Leuk

Saturday (July 3), we tentatively decided to go to the wine area down the Rhone, along the so-called “Roesti Line” (the border between French- and German-speaking Switzerland—and French- and German-eating Switzerland, since presumably only German-speakers eat roesti (“Swiss hash browns,” as the English-language restaurant menus put it)). But the lady who runs the guesthouse, almost by herself, suggested going to Saas Fee (a mountain resort), instead, while Lonely Planet enthused about Leuk. The idea of taking a two-hour walk through the vineyards, between Sierre and Salgesh, seemed less and less fun—we were tired out from our other hikes, and it was clearly going to be a real scorcher. So, on the train, as Leuk came along, we impulsively got out, although Mary Joy had told the conductor, in German, that we were staying on to Sierre. It turned out that he was French-speaking, from Lausanne, and of course preferred wine from that region to the local wines. Mary Joy then switched to French with him.

A digression. Mary Joy has been handling things very well in three different languages: German, French and Italian, with occasional stabs at Swiss German dialect. Even her English was passable (occasionally, back in the U.S., people ask what country she’s from—she enunciates much better than the average American, so some people assume that she’s a foreigner).

We got off at Leuk and walked up the hill to the old town. Just below was the Ringanker Church, a beautiful late-seventeenth-century baroque chapel. When Mary Joy saw the organ up in the choir loft, her jaw dropped. It was a small, clearly old, baroque organ that had been beautifully repainted and restored, The sacristan was setting up for a wedding, but when Mary Joy asked her about the organ, she smiled, got the key and opened the door to the choir loft. We went up the narrow, winding staircase and emerged by the organ, which Mary Joy enthusiastically inspected, asking me to take pictures of the stops. When we got back down, Mary Joy explained to the sacristan that she was an organist. The sacristan laughed and replied that that had been obvious.

We went up to the old town, which was full of medieval alleyways and buildings. The 13th-century bishop’s castle had been renovated, oddly enough, by the well-known modern Swiss architect Mario Botta, who had stuck a big glass egg on the top. We enjoyed wandering around the town very much, but since we had decided to go to Saas Fee, we needed to catch the train back to Visp, partway to Brig.

I'm falling behind in my posts, but I should be able to catch up by doing my writing on the plane to the U.S., tomorrow.

The Aletsch Glacier and Riederalp

Friday (July 2nd), on our way to the train, we picked up some rolls and some meat--dried beef, a local specialty—Mary Joy thinks that we should try local specialties. But after two weeks in Switzerland, we’ve decided that we would much rather have Italian local specialties—I’ve managed to avoid Swiss “cuisine” by eating much more pizza here than I had the last time we were in Italy.

This would be our last mountain hiking day, and our destination would be the longest glacier in Europe, the Aletsch Glacier (23 kilometers or 14 miles). It is up on a high plateau above the Rhone valley, just upstream from Brig. We took a half-hour train ride to Fiesch, where we went to the Tourist Information office. We knew that we wanted to take the cable car up to the Eggishorn, which Lonely Planet recommends as the best place to see the glacier, but we asked if there were some relatively easy but scenic walks in the neighborhood. Besides, we would like to visit Riederalp, which is also up on the same plateau—you don’t often get to go to a town named after you. If anyone happens to know of a Perozville . .

The lady at tourist information suggested an easy 1½-hour walk to an outlook over the glacier, near the Gletscherstube restaurant, which is on the shore of a glacial lake. This sounded like the beginning part of Lonely Planet’s featured 7-hour hike. Lonely Planet mentioned another, shorter route to the same place, but said that a large part of it would be through a very long, very dark (and by definition, unscenic) tunnel. It was a little disturbing when the route signs said that the Lonely Planet route would take 2½ hours, while the tunnel route would take two hours. The Swiss trail signs do tend to overestimate times, but a whole hour meant that something was not quite right.

