[PICTURED: Our view from the Sphinx]
Breakfast at the Bellevue
Breakfast at the Bellevue included many ambiguous things to eat – things that we did not necessarily recognize as breakfast food, or simply did not recognize at all – plates that looked to offer some sort of creamed something, but with only swiss captions.
I was deeply dehydrated, and drained the water pitcher faster than the server was willing to refill it. At one point I approached him and suggested that a fresh pitcher of water would be a blessing. He responded dismissively and in Swiss, in a way that conveyed to Chiara that filling water was beneath him, and that they had a girl to take care of such things, and I would have to hope for relief there.
I am sure I sound like an ass, and perhaps I am one, but I am at least an ass capable of noticing that there are five pitchers at the drink stand: Apple Juice, Orange Juice, Grapefruit Juice, Milk, and Water. The Water is in the back, and nobody in the breakfast room wanted anything besides water. The water practically emptied itself, while the remaining pitchers were perpetually full and untouched. This is not a phenomenon of any particular interest at the Hotel Bellevue.
I escalated my Water War the following morning. When the new server/water-girl pair allowed the water pitcher to sit empty for five minutes while the other four pitchers were ignored by customers, I took matters into my own hands and went into the lobby to refill my water glass from lobby’s lemon-infused ice-water dispenser, which was only intended to impress new guests, and not to be the sole source – or any source -- of water for the entire dining hall.
I went to the lobby-infused water dispenser every few minutes, expecting and half-hoping to be shoo’d back into the dining room, which would allow me to protest about the desiccation of the guests. I was going to say, “The most sacred gift that anyone can provider a traveler is water.”
But instead, the front desk clerk simply ignored me as I nearly drained the infuser over the course of ten minutes.
The Tour Bus
Swiss tour guide Konrad Peter’s agitation grew by the moment as a group of middle easterners who had arrived ten minutes late alerted him that another car full of their colleagues was even later still. “I hope they make it; we cannot wait,” said Konrad. “The train will not wait for us.”
The bus needed to travel from Interlaken to Grindelvald, where we would board a cog train that would take us half way up the Jungfrau mountain, then transfer to a different cog train that would take us the rest of the way up.
The second group of Middle Easterners did not arrive very quickly, and then suffered a bathroom emergency when they did arrive, and despite his threats, Konrad Peter did wait.
As our bus wound through tiny curved roads up to Grindelvald, Konrad fretted into the microphone about all the things that might delay us – traffic, road construction, detours, etc. – but after each one reassuring himself more than his passengers that everything would probably be fine.
From the bus windows we gazed at the first of an infinite number of roaring alpine rivers of turquoise-white water too turbulent for kayakers. A kind of stomach-twisting picturesqueness that was a perfect match for our predicament. Konrad described the various accidents in history that had claimed lives on the river, especially the time that upstream debris had created a natural dam that suddenly burst and doomed a group of Australian kayakers.
Somehow we made it to the first cog train with enough time to spare that it was uncomfortable to stand in the sun waiting for the rest of the bus to use the restrooms while Konrad negotiated 40 train tickets from the booth.
We tried to pass the time by staring at the treacherous north face of the Eiger, which was the closest of the towering mountains, claiming many lives, and inspiring “The Eiger Sanction,” a 1975 Clint Eastwood spy-adventure-mountain climbing thriller that made mountain climbing seem dangerous.
Nothing about the Eiger’s appearance made me want to climb it, even though the Eiger looked cold and windy, and we were hot and boiling. There was a heat wave this week in Switzerland, with temperatures in the mid-90’s, and the sun seemed directly overhead for most of the day. Valleys that were perpetually shaded in winter wilted in the intensity of the sun. The sunscreen on my forehead poured into my eyes.
The Cog Train
The crowd on the platform was bewilderingly international. There was no consistency in language, attire, or culture – nothing united these masses but the shared commitment to push and shove their way to the best seats on the train.
As it turned out, all of the seats on the train were the best, except for mine and Chiara’s, which were on the wrong side. More often than not we were looking across the aisle, gawking past other gawkers at the Swiss valleys and sheer cliffs as the cog trained scaled the mountain, for ten minutes, then twenty minutes, then thirty minutes and forty minutes.
Chiara’s zoom lens had a better chance of capturing the scenery than did my iPhone, but when we tried for a shot, usually a tree, post, or tunnel would intervene, so you will have to take our word for it that there are stunning views when you climb up swiss mountainsides. These are glacier-carved valleys, so if you have seen Yosemite and can imagine a network of intersecting Yosemites, except with even higher canyon walls, then you would get a sense of it.
