Last night's sunset was what you dream of when you think of mountain sunsets: the peaks were on fire with alpenglow, pink to red to orange. A low cloud banked over the edge of the ridge, the sky above turned that perfect cobalt.
This morning the sky was perfectly clear, and it was easy to pop out of bed as the sun just painted the tips of the peaks across the valley. By the time the light had whitewashed halfway down to the valley, we were on our way to the lift.
The lift the goes right over the field next to our apartment. It is 7:45 and we are heading up Schilthorn for breakfast.
Schilthorn looms over our town; at 2970 meters it is just 256 feet shy of ten grand. There is a restaurant on the summit, a revolving restaurant no less, and the main claim to fame here is that they filmed a James Bond movie here, like ten or twenty years ago. You'd think it was yesterday, looking at all the 007 ads, souvenir crap and the "007 James Bond Experience" interactive museum. We were there for the view, however, and it was breathtaking. We could see the big peaks just across the valley from us, but also the lakes around Interlaken, the peaks leading further into the heart of the alps, all the way into Germany; even Mount Blanc in France stood out clear, a snowy beacon glowing in the distance, wedged between two lesser, black rock peaks.
I was on Mt. Blanc about five years and three weeks ago, at about the same elevation.
The air is so transparent you can see the individual sun rays, photon beams lighting each crisp ridge, casting shadows from every rock and highlighting the green rainbow of pine, fir, leafy trees, bushes, grass, moss.
After breathing it all in for an hour we finally let our stomachs pull us into the restaurant, where we had coffees (Gail's cappuccino had 007 drizzled in cocoa on it. Sheesh!) and Gail devoured a fantastic apple strudel while I ate a fresh berry torte. We ate slowly, revolving twice around the entire horizon before giving up our table. It was after ten before we headed off all the way across the valley to hike.
Before you read this next part, remember, we can look down and see our town five thousand feet below. We can look across and see exactly where we are going to hike; close enough we can make out train tracks, clusters of buildings, I am guessing it is maybe ten miles distant.
But.
But we are cut off by the cliffs on both sides, dropping thousands of feet to the valley floor. So here is how you spend over an hour traveling that distance, as efficiently as possible: We took the lift down off Schilthorn to Mürren, Gimmelwald and into Stechelberg, where we caught the bus to Lauterbrunnen. From there we took a steep cog railway up to Wengen where we caught a lift up to Männlichen, at 2230 meters (7300 feet). We hiked three miles (5KM) around the base of Tschuggen to the train station at Kleine Scheidegg, where we caught the cog railway down to Wengen, where we cogged back to Lauterbrunnen, caught the lift up to Grütschalp, and the little train home to Mürren. Phew!
Back to the hike, Männlichen to Kleine Scheidegg.
This is like a one hour hike, max. That is, if you were just walking it. It took us over three hours. It's not the elevation, or the difficulty, it is the sheer, jaw-dropping views that change with every step. A photographer's dream, just randomly point the camera and your friends will swear you are a genius. Step step click, step click, step step step click click... Really, I am surprised we actually made it to the end of the trail, and that my memory card did not explode. We were walking around a peak, and along the base of the Eiger, staring up at the Mönch and Jungfrau just right there. Near the train station at the bast of the north wall of the Eiger, we stopped for a beer.
The three peaks, deadly and unclimable for years, the north face of the Eiger, full of great mountaineering stories. The names tell a story too: the Monk is protecting the Young Maiden from the Ogre (and that is how they line up).
When we finally returned to Mürren, we spied our first chamois (sham-wa, a fancy European deer with big horns) grazing in the field below the train station. Could anything make this day more perfect? We stopped by the Co-op for wine and cheese for tonight before heading to our apartment. While Gail put stuff away, I went out to set our table, and ran into Albert, our host. So we were talking, and don't you know that he was downstairs to get out his alpenhorn. He needed to practice because tomorrow, 1 August, is Swiss National Day, and he had to play in a concert and a parade and then another performance. You know the alpenhorn from those Rucola commercials. So what would you do? Of course: I invited myself to hear him practice.
Gail and I started out sitting on the steps of the garden, but when his wife, Kitty saw us she came out and soon the three of us were crowded around a picnic table enjoying the music as it echoed against the snowy mountains. He has two different horns, one is on E and the other in F. So after a few songs I ran downstairs and fetched up our bottle of red French wine, the Toblerone chocolates and wasabi peanuts and brought them up to share. Soon the horns were put aside, their bottle of red Swiss wine (from the next valley over) showed up, as well as cheese and crackers, and the four of us were drinking, talking and watching the sunset. We call it alpenglow, they call it alpenrote (red peaks). When it got colder, we moved into their warm and very comfortable kitchen. We did well with our mixture of English, poor German and their German, poor English. Anytime we got stuck for a word we just cast about, throwing out random words in either language that may or may not have been relevant, but in the end something always stuck.
Random notes: Prices in Switzerland are high, but wages are high for everyone, as opposed to the high-low incomes in the US. Thus, Albert who was a chef (French trained he is proud to note) could afford his home and kids and so on. They have travelled to the US, all three times it was a headache to get into the US (through customs). They like to vacation in Thailand, and also liked the Dominican Republic. Winter is the busy season here, excellent skiing. You can buy a local ski pass (this side of the valley, any lift any time) or a regional pass (the whole area, both sides) so you can literally ski and lift from village to village. He showed me where the ibex gather on the cliff in the winter, where the deer graze in the fall. They do not finance houses here like they do in the US, but it did involve putting up his grandfather's land as collateral. He is at least a third generation local, his wife is Dutch, hence the wooden shoes on the outside wall. More out-of-the-area people are buying vacation homes here, the latest is an Englishman spending over three million francs to build on the hill above the train station. Albert has had both knees replaced (titanium) but the second did not go as well and had to be fixed, and recently he had open heart surgery. In spite of that he still gets around the hills just fine, though his doctor has told him he can't do anything, not even blow the horn. When you march in a parade with an alpenhorn, it does not have wheels. You just carry it. (He laughed when I asked about this. Those suckers are like ten feet long. Maybe they don't play while they are marching.)
We just had the nicest evening, made a full meal out the wine, cheese and friendship, and we hugged all around when it was time to turn in.
One last note about the alpenhorn: I don't know what it is with the Swiss food; the cheese perhaps? It seems to give me more than normal gas, to put it delicately. I mean, about an hour after eating you just get the farts. But, I have figured out the solution: when you let one fly, just look off in the distance and say, "I hear the alpenhorn!"
You can thank me after your trip to Switzerland.