But before then we bought two all-day passes for all the various lifts (cable cars, funiculars, gondolas, etc.) on the Aletsch Glacier plateau (half price with our Swiss Pass), then headed up from Fiesch to Fiescheralp, then all the way up to the Eggishorn. The view over the glacier across to its beginning at the Jungfraujoch, was awesome. We could see the southern (“back”) sides of the tops of the Jungfau, Moench and Eiger. After soaking this all in, we eventually went down to Fiescheralp to begin our hike. It was now 12:30, and the last gondola down to Fiesch would leave at 6 p.m., so we would have to be back within 5½ hours, or we’d have to walk down! We headed out, and the trail, was, indeed, very scenic and at first, not very difficult, but after 50 minutes on the trail, the sign said that we were still 1½ hours from the Gletscherstube. Not long after that, the trail finally started going up. And up. And up, on switchback after switchback after switchback. It wasn’t as steep as at the Rigi, but it seemed to last forever, and the trail was narrow, and Mary Joy was getting tired. We met several groups of Swiss coming down, and when Mary Joy expressed anxiety about the difficulty of the trail, they pooh-poohed it. A couple of women said “Ruhe” and “langsam”—“rest” and “slowly.” And then, we saw two men on bikes coming down the trail, riding their bikes until they came to us, and walking them around us! “Gefaehrlich!” (“Dangerous!”), said Mary Joy to one of them. “Nein,” he replied, smiling, and got back on his bike and rode down the steep, narrow switchbacks. Well, they are called “mountain bikes,” after all.

Finally, we got to the top, and things got a lot easier. However, dark clouds were beginning to move in. We got up to the Gletscherstube about 2:30, half an hour ahead of what the sign had said, but half an hour longer than the woman at the tourist information office had said. We went out toward the overlook that had been recommended, but didn’t go all the way, because the “15 minutes” on the sign pointing the way to it was becoming closer to half an hour. So we stopped, in view of the glacier, and had some dried beef sandwiches. Down below us, walking toward the glacier, were groups of boy scouts and girl scouts. As we finished eating, we heard thunder in the distance, then, as we headed back towards the Gletscherstube, we felt raindrops. It didn’t rain heavily, however, and we got to the tunnel, following the boy scouts and ahead of the girl scouts, before getting soaked.

The tunnel was lighted, as people we had met on the trail had assured us, but minimally. Since it had many deep puddles on the floor, with some large rocks as stepping stones, Lonely Planet’s recommendation of bringing a flashlight was a good idea, but, unfortunately, we didn’t have one on hand. Of course, the boy scouts were making loud noises as they went through. About halfway through there was a side niche, lit, with a shrine to the Blessed Virgin. I had somehow gotten the impression from Lonely Planet that it would take ninety minutes to traverse this tunnel. It actually only took about fifteen. When we got out the other side, it was not raining, but there was the occasional roar of thunder in the distance. All in all, getting back from Gletscherstube to Fiescheralp took only an hour, compared to the two hours it had taken the long way around. The woman at the information office must have assumed that we would take the short and easy route, through the tunnel.

We got back down to Fiesch, after deciding that we had time to take the train to Moerel and from there to take the cable car up to Riederalp, which we did.

Riederalp is a cute mountain resort village (with a golf course, of all things). We were there principally to take Mary Joy’s picture under a sign that said “Riederalp,” but that proved hard to do, since people who are in Riederalp apparently know that they’re in Riederalp and don’t need to be reminded of it by signs. Eventually, we found a couple of somewhat useable signs and took the pictures, then we walked around a little and finally had something to drink while we sat at a terrace restaurant and read the International Herald Tribune. When we took the cable car down to Moerel, it had started to rain a little, and as we ran for shelter in the railroad station, the rain started to come down in torrents. But, again, by the time we had taken the train back to Brig, the rain had ended. We had dinner at Channa again, both of us taking a salad with grilled shrimp. We liked the shrimp, but as for the salad, it occurred to me that the most important difference between Germans (including German-speaking Swiss) and Italians is that when Italians think of salad dressing, they think of olive oil, while when Germans think of salad dressing, they think of vinegar.

That evening there was a performance on the town square by a group of three accordionists. This was not the stereotypical Swiss accordion group—think guys in their early twenties wearing tank-tops, shorts and flip-flops.

Stockalperschloss

The most important historical building in Brig, up the hill from downtown, is the Stockalperschloss--"Stockalper's Castle"--a large mansion with onion-bulbed towers, built in the seventeenth century by Kaspar Jodok von Stockalper, a powerful merchant who tried to control trade over the Simplon Pass (just south of here) to and from Italy. It has a large courtyard in the center, which last evening was the scene of a wedding. We happened to come upon it while a brass band was playing there for the bride and groom!

The reason we were there is because for our four days in Brig we have been staying right next door, at the Oberes Wegenerhaus, Gaestehaus St. Ursula, which is an eighteenth-century merchant's mansion, turned into a combination old-nuns' home, old-people's home and B&B, run by the Ursuline sisters. Although some of the correspondence involved in setting things up was in German, it wasn't too difficult. We like it, even the Swiss music on the radio at breakfast, which brings Mary Joy fond memories of growing up in Monroe.