Then we switched to the second cog train. Everyone who had gotten bad seats on the first train secretly vowed retribution against his fellow travelers, and it was truly a shark feed as we boarded again.
Chiara and I were last on this time and barely found seats together.
For a few moments, the views from this train were even better than the first, but then we entered the final tunnel. If you did not wish to stare at sheer rock for the remainder of the trip, there were movies in the train that purported to explain the history of the tunnel – more people died building it than died climbing the Eiger, that’s sure – but the movie was sponsored by Lindt, and seemed to over-emphasize the opportunities to purchase and enjoy genuine swiss chocolate – the same kind you can get at home at Costco in giant buckets – from the highest chocolate store in Europe. We disregarded the movie.
Jungfraujoch
The JungFrauJoch – the highest train station in Europe, the “Top of Europe,” as the marketers have declared, is reached via a tunnel that zig-zags THROUGH the Jungfrau mountain. It was built around 1905-1907, for reasons unknown, and once you enter the tunnel, you stay in the tunnel. Even the terminal train station, and an intermediate train station, are in the tunnel. It is about 20 minutes of tunnel, and once you arrive at the end of the track – still inside the mountain – your altitude is 11,333 feet, which is too high for anything.
You wouldn’t know you were at an unsafe elevation by the look of it – it just looked like you were inside a mountain for some reason. The way you knew that you were too high was because Konrad Peter fretted incessantly that everyone have plenty of water, and also hydrate, and drink liquids, too, and do not eat anything heavy, and we should all look after our health.
There are nine attractions at the Top of Europe. Number One is a collection of stores and restaurants adjacent to the train station. Number Four is called “The Sphinx,” and is a scientific research station seven stories above the train station, which is reached by elevator. Number Eight is called “The Ice Palace.”
We only had three hours of free time at the top of Europe, and Konrad was adamant that nobody attempt numbers 5 and 6, because they would take too much time – an hour each way journeying across the glacier at the top of Jungfrau for snow sports.
The nine attractions are connected by a long and confusing network of tunnels.
Because the tunnels are lengthy, the Swiss have included museum-like entertainment on the walls as you trek by, including many photos, artifacts, and placards regarding the original construction of the railroad up the mountain.
A memorial section of the tunnel includes plaques for each of the sixty-nine workers who died while building the tunnel, typically from dynamite-blasts gone wrong, or landslides, or the like. Amazingly, even though the tunnel was built by the Swiss, all 69 of the fatalities were Italians. The obvious implication is that Italians are really careless in their work compared to the Swiss. The Swiss honor them nonetheless.
We followed the signs toward attraction Number Four, the Sphinx. Nothing about the experience in the tunnels made one envious of gophers and moles, the difficulty of whose lives suddenly became clear. We couldn’t find our way to Number Four even with signs, until we eventually did find it, suddenly happening upon an elevator.
We squeezed into the elevator with enough others to make alarming the ratio of empty-space to human flesh, and then the elevator shot upward. It hardly mattered that there was no air in the elevator, because the air outside the elevator was so thin it did not contain much oxygen anyway, so adding air wouldn’t have made much difference, and most of the people – certainly Chiara and me – were practically blacked out from oxygen deprivation anyway, so whatever demerits the elevator experience warranted made not much of an impression.
[PICTURED: "The Sphinx," an observatory, research station, and observation point at the top of Junfrau. I took this photo, but not from a helicopter -- it was a wallposter outside the gift shop in Junfraujoch. ]
The Sphinx
When the door opened, we burst into the snow-blinding light of the glacier top. Paradoxically, you can only get a sense of what it was like to be on the Sphinx from viewing photos OF the Sphinx, as opposed to photos FROM the Sphinx. That's why I have inserted the photo above.
Photos FROM the Sphinx purport to replicate the experience, but they do not. They only document that you were there.
The Sphinx is a two-story building, roughly the shape and size of Egypt’s famous Sphynx, but without any of the lion or stone. Instead, it is made entirely of glass and metal grills, so you can see through all of it, even the floors.
The Sphinx is perched atop a cement pillar several stories high, so seeing through the floors is more a bug than a feature, if you are scared of heights, which I most assuredly am. It wasn’t enough to be 11,333 feet high. Now we needed to be another 75 feet above even that, and dangling dangerously over a wind-swept glacier.
