Germany has lakes and mountains, too

On Sunday we headed out of Munich with some friends to do a little hiking. The drive there took us past some beautiful scenery including green pastures and clear, aqua-colored lakes. It was not long until snow-capped peaks could be seen in the distance. It was almost as if we were back in Switzerland. The most notable difference was perhaps that along the hiking trails here you greet others with "Servus" or "Gruß Gott" rather than "Grüetzi".

We started at the bottom of the Herzogstand and hiked for 2.5 hours up. We were rewarded with sweeping views of the Walchensee and a whole lot of mountains. At the top we dined at a mountain hut restaurant. The local food offerings varied a tiny bit from that which you would find in a Swiss mountain hut. From the vegetarian perspective, I got to eat Käsespätzle with onions rather than Rösti. And the salad did not come swimming in a foot-deep pool of dressing. And naturally, the beer was much better. I'm sure the non-vegetarian offerings were somewhat different too... at least I can say that I'd never before seen this gelatinized meat monstrosity that our German friend proudly ordered:


After lunch we rode the gondola back down to the parking lot.

What this blog needs is MORE COWBELL

Having spent two years in Switzerland, I know exactly where to find such things.


More cowbell from zurika on Vimeo.

Slushy spring skiing

We popped down to Austria for a final ski trip of the season yesterday. It's so easy to do this that I'm having a hard time remembering that Austria is, in fact, another country. You'd think after two years in Switzerland I'd be over the novelty of popping into another country for a day trip, but you'd be wrong. What can I say? I'm easily impressed.

The time change meant we got even less precious sleep than we normally would have, but on the plus side now we can be happy that all that daylight is no longer going to waste. And, we're finally back to our normal 6-hour time difference from the east coast of the US. Whew.

We went to the irrsinnig gross ski area called SkiWelt Wilder Kaiser Brixental, which was indeed quite sizable. The skiing was pretty good - slushy, to be sure, but that slush allowed me to ski the red slopes like a rock star, granting me the opportunity to think that my skiing skills have actually improved in the past couple seasons. The sun was brutal and relentless (some people might have called it 'pleasant' or even 'beautiful'), and we probably could have spent most of the day skiing in little more than t-shirts.

Forgot to bring the camera this time, but I'll add a photo off of the old camera phone as soon as I can figure out how to magically beam it to the computer. Or you can just get the general idea from any other photo I've taken skiing.

Austrian snow therapy

We would be awfully bummed about moving away from Switzerland in the middle of ski-season... if we hadn't moved to Munich. The oh-so-conveniently-located Austrian Alps are close enough for easy day-trip skiing. Unfortunately this season hasn't been as snowy as we would like, but the Austrians seem to be pretty good at filling in the gaps with man-made snow.

There seem to be dozens of resorts to choose from. In January we hit Kaltenbach, and just yesterday we were in Alpbachtal. Kaltenbach had a nice variety of runs, and our enjoyment was greatly enhanced by a covey of skiing witches. Alpbachtal was a little short on the blue (easy) slopes, but I managed to stay entertained for the entire day (and conditions were even good enough for me to successfully navigate a couple red runs). We also enjoyed riding the charmingly antique single-chair lift.

While lift tickets seem to have comparable prices in Austria and Switzerland, equipment rental is noticeably cheaper in Austria (skiing pro that I am, naturally I own my own, but Scott is still renting until he finds a snowboard he can fall in love with that doesn't have a wild west theme painted on it). From what I've seen, Switzerland has more ski areas that are easily reachable by train than Austria does. We've heard that Germany's Garmisch is a quick and easy train ride away, but haven't had the chance to try it out yet.

Glacier Melt

Last Sunday afternoon we headed down from Murren and went to visit the Trummelbach Falls. This is a series of waterfalls roaring through a mountain, runoff from the melting glaciers of the Eiger, Monch, and Jungfrau. It is truly spectacular. The dim lighting combined with our puny little camera made it impossible to capture even a hint of how beautiful the various interior falls were.

Trummelbach Falls are reachable via bus (7 minutes) from Lauterbrunnen, and admission is CHF 12 (definitely worth it, despite what the disgruntled German tourists in front of us in line may have thought when they found out the ticket price).



