Interlaken and Above

On Saturday, July 18th, I let Mary Joy sleep in until about 8, which was against her strict orders, since we wanted to go up into the mountains, maybe to do the six-hour hike from Schynigge Platte to First, with the lakes down below on our left and the peaks above to our right. The problems with this project were several: first, that we should have started earlier; second, that the forecast was for rain and thunderstorms, starting around 2 p.m.; third, that my legs were giving me trouble,and I couldn't be sure that my right knee, right hamstring and left hip wouldn't conspire against my being able to finish a long walk. For lack of imagination and time, we decided to do the easy but spectacular walk from Maennlichen to Kleine Scheidegg, something we've done a number of times.

I picked up a couple of ham and cheese sandwiches at our usual Interlaken sandwich provider, the Michel bakery, at the corner of Bahnhofstrasse and Seestrasse in Unterseen. Then we headed for the West station and bought our tickets to Kleine Scheidegg, via lauterbrunnen and Wengen. We weren't sure what route we'd use to get back, so we didn't buy return tickets. Apparently, we got a discount not only for our half-fare card, but for the Interlaken city card that we got with our apartment. So, as we have done several times before, we took the train to Interlaken Ost, changed to another train to Lauterbrunnen, then caught the rack railway to Wengen. On that train we met a young couple from Seoul, Korea, who were staying in Lausanne, and were doing a day trip from there: two-and-a-half hours by train each way from there to Interlaken. Like most passengers on this train, they were on their way to Kleine Scheidegg to catch the Jungfraubahn train up to the Jungfraujoch, the self-described "Top of Europe." We had done the Jungfraujoch trip on our honeymoon, back in 1998. It goes fairly quickly up from Kleine Scheidegg's 2,061 meters (somewhat under 7,000 feet) to a point at 3,454 meters (over 11,000 feet) on the "yoke" between the Moench and the Jungfrau. The Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park gets higher, but you start that from a much higher point, and if you start your Jungfraujoch day in Interlaken, you have a very substantial gain in altitude in a relatively short time. I felt slightly nauseous on the Jungfraujoch. The view is spectacular on a clear day. If it isn't clear, you're out of luck.

But we were getting off at Wengen and walked through the village to the cable car, which we rode up to Maennlichen. Maennlichen is basically two cable car stations (the one from Wengen and the Lauterbrunnen Valley to the west and the much longer one from Grindelwald Grund to the east) and a restaurant.

I won't do another description of the wonderful, one-hour-plus walk to Kleine Scheidegg, since I blogged about it in 2012. This time, while the weather wasn't bad enough to make the Eiger, Moench and Jungfrau disappear entirely, they sometimes partly veiled themselves in wispy clouds. It started to drizzle, but not very heavily, and eventually that petered out entirely. It was cool enough to wear a light sweater, but just barely, and later in the day I took that off.

Again this year, as we descended to Kleine Scheidegg we saw the two odd American Plains Indian tepees (one of them huge, with the Coca-Cola logo) across the tracks from the station.

At this point, we had to decide what to do next. We could take the rack railway to Grindelwald or Wengen, but the weather seemed to be clearing up, so we bought tickets for further down the line, from Alpiglen to Interlaken Ost, via Grindelwald, and walked down to Alpiglen. This was a descent of 435 meters (about 1450 feet). Walking down is harder on the legs and knees than walking up, as we discovered once by walking all the way down from Maennlichen to Grindelwald, hobbling gamely at the end. This walk, crossing through pines, directly below the famous north face of the Eiger, killer of mountaineers, wasn't difficult, but it wasn't nearly as easy or as pleasant as the one we had just finished.

After less than an hour, we arrived at Alpiglen, little more than a station and a restaurant, and caught a train into Grindelwald.

Grindelwald is a spread-out resort town. J.K. Rowling has apparently been there, since one of the characters in the later Harry Potter books is named Gellert Grindelwald. We took a train down the valley of the Black Luetschine (Lauterbrunnen is on the White Luetschine), to Interlaken Ost, then, again, walked along the river Aare to Unterseen,

but this time we had errands to run, so we crossed back over to Interlaken by the Spielmatte and Marktgasse.

Our attention was caught by a woodcarving shop, called Woodpecker, that had nice work in the window, so we went in and Mary Joy bought some small things for gifts, as well as a set of salad spoons for ourselves. Then we went to the Marktplatz, to the Rieder Confiserie, where we picked up some of their wonderful confections, also for gifts (mostly).

Later that afternoon we visited Mary Joy's cousin Albert, and he treated us to ice cream on the terrace at Restaurant Schuh, a classic Swiss restaurant on the Hoheweg (Interlaken's main tourist street running from the West station to the East station), next to the Hohematte, the big, grassy area that gives you the quintessential Interlaken view: sitting right in the middle of the gap caused by the Lauterbrunnen valley is the Jungfrau herself (unless she has disappeared in the mist). Across the street from the Hohematte and cater-corner from Schuh, to take full advantage of this sight, is the grande dame of Interlaken hotels, the very Victorian Victoria Jungfrau,

As usual, the Hohematte provided a landing pad for para-gliders, dropping down from the Harder and other surrounding heights, miraculously avoiding the ugly, incongruous skyscraper of the Hotel Metropole. The Hoheweg was thronged with tourists from seemingly every nation on earth. In particular evidence were Muslim women, wearing either scarves or face-covering, head-to-toe robes. Someone told us that since the Ramadan fast had just ended, Muslim tourists were all arriving at once.

After saying good night to Albert, we went to the Catholic church (Heilige Dreifaltigkeit--Holy Trinity) on the other side of the Hohematte, to catch what we could of the 6:00 mass. Interestingly, as in our parish back home, the priest was Indian. His homily seemed to be passionate and deep (at least, as far as I could tell from how he spoke, since my German wasn't up to total comprehension of what he was saying). Mary Joy liked the organ and how it was played.

Afterwards, outside, we tried to get oriented as to where the original Inter Lacus ("between the lakes") monastery had been, which had given the city its name. The woman who had lectored at mass overheard us and gave us some directions. Her English was excellent, as she worked in the city tourism office, assisting perplexed foreigners. One problem they were having was that the unexpected heat was making people from warmer climates expect air conditioning, but Interlaken hotels don't have it. She and Mary Joy had an impassioned talk about church music, in Interlaken and St. Paul. She was originally from Vienna. Someone later told us that at one time, most Swiss tourism offices had been staffed by Austrians, but now much of the staff was Czech.

We decided to go to have dinner at the Goldener Anker. We'd eaten there before, and it had good reviews. We were outdoors, and in front of me there was an Indian-American family that was looking for something vegetarian to eat. They apparently found it, at least at the salad bar. Behind me was a family from New York. Mary Joy and I both had grilled perch from the mountain lakes--very good. As usual, we walked back along the Aare.