Montreaux and Fribourg

Ali and I headed off on our own today. We went to the Chateau Chillon in Montreaux, and then caught the train to Fribourg, where we visited a massive cathedral and wandered around the old city. The train to Montreaux went through some terrain that looked surprisingly like some spots in California – dry rocky mountains in the background, lovely vineyards, a fair amount of other orchards, etc. The castle in Montreaux was the best yet, with excellent information, well-preserved levels, and a very nice view of the lake. From the main train station in Montreaux, you walk 4km on a flower-laden path by Lake Geneve. There were a ton of stands set up right by the city (possibly a fair for a local jazz festival) and a ton of women in country-specific matching shirts and backpacks (possibly a gym teacher’s conference). The mountains were certainly smaller, since we had left the Alps for what I’m guessing are the pre-Alps, but they still surrounded the lake. Chillon was made famous by a Lord Byron poem, and tourists keep coming since it’s such a pleasant place to look out on Montreaux. The walk did not seem to be that great for Ali’s feet, though. By the time we made it to Fribourg, we had to stop to get some flip-flops that would avoid a majority of her blisters.

In Fribourg, we wandered around the old city until we found the large cathedral we were looking for, and when we finally made it there, we were 5 minutes too late to go up in the tower. It was still pretty inside, but it wasn’t long until we were back in town checking into our hostel for the night. The hostel (located in a really old hospital, but still really clean) was pretty packed, and we ended up in a room with two ladies (Irish & French) hiking the St. Jacob’s pilgrimage trail, one German lady bike touring from Berlin to the Alps, another French lady who was going to try to walk a little with the pilgrimage folks, and two people who were out late and left early. We had some fantastic pizza and seafood risotto for dinner (complete with a Swiss Pinot Noir), and then, we wandered out of the city center, over a pair of super-tall bridges, and looped down by the old city wall to get back to the main part of town. The sun has been setting rather late, and it was just dipping below the horizon as we got back to the hostel.

Sion

No dice with the Aletsch Glacier (which I’m rather bummed about). There was too heavy of cloud cover at the top of the ridges, so it was “unsafe” to go up. I’ll temporarily agree with that assessment, since several of the trails we’ve been on have had sections marked by cairns that would be tough to see in heavy fog. Instead, we headed to Sion to go see the pair of castles they have. The town of Sion is right into the French portion of Switzerland, and while the town may not have been my favorite thus far, the terraced vineyards surrounding the town were quite pretty. In Sion, there were two powerful groups – the church and the baron appointed by the state. Thus, there are two castles – one that is in worse state (more spread out, kept as a fortified place) and one that was more of a rather protected church. The church/castle is now in use as a small museum. After visiting the castles and grabbing some coffee, we headed home to meet up with the person in charge of renting out Therese’s place. Sausage, pasta, and potatoes in cream served as a tasty dinner with salad. (The usual bread and cheese with a pate-like paste for lunch.) Slowish day, but we had good weather for Saas Fee and the Eiger.

St. Beatus Cave and Thun

We had planned to go up to Grimselpass, a spot with glacier lakes at the top of our valley, and just sit around today. Our luck ran out with the weather, though, and since it’s storming all over Switzerland, we headed back toward Interlaken to visit St. Beatus’s cave. It’s absolutely a sacrifice cave now, complete with lighting, a concrete path, and informational audio at certain grottos. The cave is pretty, if a little sad, and there’s a rushing stream that goes through it. I think it would have been quite the amazing cave before it got converted to a tourism site; it isn’t horrible-looking even now. From the stories, St. Beatus made his cell in the mouth of the cave (a bit off the side of a large waterfall), and he’s said to have given sermons in the cave every week. He actually sounds a bit like the Bernese Oberland’s version of St. Patrick. Legend has it that he exorcised a dragon in the cave to help out some of the people living near the lakes below and threw the dragon into the swirling waters. Then he’s said to have converted everybody in the surrounding areas from whatever pagan religions to Christianity. Sadly, my fear of caves has increased, and it was tough even being in the widened areas the tour took.

