzerland we disembarked.

In Locarno we boarded our first train, and so began our initiation into the Swiss public transportation system. We brought lunch, because changing trains five times in one day requires one's wits to be in order, which requires calories:

The track dipped back onto Italy for a while, and we changed trains in Domodossola. As we entered the Alps and then Switzerland, I just looked and took no photos. We changed trains in Brig, Spiez, and Interlaken.  In Speiz, several sweaty, sunburned, passengers boarded with climbing ropes over their shoulders and pickaxes dangling from their belts.

Us, on the train.

Our hotel was near Interlaken, in a a town called Murren. (This is going to drive me crazy, because there's an umlaut above the "u" in Murren and I can't make one!) To get there we took a train (twenty minutes) to Lauterbrunnen.

The next leg, on paper, confused us when we researched the route beforehand. A three-minute ride? Well, you can do only so much research and then the pleasant surprises begin. The next ride was a funicular, because Murren sits atop a cliff.

These are avalanche fences, built to protect the towns below.

After one more train ride along the cliff top, we arrived. Our hotel, the Alpenblick, sat beside the track (this was no bother, because the train made a pleasant rumbly rushing noise, back and forth). Murren is the end of that short line.

Do you know how you imagine yourself meeting a famous person, one you admire, and think how cool you might act in that situation, but deep down you know if it really happened, you would probably be silly, elbowing your friends, pointing and saying "look, there's so-and-so!" That's sort of the way I felt about Eiger, right across the valley, outside our hotel room window.

That's Eiger on the left, Monch (another umlaut) is center, and Jungfrau is on the right, hiding behind the rock face.  Monch (the monk) protects the young maiden (Jungfrau) from the ogre (Eiger).  Jungfrau is known as the "top of Europe".

Towns dot the valley below.  One of them, Wengen, was half-destroyed by an avalanche in the 1970's.  You can see the avalanche fences.

Murren is a popular ski area in winter. In summer, hikers and mountain bikers ride the funicular and train into town. The few cars in town belong to locals, for construction and hauling supplies.

Water troughs like this were all over town.  They're for thirsty hikers.  The iron-work chamois (mountain goat) was a recurring motif in the area.

Another chamois on the side of a train...

...and more in the meadow near our hotel.

This signpost sits mid-town. Note the brown Klettersteig arrow. Most writers will insert foreshadowing into their text without announcing its presence. I'm telling you now that this is foreshadowing.

Question:  What's so great about Switzerland?

Answer:  I'm not sure, but the flag is a big plus.

HA HA hah-haaa! (snort)