July | 2019 | KandL Blog

The saga continues with Part 2, Switzerland. Leaving Paris turned out to be quite the adventure. The goal was to walk to the metro station, catch the blue line, then the red line to the Gare de Lyon station, then get on our train to Basel Switzerland, then switch to the train to Interlaken Ost, then switch to the train to Lauterbrunnen, then switch to the train to Wengen. Easy right. Oh, yeah, and add in the fact that we have almost zero experience with train stations, and everything is in either French or German. We completed the first step and lugged our bags to the metro station after grabbing a quick crepe. Now, just a point of feedback to the French public transit folks. Your signage is not intuitive and your trains are poorly marked and it’s very difficult to tell which train to get on. That feedback comes because we fell into a trap of getting on the wrong train. I knew that our train was supposed to be arriving within a minute or so, and then one pulled up. I stepped inside it to try and see if it was the right train since I couldn’t tell from the outside. Kathryn followed me in with our stuff. At that moment, I realized we were on the yellow line instead of the blue line. Then the doors closed. And they wouldn’t open up again. And then the train started moving. And I had no idea which direction we were going. And we didn’t have much time to spare till our train to Basel was scheduled to leave. What a terrible feeling. 🙁 We soon discovered the train was going in the general direction we wanted to go, just it was going to end up on the wrong side of the Seine. In hindsight, we might have been able to catch the next yellow line going back and just tried again, but we didn’t. We decided to hoof it to the train station. Holy smokes. Remember that heat wave that hit Europe. That was like the first day that it really set in. And we had all of our big luggage with us. Put all that together, we were drenched, but we made it to the Gare de Lyon train station.

The next mission was to find our train, and we were super tight on time. Given our unfamiliarity with train stations and the foreign language and we were very confused. Add in the exhaustion and dehydration and we were dumb and lost. Add in the urgency and we were lost, dumb, and frantic. That is not a good combination and I hope to never go back to that state again if I can avoid it. So, we asked someone for help finding our train in this gigantic station and they pointed us to Hall 2. We rushed over there, looked at our tickets “voiture de train 13”. Due to the lack of mental function in the moment, I thought that meant departure track 13. So we rushed over to platform 13 in hall 2 only to find that they had just closed the gates and they wouldn’t let us on. Oh, the frustration and anger after pushing so hard to get there, only to be thwarted by the gate agent. Then, we saw the train pull away. “What! this train is leaving 15 minutes early! After everything we went through to get here! That is so wrong and so not fair! I can’t believe this!” … etc.

You know that sense of relief, triumph, and a little bit of invincibility when you make that flight you thought you’d miss, or anything else with a set deadline where you just barely squeak in. The opposite feeling is very unpleasant. Disbelief turns to anger, then to blame, then to resignation and acceptance, then to self introspection. Well, we marched over to the ticket office, (only to find a huge line because someone left their bag and they had to call in the bomb squad to investigate). In that time waiting for a chance to talk to the ticket people, we ate our crepes (that Kathryn had been carrying the whole time since we were so rushed and couldn’t get a chance to eat them) and thought power began to return to normal levels. Finally, we got a chance to talk to the ticket lady and explain our sad story. When we got to the part where we said that the train left early so stopped us and said that the trains never ever leave early. They can’t. They are all on a set schedule. It was at that moment that the realization of my error hit me like a ton of lead. Voiture de train 13 didn’t mean platform 13, it mean train car 13. We had to find the platform numbers on the monitors, not on our train ticket. And I knew that. I had translated my ticket the night before and made note that we’d be in car 13 to find our assigned seats. So, that wasn’t our train that pulled away ahead of schedule. That was some other train going to who knows where. Ours could have been on the very next platform just sitting there waiting for us for all I know. That was a sad thought.

Now, for all that drama, things could have turned out a lot worse. There was another sequence of trains that we could get on that would take us all the way there to our final destination. Total cost was 30 euros for the change fee and a 2 hour total delay. What could have been a serious impact turned out to be little more than a small hiccup. Tender mercies. Regarding lessons learned, there is a great business book by Jim Collins called “Great by Choice” that we’re studying right now. I’d highly recommend it. In it, he tells the story of Amundsen and Scott, two explorers racing to the be the first to reach the South Pole. Long story short, Amundsen did lots of preparation and made it down there and back. Scott was much less prepared and he and his team all died. Jim Collins asks us to consider if we’re more like Amundsen or Scott. That day, I sure felt like Scott. Let’s try to not let that happen again.

Ok, so now the first picture. Here we are on our train to Basel. Because we weren’t sure exactly when we’d want to head out from Paris, we booked our tickets really late. The consequence of that was we had to buy first class tickets for the first leg of the trip from Paris to Basel. The consequence of that was awesome. After all that struggle, being in first class with the amazing view going by at 220 mph and a super delicious 4 course lunch was awesome. 🙂

I’m happy to report that we didn’t have any more train blunders and we made it without incident all the rest of the way to Wengen. Here we are on one of the other regional trains in the peasant class.

At some point we got this picture of the kids. LOL. They don’t seem to be missing us at all!

Switzerland has some amazing scenery. This is as we were passing through Bern. Check out how incredibly turquoise blue the Aare river is, with the old churches, and with the Alps in the background. That’s where we’re headed.

The last of our trains for the day, going from Lauterbrunnen up the steep mountain to Wengen! What an incredible sight!

Our home away from home, Hotel Edelweiss. Yes, we did watch the Sound of Music while on this trip.
Edelweiss Edelweiss
Every morning you greet me
Small and white
Clean and bright
You look happy to meet me

After dinner, we walked around a bit and saw this little park next to our hotel. We practiced our slacklining skills. They went from poor to medium poor.