The Sphinx has outdoor observation decks on all sides, with see-through metal-grill stairs that invite you to fall to your doom, or at least to lose your hat, phone, and glasses over the edge. The temperature on a hot July day was as cold as snow.
We had to shove through or past endless tourists taking their stupid, indulgent selfies so that we could take ours. After a while I was ready to just send those tourists over the edge. One of them was using up a prime selfie-spot – there was a mountain with snow right behind it – while he checked the film in his camera, which took a while because it was actually a phone and did not use film.
After we had squeezed what there was from the Sphinx, we passed the highest chocolate shop in Europe and the highest watch shop in Europe, ungraciously refusing to purchase a thing, and returned by elevator to the relatively oxygenated 11,333 feet and continued to wander helplessly through the tunnels.
Eventually we happened into Number Eight, The Ice Palace.
The Ice Palace
The Ice Palace does not share much in common with a common palace. What they mean by “Ice Palace” is that the tunnels, instead of being bored through rock, are bored through glacier ice.
That means that not just the walls and the ceiling are ice, but the floor also, and if you have ever tried walking on a frozen lake that was as smooth as glass, or as smooth as ice, then you have some sense what it was like to walk through the tunnels of the ice palace.
There were hand rails on both sides of the tunnel, but only a pansy would be tempted to grab one, and there were no pansies in Jungfraujoch this day.
Of all the safety warnings Konrad Peter urged upon us, the one he forgot was to hold onto the hand rails in the ice palace, which could have done me some good, because I in fact slipped twice. But I would have disregarded Konrad Peter on this point, because I am no pansy.
The tunnels through the glacier that make up the ice palace are longer and more extensive than they need to be to make the point. And like the tunnels through the rock, they branch unnecessarily and rejoin in unexpected loops. Sprinkled throughout the ice palace are caverns in which animal-shaped ice carvings have been placed and dramatically lit. These ice carvings are somewhat like the ice carvings that cool the butter in the fanciest of restaurant buffets, only the ice doesn’t melt. And it’s not a swan. Instead, it is a family of penguins or polar bears, or a proud banner reading Jungfraujoch – an obvious photo opportunity.
They have a sense of humor, the Swiss. At one point you can find without comment, frozen into a block of ice at about eye-level but slightly askew, the hapless saber-tooth squirrel from Ice Age.
There weren’t too many people in the Ice Palace, either because they died trying to find it or because they prefer to take their ice sculptures with a buffet, so we had an unusually easy time taking photographs. At least when I wasn’t falling.
Crystal
After the Ice Palace, Chiara and I decided it was time to disregard Konrad Peter’s advice about heavy food, and we headed to the ice station’s main restaurant, Crystal, which offers window views that are comparable to what you would get from the Sphinx, which was in fact directly above us, but way more comfortable than the Sphinx.
We drank excessive quantities of water, of which Konrad Peter would have approved, and then ordered a chesse fondue, of which Konrad Pete – Oh, I misspelled cheese fondue! Auto-correct, can you help with that?
I guess not.
Konrad Peter and Microsoft BOTH would find unimaginable our having a cheese fondue at 11,333 feet, and in retrospect I know why. First, by “cheese” they meant “beer cheese,” which was surprising to me in a bad way, just like when I ask for a Diet Coke or an Banana Split I do not hope to get a BEER Diet Coke or a BEER Banana Split, but that is how it is at the Crystal Restaurant.
Also, I expect that the things you stick in a cheese fondue are bread or vegetables. But in Switzerland it is bread or PICKLED vegetables, which probably reflects a regional and historical difference in approaches to produce between California and Switzerland.
One of the reasons we travel is to discover our unconscious biases and to open our mind to different ways of arranging our daily affairs. So now my mind is open to the idea that instead of broccoli and cauliflower, one might dip into the cheese a picked baby corn, which would not have occurred to me, though I still might not do it.
The Train Down from Jungfraujoch
On the train back down, Chiara and I determined to take whatever measures were necessary – including extreme measures – to secure seats on the side of the train with the better views.
We waited patiently through tunnels, but when we emerged the views were different. Konrad Peter had arranged for us to ascend through the Grindelwald Valley, but to descend into the Lauterbrunnen Valley, so that we would have different view going up from going down.
Traversing two different valleys is one of the advantages you get from a tour, which you wouldn’t know to do on your own, even if you could somehow work out the logistics of arriving and departing from different stations.