Kind of reminded me of Ruby Falls. OK, not really.

Bernese Oberland, oh how I will miss you

And now for a more beautiful side of Switzerland... this weekend found us back in one of our favorite destinations, Murren, where we stayed at the Hotel Eiger. We paid a bit extra for a ‘superior’ room, which was superior, I imagine, only in the fact that it came attached to a balcony with a spectacular view of said Eiger (the room itself was fine, but unremarkable). The hotel’s staff was exceedingly friendly and helpful, and we much enjoyed our stay.

Murren is so idyllic it almost makes me weep. There are no cars in this little 400-person village nestled cozily into the side of an Alp, and the only way to arrive is via one of two big ski gondolas. We spent Saturday afternoon wandering around the village and taking pictures, with a brief stop at Coop (yes, even in this remotest of outposts there is a Coop) to stock up on happy hour essentials (i.e., beer and snacks). Then it was back to the hotel to sit on our balcony, consume our consumables, and soak in the view. Next we visited the hotel pool, which was full of various jets and bubbly things to massage and stimulate various parts of your body, and also had a panoramic mountain view. We also popped into the sauna, but given my aversion to heat, my stay didn’t last long.

We watched sunset from the balcony, then headed down to the hotel restaurant for dinner (which wasn’t bad, but I would not recommend the vegetarian cutlet thingies). The next morning we went out for a hike (after a lovely hotel breakfast and another dip in the pool).

We decided that although it’s not quite as perfect as it is during the winter, Murren in the summer is pretty gosh darn lovely, too. More summer Murren pictures here.

While we did head to the Swiss Alps this weekend...

...unfortunately we completely missed this event (so you can stop searching for us in the pictures already).

Fabulous news for Switzerland's glaciers

My fellow environmentalists will surely join me in celebrating this major breakthrough today: funding has been secured for extensive research into captive glacier breeding experiments. The research will take place in Alaska and will be the first of its kind. We can only hope it will lead to the glacier repopulation that is so desperately needed in this part of the world, especially if we want to keep skiing. You can read more here.

I just have one question: how do you think they tell the girl glaciers apart from the boy glaciers?

Skiing in Davos – a post for posterity

Sunday morning we woke up hideously early and hauled our ski gear to the train station for a day in Davos. On the way there my husband joked that someday we would tell our kids about this last day of skiing ever before global warming made it a thing of the past. So I figured I better write about it so we’d be able to remember.

We took the train to Davos Dorf (don’t you just love the word Dorf?) and then a short bus to the Parsennbahn, which brought us up to a lovely cluster of blue slopes at 2600 meters.

At least it was a pretty good ski day. The snow was the best we’ve skied on all season (and would actually have been some of the best skiing I’d done in my life prior to last year’s fabulous Swiss ski wonderland). Plus it was a beautiful, sunny day, without a cloud in the sky. The slopes were somewhat crowded, which was to be expected on a Sunday, but even so the lift lines were for the most part tolerable.

The bummer is that neither of us feels like we’ve improved at all this year. Not the best way to end a ski career. I guess we’ll just have to cross our fingers and hope for some snow for next year after all...

Sledding down the Alps

If there's one thing the Swiss do right, it's sledding. OK, they actually do several things right (melted cheese, dark chocolate, public transportation, yodeling...), but sledding is one of the most fun. It's a completely different activity here than the sledding I grew up with in the US, which consisted of trudging up a small hill dragging a plastic disc and then flying down said hill on said disk, landing in an uncomfortably cold pile of icy snow only to brush off and trudge back up the hill.

In this country, sledding (or sledging, as they seem to think it is called in English) is much longer on the downhill, and much less strenuous on the uphill. A more satisfying experience all around. Here's how it usually works:

(1) You spend around CHF 10 on renting a quaintly old-fashioned-looking wooden sled (or sledge, if you speak that wonky British version of this language);
(2) You get into a big ski gondola or other mass-uphill-transit device and ride to the top of an Alp;
(3) You get on your sled(ge) and ride it down said Alp along a narrow groomed path, dragging your feet and leaning your body to and fro in vain attempts to control the trajectory of your vehicle;
(4) Assuming you managed to make it to the bottom without losing consciousness or a limb, repeat steps 2-3 until it's time to start the apres-ski (apres-sled?) part of the day.