Night in Brig

Where we are staying in Brig is nice (Mary Joy obsesses about denting the beautiful wood floor in our room), but there is no air conditioning, so when it’s as warm as it is, we have to keep the windows open at night. The street we face on doesn’t have much traffic, but it is cobblestoned and with the old buildings close in it’s like an echo chamber. When a car does come down the street, it sounds like a freight train and when a group of loud people walks down shouting at 3:15 in the morning, you don’t sleep through it.

Pretty quickly, you realize that instead of the standard Westminster chime, the local church’s bells are playing the Lourdes Hymn:

5:15: “Immaculate Mary”
5:30: “Immaculate Mary, your praises we sing.”
5:45: “Immaculate Mary, your praises we sing. You reign now in splendor”
6:00: “Immaculate Mary, your praises we sing. You reign now in splendor with Jesus our . . .” Pause. “King, king, king, king, king, king.” No Aves.

Matterhorn

I’ve gone back and added some pictures to earlier postings.

This morning (Thursday, July 1st) we caught the 8:28 train to Visp, and from there we took a train to Zermatt, arriving a little before ten. From the plaza in front of the station you can look up and see Switzerland’s most famous natural monument. We crossed the river and went up to Sunegga (2288 meters, around 7600 feet) in an underground funicular. From there, we had our own gondola car up to Blauherd (2571 meters, about 8300 feet). Then, we took the cable car to Rothorn (3103 meters, 10,180 feet).

The Matterhorn must be very accustomed to having its picture taken. Certainly, I added my share to those millions of photos, as Sunegga, Blauherd and Rothorn all provided the mountain with opportunities to pose.

Eva and Andreas had suggested going to Fluhalp, where they had had a room. It is also known for its restaurant. Rick Steves suggested walking there from Blauherd. The woman at the tourist information office suggested walking down from Rothorn. Having digested all these suggestions by the time we arrived at Rothorn, we decided that we didn’t feel much like walking at that altitude, especially walking down about 500 meters. Going from Blauherd (2571) to Stellisee (2537) to Fluhalp (2616) seemed more within our range of ambitions. So we took the cable car back down to Blauherd and started our walk from there. It was a very nice walk, first through moss-covered boulders to the pretty little glacial lake, Stellisee. Near its outlet some architecture students had built an odd-looking structure, made of rounded wooden slats. You could enter it and go up, keeping in the same direction, and eventually, after going around twice, you would end up back down at the place you had begun. From Stellisee we walked up a slate-strewn hillside to Fluhalp, a large wooden building with red shutters and a deck terrace. It was a restaurant-hotel, and we sat on the deck and had a very nice lunch. I had a bacon and vinegar salad, but with all sorts of things added to the lettuce, including chicken pieces and little mushrooms. Mary Joy had mountain trout (perhaps caught in the Stellisee) in meuniere sauce, with roesti (a Swiss way of cooking potatoes, similar to hash browns).

We decided to go back down by the “Murmelweg,” or “Marmot Trail,” a route celebrating the principal inhabitant of these heights, a rodent somewhat similar to a groundhog. Basically, it would go down to Sunegga, without passing through Blauherd. Unlike the other trails there, this one was marked in yellow on the trail signs, indicating only a “Wanderweg” (“Hiking Trail”), instead of the white-red-white that shows a “Bergwanderweg” (“Mountain Hiking Trail”). In other words, the Marmot Trail was supposed to be the sort of trail suitable for wimps and grannies (non-Swiss grannies, that is—Swiss grannies have a lifetime of experience on near-perpendicular trails). We were feeling that we had met enough challenges recently and were due for nothing more than a pleasant walk.

It appears that the sole basis of distinction between a Wanderweg and a Bergwanderweg is steepness, because if anything else were taken into account, the Marmot Trail would be a champion Bergwanderweg. Though it avoided steep grades by the use of many, many switchbacks, on a lot of them the footing was none too sure. In addition, there is a long stretch where the trail is very narrow—not much more than a foot wide, with a steep drop-off to the left. But we got down to Sunegga, cheered by the wooden statues of marmots (and their predators and annoyers) along the way.

At Sunegga, we sat on the deck and I had a beer, while Mary Joy had a Rivella. Rivella is a type of Swiss soda pop, sort of like an orange Fanta, but, we are assured by the label, containing milk serum.

We went back down the funicular and walked around a little in the commercial frenzy of downtown Zermatt. Zermatt has no gasoline-powered vehicles, but there are millions of electric-powered little trucks, buses and taxis, whose drivers appear to be overcome by the urge to more than make up for the lack of gasoline-powered dangers to pedestrians. We ran into one of Zermatt’s best-known tourist attractions: goatherds walking their goats down the main street of town.

