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| From August 13 Gimmelwald |
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| From August 13 Gimmelwald |
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| From August 13 Gimmelwald |
When we arrived on our longest train ride (the second train on the list), we discovered that we had been booked into the so called "quiet zone". This is a little room on the train (very much like the rooms on Hogwarts Express). We are bad at quiet zones. In particular, my dad is bad at quiet zones, and luckily the one person that was in the car with us got off at the first stop (or left and hid elsewhere). Hopefully we did not disturb the people in the rooms next to us.
When we arrived in Switzerland (sometime on the second train ride), things suddenly started to look pretty familiar. This is not because I have astral projected to Switzerland in the past, but rather because Switzerland looks just like Jasper or Banff (or any other town in the Canadian Rockies). And it's not just similar in the sense that any tourist-y place is like Jasper or Banff, it looks almost exactly the same. This is, of course, because Jasper and Banff have copied the Swiss Alpine towns as best they could (pretty well).
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| From August 13 Gimmelwald |
So in Switzerland in the town of Interlaken (situated, shockingly, between two lakes) we got Swiss Francs and food for Gimmelwald which, as a small town in the mountains, really has no stores and only two restaurants. Now the confusing thing about today is that from Interlaken you can also get to the community of Grindelwald (which as we all know is named after a wizard in Harry Potter). So you can imagine every train station announcement for Grindelwald made us think it was an announcement we should care about.
The other confusing thing about the Interlaken train station is that we got onto a train where half of the train goes to Lauterbrunnen (where we wanted to go) and the other half goes to Grindelwald (where we did not want to go). So, you had to look at what it said on the side of the cars to make sure you were going to the right place, which made the whole Grindelwald/Gimmelwald thing extra confusing.
Anyways, we eventually made it all the way to Stelchelberg, where we were to take the cable car from. Although I knew that we were going to be taking a cable car up the mountain, I sort of assumed that it would be like the cable car in Jasper, wherein it sort of goes up along the side of a mountain, where you could walk if you weren't lazy. This is not so in Gimmelwald. Here, the cable car goes up the side of a sheer cliff.
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| From August 13 Gimmelwald |
I am not a super big fan of heights, although ladders and such don't bother me. But if I am higher than about three stories, then things start to make me a bit nervous. I can tell you that we were a lot higher than three stories. We were, in fact, so high up that I had difficulty looking down. But the view was pretty sweet (looking across is OK, so long as I don't angle my vision down).
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| From August 13 Gimmelwald |
Gimmelwald is worth the five minute terror to arrive at. It is probably the most awe inspiring place I have ever visited. It's just this village clinging to the side of a mountain. Some person thousands of years ago came to this place, looked up, and said "I think I'll farm here." So, there are goats, cows and sheep all over this place. And there is a view of the entire valley that is actually beyond words. I've got some pictures, maybe you'd like to look at those?
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| From August 13 Gimmelwald |
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| From August 13 Gimmelwald |
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| From August 13 Gimmelwald |
We are staying in a little B&B that is the most expensive place we are going to. It is more expensive than Paris or London. This is because the only way into Gimmelwald is cable car or hiking. So, getting things up here is pretty difficult. The other thing with Gimmelwald is that it's not flat. There is no part of it that is flat. It is quite literally on the side of a mountain. In BC, there are often big flat meadows up on mountains. This is not the case here in Switzerland. Here, mountains don't joke around. They just go straight up as fast as they can, and don't take guff from no one.
I should also mention that the "B&B" we are staying at is actually a "B" because breakfast costs 15 Swiss Francs, which is currently about $20 Canadian. Also, it would be the same terrible breakfast we've had everywhere else, a so called "continental breakfast" On the upside, the proprietor here will do our laundry for us.
So, anyways here are some pictures that mom took. You might think there are a lot of pictures of hang gliders. You would be shocked to learn that I erased over half of the ones she took. The skies are thick with hang gliders here. In fact, there are probably more hang gliders than mosquitoes, and mom took several every time she saw one. Also, it is late, and the pictures are taking a while to upload, so there are a few at the end without comments. It should be easy to deduce what they are of though (mountains).
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