You've never seen grown-ups laugh, shriek, and tumble around as much as our merry band of 30-something lawyers, engineers, financial analysts, and journalists did during our last couple days in the Bernese Oberland. Even though we had gone sledding in Switzerland a couple times before, we weren't prepared for the steep icy bits we encountered on the first day in Grindelwald. Luckily there were a couple of old Swiss ladies walking nearby who instructed us on the proper method of breaking on such hills (grab the front of the sled and pull up, while gritting teeth and trying not to pee pants).

The lower parts of the runs were closed (due to inadequate snow), but we still got to sled for over an hour at a time, down 10-15 kilometer trails. We came home a little banged up and bruised here and there (who knew that sled runs had moguls?), but at least we got to have some good old-fashioned winter fun in the Alps.

Planning ahead gets you nowhere

So my first attempt at premeditated week-long skiing was not particularly successful. We're back from Grindelwald, two days early. I'll let this article in SwissInfo explain why:

The month of January is set to be the warmest on record in Switzerland despite the cold snap at the end of the month, according to the national weather service. [...] This development coupled with little snowfall, has wreaked havoc with the ski industry, with many low-lying resorts unable to open for business.

We did manage to get in a little skiing at the beginning thanks to last week's snowfall, but the oppressive sun showed no mercy, making the conditions worse and worse each day. We entertained ourselves with sledding for a couple days before giving up on more snow coming to save the week.

My brother is still here for two more days, so we're trying to figure out some non-snow-oriented entertainment to round out his Swiss vacation.

The Bernese Oberland – the reason why I fell in love with Switzerland in the first place

Switzerland won my heart over in January 2005, on a trip we planned at the last minute for the long weekend of Three Kings Day (I was working in Italy, where we actually got the day off of work for it). My husband and I were both tired and stressed, but we managed to find a good hotel deal in Interlaken, so with little additional research we hopped on a train.

We spent the next four days in a snowy, Alpy wonderland that filled us with absolute joy just to be there. We bought regional transportation passes and spent the entire time exploring the cluster of tiny Alpine villages known as the Bernese Oberland. We traveled on cog-wheel trains, gondolas, and funiculars to the little towns, admiring the views and rejoicing in the snow. We ate fondue in adorable, rustic taverns, and drank beer in flimsy, busy tepee ski bars. We trudged around in our winter clothing that hadn’t been used in a long, long time. The trip was dubbed “best vacation ever” about 30 minutes after arriving, and held true to that title the entire time we were there.

Since moving to Switzerland, we have been back to the Bernese Oberland several times, but really not enough given how much we love it. I suppose everything loses a little bit of appeal when it becomes more accessible. Nonetheless, I couldn’t be more thrilled that we are spending the next week there, in an apartment we rented with some friends and my brother. Given how much snow Switzerland has gotten in the past couple days, I’m downright giddy for this trip to begin. It’s all I can do to not shriek with joy and dance around like a maniac. See you in a week!

The running of the cows

This past weekend we enjoyed that quintessential Swiss experience, the cow festival. These are celebrated in small farming towns all over Switzerland at the end of summer, when the cows are brought down from their summer grazing spots in the mountains.

This particular fête désalpe (which as far as I can tell is French for de-alpification party) took place high above Lake Geneva in the small hill town of St-Cergue. We arrived at around 8.30am so as not to miss the first herd’s appearance. Its arrival was accompanied by the deafening clamor of 50 or so cow bells, some of which were as big as the heads of the cows wearing them. The lead cows and a couple of the others were decked out in headpieces made out of miniature pine trees and colorful crepe-paper flowers.

The herds continued to appear every 20 minutes or so and were led in a loop through the middle of town before disappearing. Between-herd entertainment was provided by a group of Alphorn players, a yodeling men’s choir, and a band playing traditional Swiss mountain music. We also kept ourselves busy sampling the culinary offerings of the festival booths – cheese tarts, curried chicken rice balls, homemade caramels and chocolates, tartiflette, and Glühwein.

The cows were surprisingly well-mannered (save a little shoving here and there) and didn’t seem to be bothered by the crowds of people gawking at them, even if the ones wearing headdresses didn’t look particularly amused. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for them a tiny little bit.