We escaped on the 5:13 train and went immediately to dinner at an Italian restaurant called Channa. It had an open interior courtyard, with no smoking (unlike the tables out front of a Swiss restaurant). We didn’t have much (Mary Joy had a salad, while I had a Margherita pizza), but it was good.

On our way back to our room, Mary Joy asked me to wait for her (I wouldn’t accompany her) while she went up the next street to see if the big church there was open. Half an hour later, I went up in search of her. The church door was locked and no Mary Joy in sight. I ran back to our guesthouse to see if she had gotten back there somehow, and I saw her up the street, talking with a woman. The woman turned out to have the key to the church, as well as to the chapel before which they were now standing. Well, addictions are addictions.

Lugano, the Centovalli and Brig

The Montarina is an old, pink villa, set in a forest of palm trees, that has been turned into a hostel. The next-door building is the hotel, where the non-dormitory rooms are. Ours was simple but nice, and best of all, had air conditioning! Wi-fi was available in the lobby, but if you had your own ethernet cable, as I did, you could connect in your room. There was a nice swimming pool, which we didn’t use, as well as an outdoor breakfast “room” (which we also didn’t use) with nicely varnished picnic tables.

Both the Montarina and the railway station are on a hill overlooking downtown Lugano. To get down the hill, you take a funicular from the station (1.10 francs—about a dollar—unless you have a Swiss Pass, in which case it’s free). We went down, asking the woman who went down with us where we could find a supermarket, she said that Manor was just around the corner, but that it was closed, like practically every store in the city, for the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul. We discovered that this was true not only of stores, but of many restaurants as well. Eventually, after following Rick Steves’s walking tour, we had salad and a pizza (both good) at Tango, a restaurant with one side on the main square (Piazza di la Riforma) and another terrace on a small square in back. While we were there, it started first to thunder, then to rain, but that soon ended, except for occasional sprinkles.

Lugano is a pleasant city with a nice park on the lakefront, besides being the second-most-important banking center in Switzerland, after Zurich.

The next morning (Wednesday, June 30th), we took the funicular down and went to Manor, which is a gigantic department store, with a gigantic supermarket in its basement. Mary Joy was in seventh heaven down there. We got some food for breakfast and lunch and had a coffee. Then we went to the lakeshore and ate our croissants and drank our yogurt drinks on a park bench.

We went back up to the hotel, finished packing, checked out, and for about half an hour sat in the sun at a picnic table while Mary Joy wrote post cards and I read last Monday’s International Herald Tribune newspaper. Then we went down and caught the 10:30 train to Giabiasco, where we caught the 11:04 to Locarno, where we walked over to the private FART railway station (no jokes, please!), where we caught the 11:37 Centovalli Panoramic train to Domodossola, Italy. We actually had to pay 2 francs apiece for this ride, as a supplement because of the panorama windows.

The Centovalli (hundred valleys) is a long valley with many side valleys. The route, though with no to-die-for views, was much more interesting and pleasant than the previous day’s bus ride. About halfway through, we crossed the border into Italy. In Domodossola, we caught the Milan-Geneva train and rode it back into Switzerland, through the tunnel under the Simplon Pass, and got off almost immediately, in Brig.

We have been through Brig many times, but have gotten off of trains there only for the purpose of getting onto other trains. Brig is the place where the Simplon route over the Alps crosses the broad, deep valley of the Rhone River, which flows from the Rhone Glacier west and south, then curves northwest to flow into Lake Geneva. Brig is on the most natural route from Milan to Geneva and Lyon, and now, with the Loetschberg Tunnel, is on the direct rail line from Milan to Interlaken (which is why we’ve been through here so often in the past), Bern, Basel and Frankfurt. We are here now because, as a rail junction, it gives us a great deal of flexibility for day trips by train, depending on the weather and other circumstances—we don’t want to go to Zermatt when the Matterhorn is covered by clouds. It is a very pleasant town of 19,000, with an interesting old town,where we're staying.

We had a good dinner (Mary Joy was very pleased with her beef and vinaigrette dish) at the Restaurant Angleterre.

The Bernina Express

Tuesday morning, June 29th, we had breakfast at the hotel, checked out and crossed the street to the railroad station. The 9:52 Bernina Express train arrived, a few minutes late, and we went looking for our car, car 13: 17, 16, 15, 14, 11! No 13! I boarded car 11 and was met by a pleasant conductor, who asked if I had a reservation. Yes, I said, but for car 13, and I couldn’t find it. She got off the train, looked at the next car, and came back smiling. No problem. We could stay in this car. So we went to our seats, 45 and 46, and they were already occupied. However, the older couple there asked if we had a reservation, and moved across the aisle when we said that we did. Then, an announcement came over the intercom that this was a special train, with reserved seats and that anyone without reservations should wait for the regional train. So the other couple quickly got off.