The Lauterbrunnen Valley was known as the Valley of 72 Waterfalls, and indeed we saw many waterfalls, both near the train and across the valley.
Another advantage of the tour is that Konrad Peter has done this hundreds of times, and he knows the exact best picture moments, so would call out, “The next great photo has a waterfall behind a tall steeple, fifteen seconds, fourteen, thirteen…not yet…ten, nine…no this isn’t it, hold your fire…” and it was truly difficult to not take that photo because it looked SO perfect! But we obeyed Konrad, as he counted down “thee, two, one…Go! Take another!” And indeed each time he had directed us to the perfect shot.
The Bus Ride Back to Interlachen
We traveled from the last train station back to Interlachen by bus, and during the bus ride Konrad Peter regaled us with more tales of collapsed bridges, famines, the cold misery of winter, and especially how the Swiss government had a few years ago abandoned price supports for milk, which cut revenues for the local dairy farmers by 30%, and they were hurting terribly. Konrad Peter said that he had seen a documentary about the plight of the Swiss dairy farmers, and it was not good, and he cursed the Swiss government on behalf of the farmers.
Back in Interlachen
We were very tired when we returned to Interlachen, but it was too early to go to sleep, so Chiara and I explored the town a little.
First we practiced finding the East train station, from which we would embark on the following day’s unguided adventure to Schynige Platte. Next, we headed back toward our hotel on the west side.
The river that connects the two lakes that define Interlaken is called the Aare river. We found on its shore swimmers who ordinarily would resist Alpine streams but were willing to try it in the sweltering heat.
The houses along the stream all had meticulously tended gardens. From every train throughout Switzerland we saw small, dense, carefully designed gardens with some flowers and every kind of produce. The Swiss have a strong gardening culture, which reminds me of the Minnesotans, and may come in part from the rigor of the seasons.
The river was very high, nearly to flood stage. The sluice gates were open on an ancient wooden dam, and the water was extremely turbulent as it poured through the sluice channels. Nearby, a fish ladder had successfully helped several species of fish repopulate the lakes, although not yet salmon, a nearby sign ruefully explained.
Interlaken has many public fountains with potable water, and even places for pets to drink near the bottom of the fountain. It was easy to find little “Coop” grocery stores for snacks and supplies, and many restaurants beckoned. However, the cheese fondue had been enough, so without any additional supper, Chiara and I went to sleep.
[PICTURED: The station from which the cog train departed to Junfraujoch.]
[PICTURED: Some stupid Swiss valley. Every time the train goes around a bend you get another view like this.]
[PICTURED: Another Swiss valley. You can get a hundred of these photos if you want.]
[PICTURED: Chiara demonstrates how to take a Swiss Valley photo.]
[PICTURED: Chiara peers down into the snowy valley. This was taken in July, so it's mostly glacier, not recent snowfall.]
[PICTURED: Reminder, The Sphinx. The next set of photos were all shot from the balcony around this building, just looking in different directions.]
[PICTURED: The observation balcony surrounding the Sphinx. Take a look at the floor...]
[PICTURED: Obligatory selifie.]
[PICTURED: Mountains and glacier.]
[PICTURED: Chiara is Boss of the Sphinx.]
[PICTURED: You can see RIGHT through the floor, and it's many stories up. Not a great place to be scared of heights. Between the tunnels and the Sphinx, Chiara's claustrophobia and my acrophobia were perpetually activated.]
[PICTURED: Normally this kind of landscape is unphotographable, but you can kind of get a sense of it here.]
[PICTURED: The Palace is really just ice tunnels through the glacier. Does that floor look slippery to you? It's VERY slippery.]
[PICTURED: Penguins carved in ice.]
[PICTURED: Eagles carved in ice, preparing to eat fish carved in ice.]
[PICTURED: The ice penguins live in an igloo.]
[PICTURED: Scrat, the Saber-Toothed Squirrel from the movie Ice Age, is frozen in a block of ice, without comment.]
[PICTURED: Crystal, the restaurant at Jungfraujoch, has arguably the best view in the world.]
[PICTURED: The amazing views at Crystal didn't make their cheese fondue taste good, but I would eat worse for this view.]
[PICTURED: We couldn't get many photos on the way down. This is the Lauterbrunnen, the Valley of 72 Waterfalls. Most of the waterfalls went by too fast, but if you ever make it to the Alps, this is the place to be, superior to the Grindelvald Valley.]
[PICTURED: This is the photo that Konrad Peter recommended, but I didn't hold the camera straight!]