More pictures here, and whatever you do, don’t miss this video!

A little Tuesday afternoon entertainment

Now that I've finally figured out how to post videos, I feel obliged to keep my promise and share a clip of the greatest entertainer of all time (or at least the greatest entertainer in all of Zermatt on a particular Saturday night in May).



Marco sings Crocodile Rock, or something like it on Vimeo

Can you believe I actually had to DRAG my friend Alison into the bar to see this guy perform? (By the way, she's the one singing 'la la la' the loudest on the tape.)

Grindelwald, day two

Recap: we spent the weekend in and around Grindelwald, a small town in the area of the Swiss Alps know as the Bernese Oberland. Saturday we hiked, watched the Eiger crumble, and got attacked by goats.


Sunday we woke up to drizzle and some slowly-moving clouds. Determined to enjoy ourselves anyway, we hopped on the Firstbahn, a glorified ski lift which took us up past Bort and Schreckfeld to First (at 2,168 m). About halfway through the half-hour ride we went straight into a cloud, never to emerge again.

Once at the top, we admired what should have been the view and then set up camp in the restaurant. We bought a 9-franc deck of cards in the gift shop that helped us pass the time until the clouds finally dispersed. After oooohing and aaaaahing over the view, we made friends with some cows and hiked down to Bort and then took the lift back to Grindelwald.


With weekends like this, I’m beginning to think I will never get tired of Switzerland. More pictures here.

Alple Crumble - the video

Alple Crumble on Vimeo

Plus a free bonus kitty cat.

Warning: Crumbling Alp Ahead

Alternate title suggested by GenevaGal: Alple Crumble


Inspired by this Reuters article, we jetted (ok, trained) off to Grindelwald this weekend to see what all the fuss was about. It doesn’t take much of an excuse to get us into the Alps, especially when the weather is nice (for me, nice = anything but hot or torrential downpour). Plus, who can resist the draw of thawing permafrost?

After the 3-hour train ride from Zurich to Grindelwald, we had a quick lunch at Restaurant Rendez-vous (passable food with a great view) and then headed up to find the hostel referred to in the article. A short ski gondola ride and about 45 minutes of uphill hiking later, we started hearing the sounds of, well, crumbling.

The first couple times we scoured the rock face with our eyes, trying to figure out where the noise was coming from, to no avail. Finally we rounded a bend and reached a spot where you can actually see the rock slides. Although they looked like little more than pebbles off in the distance, the accompanying sounds made it clear that these were very, very big rocks tumbling down into the valley.

After resting and watching a couple of these rock slides, we pushed ahead another 20 minutes or so to reach the Berghaus Bäregg, which proved a lovely place to sit and have a snack while watching the Eiger crumbling away. The rock slides came intermittently; we saw maybe five or six of them within a half-hour period.

We headed back just in time to catch the last gondola ride back down to Grindelwald, and even survived a mountain goat attack along the way. We cleaned up at the hotel and then headed to Onkel Toms Hütte for some good pizza and great wine (the wine list was quite impressive).

Since the article didn’t give many specifics on how to find this Alple Crumble, here are the details for getting there for anyone who’d like to make the trip. But hurry – the crumbling is expected to stop as temperatures drop and the permafrost firms up again later this year. The easiest way to reach the Berghaus Bäregg is to first take the short aerial cableway (Luftseilbahn in German) from Grindelwald to Pfingstegg. From there, follow the hiking trail signs to Stieregg. The uphill hike takes around an hour and 20 minutes, and is pretty steep in parts, especially towards the end.

Information about the cableway and hiking trails can be obtained at the tourist information office near the Grindelwald train station, or at pretty much any hotel in town. We also found the Grindelwald Tourism Website to be helpful in booking a hotel for the trip.



See more pictures from this day here.

What else we did this weekend: conquer Mount Blanc

And by “conquer” I mean “ride the gondola up”. This was our second trip to over 3800 meters of elevation in two weeks, but unfortunately my body does not seem to have gotten any better at making the adjustment to a low-oxygen environment. At least this time we didn’t attempt any hiking (although sadly, there were no monks).





