Sarly goes to Switzerland

I'm on a Swiss train eating Swiss chocolate and admiring Swiss Alps. We are now departing this land of paradox: independent yet structured, wild yet manicured, fierce yet serene. The people, the culture, the government, the infrastructure - all of it binds my fascination to these mountains. Highways are stuck to the side of mountains as if with super glue; mere ledges against sheer rock faces. Cable cars float up at impossible angles, ferrying tourists (and cows) to niche villages built into alpine slopes. Helicopters double as supply wagons and construction vehicles while trains glide between every city with impossible punctuality. I could go on and on about this fascinating culture where apprenticeships abound and managers are home-grown from the ranks of everyday workers, where you are fined 15% of your annual income for a speeding ticket but are paid 80% of your income in unemployment benefits if you quit your job. Rarely is the system abused, though; the Swiss just work. Hard.

Our tour began in Basel, north of the Alps against the Rhine where it cuts between Germany and Switzerland. David, an old family friend from the States and our next host, met us at the train station and took us to his trim apartment near Barfussaplatz. Roughly translated, Barfussaplatz means "barefoot plaza," and is named after the barefoot monks that once resided in the nearby Münster Cathedral, now transformed into a Reformed church. David took us through old town, with its bright wooden shutters and peaked roofs, and along the Rhine, where we saw the heads of swimmers bobbing alongside tethered  clothing bags as they floated down the swift moving, mineral-clouded waters. If we'd had an extra day, we would have taken the popular plunge ourselves, but as it was, the Alps ended up being wet enough to suffice.

On Monday we raced to the Basel train station and snagged the morning ride to Thun: a small city in the Alps nestled at the end of a long lake named Thunersee (original, I know). But there was a lot to see on Thunersee, so we boarded a steamboat with a real paddle wheel and zigzagged across the lake on our way to Interlaken (literally, between the lakes). For all you boaters out there: my admiration for the Swiss began on this ride as I watched the captain dock the boat by jiggling and reversing the paddle wheels until the whole steamer feathered up beside her pilings.

The clouds were low and obscured the mountain peaks, but the lake shores were clear and we could easily see toy villages nestled on green slopes with toy trains running between them. It was all real, of course, but the sheer size of the surrounding terrain reduced everything to toy-sized caricatures. Once we disembarked in Interlaken, the rain chased us around town as we searched for a bowl of hot soup. If München was full of Turks, Interlaken is full of Indians. Hunger got the best of us and we settled for spicy curry at the Taj Majal, a restaurant decorated with colored Christmas lights and cheap posters. Later, our hotel manager (an Englishman and my informant of Swiss culture) explained that many of the most famous Bollywood films are made in Switzerland, so much so that the Indians rival the Chinese as the number one spenders in Switzerland.

We'd planned on spending a single night at the Mittaghorn hotel in Gimmelwald, a nose-bleed of a village with seventy people that requires a train, a bus, and a cable car to reach. But the quaint scene and our beautifully rustic room stole our hearts and we hastily booked a second night, despite the foggy weather and obscured views. I don't know how to begin describing our hiking exploits. Go watch Heidi and combine it with Lord of the Rings, and you might get the idea. Carly asked, as we tucked into our twin beds with cows bells ringing in the street below us, how I was going to sum up our eight-hour day in the mountains. "Some descriptions, I guess," I said. Ha! Such descriptions have taken books. But...

The near-vertical pastures were alive with wild flowers; small heads of yellow, white, purple, blue, and red  hung heavy with mist and dripped into the tangle of grass beneath. Brooks tumbled down every crease of the earth's mantle; waterfalls launched off every step and dropped from impossible heights. Some streams fell so far that they turned completely to mist before reforming on the rocks below. The cloud cover forced us to notice the details instead of the overwhelming panoramic views seen on postcards, but looking across the valleys we lost all perspective anyway and felt almost a giddy sense of vertigo.  The mists added an ominous air as they swirled to reveal strange new rock faces and jutting, stern shoulders. Carly reviewed several pictures and huffed. "These pictures just look like dumb rocks. There is just no way to capture the perspective." And it's true. You really have to be there to understand.

We followed a river up to its source: a large canyon with no fewer than a dozen waterfalls and slabs of glacial snow. Years of melted avalanches had left piles of black rock behind, so the whole scene felt mysterious and prehistoric. Continuing upwards, we heard the deep tones of cow bells long before we caught up to them in the mist: the locals, taking their small herds up to the high pastures for the summer. Consequently, the trail was slippery, muddy, and loaded with liquified grass. By the time we cleared the tree line and zig-zagged up an endless slope, we were more than ready for the hot meal that awaited us at Rotstokhütte, a solitary cabin manned by a solitary cook. Best. Food. Ever.

We ate dinner back in our village, hiking down trails so steep that at times we seemed to be headed for a precipice. In 'downtown' Gimmelwald (a hundred meters down mountain from our hotel) we snuggled into a basement restaurant and enjoyed food service from Englishmen that reminded us of hobbits. On the way home, we mutually decided that four nights in Switzerland was not nearly enough.

I must come back here. For the sake of my soul.