Eva and Andreas are avid mountain hikers. For their vacation, starting next weekend, they will spend three weeks in the Dolomites, in the Italian Alps. After a week at a resort, hiking every other day, they’ll start hiking from mountain hut to mountain hut, doing a total (combining distance and altitude changes) of 20 to 30 kilometers (12 to 18 miles) a day.
The last two times we visited them, we had gotten away with level Sunday afternoon walks in the meadows of the Zugerberg. This time, however, we were going to spend pretty much all day Saturday on the Rigi, for which Eva loaned Mary Joy a pair of heavy hiking boots and Andreas loaned me a small backpack, with chest and waist straps, in place of my daypack.
The Rigi Kulm (summit) is only 6000 feet (1800 meters) high, but in comparison with the surrounding area, it towers over both Lucerne and Zug and their respective lakes. Our walk wouldn’t involve starting at the bottom and going to the top (which, of course, Eva and Andreas have done), but only what one of their friends described as a walk suitable for taking visitors on--challenging, but not too, too hard.
We drove to Goldau, just past the southern end of the Zugersee, and from there we took the 9:12 train a short way up, then the cable car to Rigi Scheidegg, a secondary peak, at 1662 meters (around 5600 feet). At that point I discovered that I had left my camera back in my daypack, which was very unfortunate, because this would be one of the most tremendously scenic walks we’ve ever made (incidentally, I’ve now added pictures to the Gimmelwald post). We started out walking downward, through meadows, with a wall of peaks in the not-too-distant south (including the recognizable triangular north face of the Eiger—only a baby ogre at this distance). Then we came into view of Lake Lucerne, spread out far below, and eventually the city of Lucerne itself. But what goes down, must come up, and we started gaining altitude on our way up to the Kulm. The secret to steep uphill hiking is to do it very slowly, and that we did, taking the occasional rest stop. When we finally got to the top, we were met there by a crowd of people who had taken the train up, some of them in flip-flops! Wimps! We sat on the grass and ate our well-earned sandwiches and chocolate, had an ice cream from a kiosk there, when we couldn’t find any open table on the terrace of the hotel restaurant, then we had to decide whether to walk down partway, or take the train all the way. Of course, happy wanderers that we are, we took our backpacks on our back and headed down.
Going down is harder on the knees and calves than going up, so it helps to have a walking stick. Eva and Andreas had extras, which made it a lot easier for us. Down is a lot faster than up, so in less than an hour and a half we were almost to the train station at Kloesterli, which is nearly 600 meters (2000 feet) lower than the Rigi Kulm. To get to the station, we had to take a little bridge across a little brook. Since we had some time before the 3:15 train, Andreas went down to the stream, took off his boots and socks and started wading around. The rest of us joined him. The water, of course, was cold, but it felt good. All in all, they figured, we had traveled a total of about 18 kilometers (about 11 miles) including both horizontal and vertical distance.
We took the train back down to Goldau, drove Eva to the village where she and Andreas would be singing in the choir at mass (to save time, she would shower and change at a friend’s, before going to practice), then drove back to Zug. The three of us showered and changed, then Andreas drove us back to the village, where Mary Joy and I had a salad at a restaurant while he went to his practice. At 5:30, we went to the church, where the women of the choir sang Faure’s “Messe des pecheurs de Villerville,” while the men sang other parts of the mass in Gregorian chant. It was beautiful, and Mary Joy liked the organ and the organist.
Afterwards, there was a wine and cheese reception across the street, followed by a choir dinner at a restaurant way up above on the Zugerberg. We sat at a table with two other couples: Ronnie and James, who were English, Franca (Italian) and Stefan (son of Swiss emigrants to Australia--as an adult he had returned to his ancestral homeland). It was a delightful and funny group. Ronnie, for instance, said that she had arrived in Zug intending to stay there two years, but had now been there for nineteen and had become more Swiss than the Swiss. For instance an English relative or friend had said that she could never live in a country where they didn’t allow you to mow the lawn on Sunday. Ronnie said that in order to be free, you have to have rules, that everyone obeys. Then everyone is free to have a quiet Sunday, without having their peace destroyed by lawnmowers.
As the evening progressed, people at another table started singing from a book of Swiss folk songs, songs that everyone knew, that, as one person put it, she had sung in the Girl Scouts. They had a lot of fun, singing in very nice harmony (this was, after all, a church choir).
Mary Joy met the choir director, who had spent some time in Stacy, Minnesota (as an exchange student, perhaps). He said that an American organist, Gail Archer, had recently played a recital at the church. Mary Joy told him that she’s met Gail Archer, so it’s a small (organ) world. He said that Mary Joy should play there the next time she comes to Zug.
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