Snow in July is such an appealing sight that I'm trying to sell my husband on the idea of spending June through August in the southern hemisphere each year, so we can just skip summer altogether. Surely there're some rich globe-hoppers out there who need us to house-sit for them while they're spending their winters somewhere warm?

Just another weekend in the Alps

This weekend we headed to Flims, a small town surrounded by panoramic Alpine views that are snowy in the winter and cowy in the summer (can you believe spell-check doesn’t like the word “cowy”?).



There is nothing like a trip to the Romansch-speaking part of the country to suddenly make Swiss German sound familiar and understandable. Luckily the locals pretty much all also speak High German, so we were able to get around without a problem. We mostly spent our time there hiking, swimming, and eating/drinking/watching soccer.

Several of the area’s ski lifts are open in the summer to move hikers and mountain bikers to the higher-altitude trails. The areas that serve as ski slopes in the winter double as wildflower-covered cow pastures in the summer. It was amusing to see (and hear) cow bells actually tied around cows necks for once, rather than hanging in cheesy Swiss souvenir shops.



For swimming, there was a gorgeous clear blue-green lake to which one could either hike down or take a small free funicular (which looked more like an outdoor elevator). The water felt as good as it looked, especially after a long day of hiking.



Click here to see more pictures from the weekend.

The monks, the Jungfrau, and the mystery trip

This past weekend we were told to pack a bag and show up at the train station at 7:50 Saturday morning. On our packing list was hiking boots, a towel, and clothing for temperatures from -3 to 30 degrees Celsius (26 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit). The mystery trip was organized by the owner of the company where my husband works. Trips to the unknown have been biannual requirements for the employees for several years, but this is the first one where spouses were also invited along.

We were slightly disappointed to find out that the mystery destination was the Jungfrau, one of the highest peaks in Switzerland, only because we had been there before. Surprisingly, most of our traveling companions (who are almost all Swiss) had not. Apparently the Swiss think themselves too sophisticated for the ‘Top of Europe’, dismissing it as a destination for silly foreign tourists (like us).

When we changed trains in Interlaken, our group was joined by a Buddhist monk whom was good friends with the organizer of our trip. The monk had a small entourage of monks, nuns, and monks-in-training with him, many of whom were on this trip to find out how they do in high altitude environments. They are planning to climb a holy mountain in Tibet later this year. Their group included a 6-year-old boy dressed in a monk’s robe, with a waist-length braid of hair sprouting from the top of his otherwise shaved head. I was fascinated.

We switched trains a couple more times before arriving at Jungfraujoch, at 3500 meters, billed as the highest point in Europe reachable by train. From there we had sweeping views out over the glacier and the snowy Alps. We had lunch and then wandered through the Ice Palace and up to the Sphinx observation deck for more sweeping views of snowy Alps and glaciers.



I was fine with the altitude (while many of the Swiss and some of the monks complained of dizziness as soon as we arrived at the top). Fine, that is, until we started the uphill hike through the sand-like snow. In those types of situations, my body likes to have oxygen. Although the hike lasted for less than an hour, I felt like I had been walking all day by the time we reached our destination, a small hut decked out with some sweet snacks and beverages for our group. The return (downhill) hike was a piece of cake.



We then took the train down to Kleine Scheidegg, a small skiing outpost that consisted of a couple hotels and a handful of bars. We spent the late afternoon watching a World Cup game in the bar, and then had dinner with the group. My husband and I snagged seats at the monks’ table, as we were curious to pick their brains a little bit.

We spent most of the meal chatting with a young monk-in-training from Massachusetts. After learning a little bit about his life at the pagoda and what brought him there, I got to my real question: what’s up with the little kid monk? The answer was not disappointing. Turns out, he is the reincarnation of a monk. How do they know that? One, the master can recognize him. Two, before his death, he had gone to a certain woman and asked her to be his mother. So when this woman bore a son, she immediately brought him to the pagoda and put him in the care of the head monk (as had been pre-arranged). And there you have it.

After dinner we caught the second half of the Italy – US game and then fell into bed exhausted. The next day we enjoyed another scenic hike (at an altitude where the air still contained oxygen in reasonable quantities), had lunch, and then headed back to Zurich. All in all, a very enjoyable mystery trip. I hope spouses will be invited along for the next one, too.



To see more pictures, click here.