Switzerland--The Berner Oberland

We have just returned home from our European adventure, following an amazingly beautiful week in Switzerland (including a quick visit to France, via Lake Geneva/Lac Léman) and 24 hours of flights, customs, and airport delays. For ten days we were without free internet access, but our time was packed with hiking and sky-high scenery and little time for logging our travels. We shall attempt to catch up here, as long as jetlag and the putrid odor of dirty laundry will allow.

Again, we journeyed by train. The Swiss rail pass is a great deal for families (kids ride free--as they do on point-to-point tickets within Germany), and the flexibility to jump on any train or other public transportation at any time makes traveling a breeze. (Well, except for finding seats on packed trains, or hauling one's luggage--and that of sweet little traveling companions--on and off the trains to make the next connection.) Swiss train travel--in August, at any rate--meant the opportunity to sit among an exciting mix of international vacationers. Upon boarding our connection in Zurich, we saw an adorable Hasidic boy sporting blond ear curls and otherwise short-cropped hair, women in full black burkas or multi-colored saris, and men in super-sized turbans. The Berner-Oberland has become an extremely popular vacation spot for jet-setters (in this case, rail setters?) from India and the Middle East, as well as Europeans willing to pay the outrageous Swiss prices.

So, while the Swiss rail pass was a great deal, other costs in that beautiful country make Germany seem inexpensive. E.g., in Interlaken, if costs over $12 for a McD's value meal. (Honestly--we were just looking!) But Cam made the definitive comparison: the Starbucks Frappuccino. In the U.S., this beverage runs about $3.50; in Germany, it is 4 Euros (about $6); in Switzerland, it is 9 Francs (about $9)! (So what will it be tonight: dinner, or a cup of coffee??) Actually, a full-service dinner out would have run at least $125 for our entourage, so we felt very fortunate to have a small fridge and microwave in our B&B, and to be right next to a grocery store. Had it not been for the lure of Swiss chocolates, we might have managed to eat affordably.

Okay, enough about prices. The beauty of the Alps really takes one's breath away. We were astonished at how clean and unspoiled such an over-visited place can be. In addition, hiking along an alpine meadow, reveling in the colorful wildflowers, hearing only the murmur of cowbells and goatbells in the distance (and breathing in the intoxicating odors of said music-makers) can do truly magical things to a person. For one thing, my family somehow got me to dangle by a thread thousands of feet above the valley in a gondola (or cable car, or tram, or whatever the h*ck they are called)--not just once, but five times. They also convinced me to ride a rickety-sounding old train that creaks precariously along a narrow mountain cliff thousands of feet above the valley floor (called, I think, a cogwheel train).

(At over 7,000 feet, we had forgotten to dress for the weather!
Luckily, a mountain blocked the wind for most of our hike.)

Disappointingly, our camera could not capture the true beauty and grandeur of the Alpen landscape. At times, we gazed down these scenic overlooks, sometimes dropping thousands of feet to the valley below, and enthusiastically snapped photos to document our bravery--or stupidity--but the camera flattened out any depth perspective. (Of course, dropping one's camera down a 2,000-meter scenic overlook doesn't help much, either....)

Because of the lack of photos of me on this blog, some of our friends have suspicions that I did not actually go to Europe this summer. My family, however, managed to snap this shot of me enjoying one of the favorite sports of the Berner Oberland:

During our time in Switzerland, we made an overnight side trip via the Golden Pass train to Montreux and Lausanne on Lake Geneva (locally called Lac Léman). On a sunny day, the lakeside stroll near Montreux was serenely beautiful. We took a long walk (longer than the guidebook said!) to the fascinating Medieval castle Château de Chillon, parts of it up to 1,000 years old, where we saw Lord Byron's name carved on a dungeon pillar. (Byron made the castle famous with his poem The Prisoner of Chillon, about the Genevois monk and politician François Bonivard, who was imprisoned there from 1530 to 1536.)

A resort town, Montreux has been a home to many famous persons over the years: Tchaikovsky, Nabokov, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Stravinsky, even Bill Gates. Former Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury also made Montreux home for himself and his recording studio.
Below, professed Queen fans pose next to his statue:

People like riding all kinds of watercraft in Lake Geneva/Lac Léman. We took a boat (free with our Swiss rail pass) across the lake to Evian, France. Less than forty-five minutes before our 1:30 pm boarding, we realized we had left our passports in Cam's heavy backpack, stored at the hotel office. Cam attempted to dash from the lakeside Ouchy district of Lausanne to our hotel in old town (vieille ville) Lausanne, a distance of about 3/4 mile--steeply uphill--to try to make it to the hotel before the office closed for lunch at 1 pm, and back to Ouchy before our boat would depart. (We had taken a bus to the Ouchy district and only meandered through vieille ville, so Cam didn't really know the route from Ouchy.) We thought it impossible, but we could almost hear the climactic music from a heroic scene in a movie as he came sprinting into sight just 5 minutes before boarding time.

With the summer Olympics slated to begin upon our arrival home, we could not miss a visit to The Olympic Park and Museum in Lausanne. (Lausanne, dubbed "The Olympic Capital," has been home to the International Olympic Committee since 1915.) The park has a stunning array of interesting sculptures, and the museum is so full of Olympic history and information that we had time to view only a small fraction of it. (Unfortunately, because of its late opening hour, we also ran out of time to see what promised to be a fascinating art museum in vieille ville, the Collection de l'Art Brut, a museum of art by untrained artists, many labeled criminal or insane.)

We felt dwarfed by the record-setting high jump bar. Hard to believe a human being can do this!

At the end of our trip to Lake Geneva, and after staying a bit too long at the Olympic Museum, Cam was again challenged to make a heroic sprint from the train station to our hotel to retrieve his heavy pack (laden with many of our clothes and a laptop) and return in time to take the last train with reasonably short connections back to Interlaken. Again, we thought the timeframe made this impossible; but even Rocky could not have faced more enthusiastic cheers when he bolted into the station just before departure. (Thank goodness that run from the hotel was all downhill!)