The Bernina Express train has large picture windows (in first class they are panorama windows, curving up over), an intercom narration in German and English as to passing sights, and a booklet with maps and descriptions. The train part of the trip ends in Tirano, Italy, where you then pick up a bus back into Switzerland, to Lugano. Both legs are covered by our Swiss Saver Pass, but we had to buy reservations, separately, for each. I had paid for and printed out a reservation for the train online from home, but all I could get for the bus was a confirmation number, which I had used to buy the reservation card itself at the railroad station in Interlaken.

The route, with wonderful scenery, takes you up to the Bernina Pass, the highest non-tunnel crossing in Europe (2253 meters or 7391 feet) and the border between the Danube and Adriatic watersheds, as well as between the Romansh-speaking Engadine and the Italian-speaking Poschiavo Valley. Then there is a precipitous drop, involving many switchbacks, to the town of Poschiavo (1014 meters or around 5300 feet). Farther on is the most famous engineering marvel of this rail line, the Brusio Viaduct, where the train goes in a complete circle—a long enough train could theoretically pass under itself! Our enjoyment of the trip was marred a little by the fact that a group of young Germans in our car was making so much noise that it was sometimes difficult to hear the narration.

A little after noon we crossed the Italian border and arrived in Tirano, on the Adda River in Italy’s wine-producing Valtellina Valley, which had been part of the Graubuenden (and thus of Switzerland) until Napoleon had taken it away in 1797. We had more than two hours until the bus left, so we took our luggage to a nearby restaurant, Ristorante-Pizzeria Sale e Pepe, and had lunch on the terrace, next to a table of nine Japanese. It was indeed “Sunny Italy”: all the temperature readouts we saw were either 34 or 35 degrees Celsius (93 to 95 Fahrenheit). I scouted out the restaurant WC. There was one room marked “Toilette,” with two cabinets. I went to the one on the left: it was a “Turkish” toilet with no bowl. You had to squat over a facility set in the floor. Also, there was no lock on the door. As I came out, though, I saw that the other cabinet had a bowl toilet and could be locked, so I went back and told Mary Joy.

We tried to do a little walk into the center of town, but in that heat, loaded down as we were, we didn’t get very far, but went back to the fountain in the piazza before the station. I sat there with the luggage, while Mary Joy went off to see what she could see. Every so often the fountain would go on, spraying me a little in the back, but in that heat I didn’t mind it.

Then one of the Japanese came by, waving a wallet and asking if it were mine. Indeed it was. I had left it at the restaurant. All there was in it was some walking-around money and a card with my parents’ phone number. I carry anything really important (passport, credit cards, plane tickets, large amounts of cash) in a money belt under my clothes. That had saved us a lot of trouble when we ran into a gang of pickpockets at the bus station in Torremolinos, Spain in 2005.

I had just checked the bus reservation card to make sure of the time of departure. Now I decided to take it out to keep in my pocket until we left. It wasn’t in either pocket of my money belt. Not in my wallet or pockets. Not in my daypack. I started to panic. When Mary Joy got back, I ran back to the restaurant and asked if they’d found it. No.

Going back to the fountain, I felt the card in my underwear or shirt. I had been distracted when last putting it back in the money belt, and it hadn’t gotten in somehow.

So we went to the bus, a Swiss Post-Bus marked “Bernina Express.” When we got on, we discovered that our reserved seats were on the far rear bench, in the right corner (scenery would mostly be on the left side of the bus). At least, there was no one assigned to the middle seat of the five. The last row had only one air-conditioning vent, which was inadequate, though much better than nothing. The first hour of the 2½-hour trip was a boring drive down the Adda, through industrial villages overlooked by vineyarded hillsides. When we got to Lake Como, the drive along the north shore was somewhat scenic, but not exciting. The excitement came when we left the lakeshore and headed up the hillside, with the bus honking loudly as it handled narrow hairpin turns. We then headed west, reaching the north shore of Lake Lugano. We drove through the narrow, winding streets of old lakeshore towns, often honking away, then reached the Swiss border and were waved through by customs. Suddenly, the road was wider.

We arrived at Lugano a little after 5:00 and walked up the hill behind the train station to our hotel, the Montarina.