Switzerland -- Mountain Wonderland

I should start by saying my Mom talked me into this trip. She had always told me how much she enjoyed her drive through Switzerland many many years ago. While here in Europe, and with my wife back in the U.S., I figured I'd go see what my mother thought was so wonderful.


The plan was to head to the hills... go see what Switzerland is all about. Again, using Rick Steve's guidebook for a hint on what might be fun. Rick suggested Gimmelwald, which is near Interlaken. Unfortunately, not much in the way of places to stay on the weekend of the 4th of July...so I ended up staying in Interlaken.

A side note: For a rich banking country that looks so beautiful and be so expensive have such, well, crappy hotels? I'm sure I could have spent a lot of money and stayed in a 5-star hotel, but how come a $200 hotel feels a lot like a $75 hotel back home? The hotel I stayed in was a way from the city center, and quite nice. But the room?!

So what did I do on this trip? Took trains up into the mountains and went first to Gimmelwald to see what Rick Steve's liked so much. What was he thinking?! This place was a nice town for, say, getting to it... the trains were really fun to ride (and a bit expensive).

Gimmelwald is a town with no cars, and can only be reached by gondala (or by walking along a path from a town called Murren, which Rick Steve's could have mentioned was so close). I found the little town quite nice. For a bout 15 minutes. Then I had to go see something else. To give you an idea of what this town was like: It had 1 real hotel, and another place you could pay like $15 to sleep on straw in a barn. The hotel was a nice little place with probably 10 or so rooms. I came, I saw, I walked around for a few minutes, swear I saw Rick Steves walking around taking notes, then I left before realizing I might have had a chance to meet the man leading me around Europe.

NEXT. I started a long hike towards the Junfraugh train--this is a train leading up to the highest train station in Europe. I walked along a beatiful trail and was accompanied by many many Japanese tour groups.

As an aside, I spent 4 years in Japan in my youth as a military brat back in the late 70's. The Japanese were, and still are the nicest people you'd ever want to meet. They are kind, generous and very honorable. Except...

Except when they are in tour groups. These people consumed the small trail leaving almost no room to walk around--and seemed offended or just protective of the trail path so as to literally block it. With 30 people in a single group all stopping to look at a single flower, it was quite annoying to be unable to get around. They'd smile, just like I remembered the Japanese to do, but then move to keep me from passing as though there was a prize at the end they didn't want me to have.

As you can see, the flowers are nice, but eh, not so nice that you have to block poor hikers from seeing them.