Post-cave, we headed to Thun, which is way more awesome than Interlaken (and you should go there instead if you ever contemplate a vacation in Interlaken). Though we only took enough time to get coffee and go for a brief walk, Thun has a very old city center and has the same kind of feel as many other fun European cities. (I’m basing this entirely on the short time spent in Zurich and Milan.) There are twisted, narrow, cobbled streets, a nice array of shops and restaurants, and a teal river/canal running straight through the middle. I would not have minded spending more time there, but we headed home to have our mini-brat things, spaetzle, gravy, and salad. Speaking of food, we also tried out some butter pretzels (literally, soft pretzels halved and spread with butter) and something in a metal tube that tastes strikingly similar to pate. Weather allowing, we’ll head to the Aletsch Glacier tomorrow.

P.S. The rivers are pretty close to breaching their banks. (One tree got pulled in from the bank as we went by in the train.) However, the clouds cleared briefly just after dinner, allowing for a gorgeous sunset and the clearest views up and down the valley we’ve had yet. There are some beautiful snow-capped mountains at the bottom of the valley that are almost always covered in haze, and the side hollow that feeds into Munster was also the clearest I’ve seen yet. Pinks and oranges reflecting off rocky/snowy peaks? Yes, please.

Hut to Murren

We woke up this morning to a perfectly clear day and a perfectly tasty breakfast (complete with the bread, cheese, and some sort of meat – thankfully there was also quark, chocolate croissants, a nutella-like spread, coffee and fruit juice to round things out). We stayed at the hut just long enough to get fed, watered, and otherwise ready for the day, and I grabbed some pictures since the Grindelwald valley and Eiger/Monch/Jungfrau were right off the restaurant’s porch. It took us a couple of minutes to figure out how to take the trail near the L-horn ski race, but once we did, we started heading up the ridge (opposite the 3 famous mountains). Though it was a little steep and windy for the first thing in the morning, the views were beautiful, and there were wildflowers covering the meadow. (Come to think of it, wildflowers covered pretty much everything today.) The ski race (super-G, for those interested) is 4.5km, and it takes the skiers approximately 2 minutes and 30 seconds to get to the bottom (155km/h speeds, with one 9m-wide tunnel that slows the racers down to 90km/h). It took us a bit longer, and instead of worrying about gates, we were worrying about herds of cows grazing all over portions of the trail. (I managed to make friends with one by petting her nose and scaring the flies off.)

The ski trail ended in Wegner, so we took an incredibly switchback-y gravel path through a very pleasant pine forest to the gondola in Lauterbrunnen (a town that’s home to one nice waterfall). The gondola was survivable, though I oddly still prefer chair lifts to gondolas (and small gondolas are a little better than large gondolas). The gondola took us up the far range of mountains to Griesalp(?) – the first place all three mountains fit into the frame of my camera. We hopped on the Mountain View Trail, which certainly lived up to its name. The trail started in pine forest, but quickly climbed out of the forest into alpine meadows of grassy peaks. Opposite us, you could just see the area where we had started our day (and, of course, some impressive views of the glacier-covered mountains). We spent a couple of hours winding up and around the faces of the mountains opposite the Eiger/Monch/Jungfrau chain and then hoofed it down to the train station in Murren. We probably spent 6-7 hours out. I’m somewhat confident that I could spend 6-7 years wandering around the area and staring at the mountains.

As soon as we headed out of the Jungfrau’s shadow (in a train), we hit a giant patch of rain that all seemed to be squeezing into one of the narrow routes toward Lauterbrunnen. We got out of that patch almost as suddenly as we had gotten into it, though, and weather stayed clear enough until we were home in Munster. Everybody’s pretty content after showers and pasta (minus some blisters and stiff joints among us). Tomorrow we’ll have something of a break.