New day. Time to get some serious elevation and check out the views from up top. This is the cable car up to Männlichen. Same brand as the one at Snowbird. Makes sense.

Totally unreal views on the way up. And it’s the real deal. No plaster and paint. Might be a princess stuck in a castle somewhere out there though.

Next, we hiked from Männlichen over to Kleine Scheidegg. It was an easy gradual downhill walk for a little over an hour. Check out that pretty adventure girl.

Grindelwald is another town that can be seen in the distance.

This is a 360 degree panorama from a little overlook point I took with the big camera and stitched together.

At Kleine Scheidegg, we decided to go for it and go the rest of the way up to Jungfraujoch. I’ve been throwing out a lot of names, so here is a map to help out. Now, on these maps, it just shows that dotted line going from Kleine Scheidegg to Jungfraujoch. Originally this was confusing to me. Then I finally learned that these Swiss people decided to just dig a tunnel from Eigergletscher all the way up to Jungfraujoch. It’s a 7.1 km (4.4 mile) tunnel that basically follows the ridgeline up until under the Eiger peak then turns right and keeps climbing up under the Mönch peak until coming out at Jungfraujoch. After 16 years of digging, the tunnel was completed in 1912.

Here is one of the trains that hauls people up and through the belly of those two mountains in the background.

View on the way up before entering the long tunnel.

After making the turn under Eiger and turning right, there is stop where you can get out and admire the view looking up towards the Schreckhorn peak.

At the top. Jungfraujoch is proudly advertised as “Top of Europe” and is able to boast being the highest train station in Europe.

We took a really fast elevator from the train station level deep down in the mountain up to the observatory. The view from up top was pretty intense. Thanks to the Europe heatwave, I think it was like 60 degrees of more and a bright sunny day.

This is looking down at the glacier and the level that the station and shops and stuff are on.

And this is looking back up at the top.

Out on the glacier field, they hold lots of fun publicity stunts, like a tennis match between Roger Federer and Lindsey Vonn. There have been basketball games, boxing matches, and cricket matches too.

We decided to do the zip line. How could you pass up a zip line experience at a place like this.

Another cool thing they had there was a series of ice tunnels carved into the glacier. In there they had lots of cool sculptures.

Favorite find might have been Scrat with his acorn.

Lindt is a big sponsor of the place. They had the world’s highest chocolate shop there.

Hard to pass that up without getting a bag full of all kinds of fun flavors to try out.

More amazing scenery on the way down from the top on our ride back down to Wengen.

Our hotel had a great restaurant that we really enjoyed.

The view from our room. Pretty. Epic.

The next day we decided to rent some bikes and go see the valley from the other side. This is the Staubbach Waterfall in Lauterbrunnen that we liked to look at from our hotel.

There is the waterfall again. This is on the cable car to Winteregg on the way to Mürren.

Once we got there, we biked back down. The trail was a mix of pavement and gravel roads, and was a lot of downhill (duh?). I think we’d rather put around on a flat trail or slightly downhill next time. We spent the entire time on the brakes afraid we were going to wipe out. We’ll pick a different trail next time I think. Can’t complain about the views though.

I wonder if these cows ever get tired of having a big bell tied to their neck. You could here bells clanging all over the place, especially early in the morning.

View from the front of the train on the way back up to Wengen after we returned the bikes. The reason that there is the track in the middle is that these were all cog trains. Imagine a big long gear rack laid out with the track and then the train has the pinion gear which is uses to pull itself along. This allows the trains to go up steep inclines without slipping the wheels.

The Europe heat wave continued, and even up in the mountains it was still 90 degrees. After a hot day biking around, we cooled off in the pool. I’ve never swam in a pool quite like this one.

View from our table at the Caprice Hotel where we had our last dinner in Wengen.

New day, last day in Wengen. We went on a leisurely walk to take in the sights one last time before heading out.

Thanks for the picture Mavic 🙂

And here is a collection of wildflower pics from our walks and hikes.

Remember how we stayed in the Edelweiss hotel. Do you wonder what an Edelweiss looks like? So did I, and we never saw one on our walks that I remember. Well, we looked around the hotel since surely that’d be the place to find one. Sure enough, there they were right next to the front door, so small and white, clean and bright.

And as a bonus the the hotel had this fun Edelweiss design in their log pile.

Goodbye Wengen. You were awesome. Thank you for sharing your amazing vistas with us.

Hello Zurich. Wow it was hot. In retrospect, we made the questionable decision to get some fondue for dinner. It is a traditional dinner after all and we were looking for some cultural experiences. Well, I think fondue would be more appropriate on a cold winter day when the fire under the pan and the hot cheese had a welcome warming effect rather than a sweltering one. We came, we quickly ate, and left. Both of us wished it was a chocolate fondue dinner. That would have been awesome.

Zurich was like a long layover for us. We saw as much as we could in a couple hours and then called it quits and enjoyed blasting the AC in our hotel room.

Bright and early the next morning, we headed out. Final destination, home. This time we tried to be a little more like Amundsen giving ourselves plenty of time in case we goofed up and doing research ahead of time. Even so, getting from our hotel to our gate was like a giant treasure hunt. We were really only working off of one clue at a time trying to find out where to go next. Which concourse, which hall for the baggage drop, where in the hall, which terminal for the gate, then walk through the rat maze to the gate. Of course all the signs are in German which made it even more exciting. Finally, we did it and made it on the airplane.

The layover in Paris was also exciting in an uncomfortable way. Our flight was a bit late (thanks Air France) and then we had to walk what felt like a mile though the huge Charles de Gaulle airport. Then we were one of the final people on the plane. That is one flight you don’t want to miss. Oh, so good to be on Delta after all the international travel. Felt like a familiar piece of home.

Almost home! Flying over Jackson Lake and the Tetons.