Swiss Alps (and the end of the whirlwind)

I’m finally behind schedule getting a post out. I have to begin this one by admitting two things. First, I’m a fraud. I’ve lied to you, lied quite a bit in this blog. You see, I marketed myself as Widdershinning Weiss, but I’ve only been one of those things. I’ve been Weiss, sure. I’ve also been traveling almost exclusively west since leaving Munich. Widdershins means opposite the sun – east! Well, that changes now. From Liege onward everything else in Europe will be going eastbound and down. I have some further violations of the widdershins planned for Asia, so please forgive me in advance. My second admission is a traumatic secret that I kept for the last week and a half. I wanted to wait until I could confidently declare it a success story before sharing. Just a week into my trip, in Mainz, I encountered one of every backpackers worst nightmares: bed bugs. These little guys certainly weren’t fasting on Yom Kippur because they had a nice feast at my expense, tattooing me from my fingers to my shoulderblades, with a few other scattered bites here and there. An immediate trip to the laundromat and a high-heat dry (sorry to my wool socks), plus a few lavender oil products that I’ve been spraying on beds and belongings, washing with, and generally drenching myself in seem to have done the trick. My bites itched for about 6 days, but fortunately subsided somewhere around France. Now that I’ve cleared my chest, back to the Widdershinning.

Today’s post encompasses this:

I last left you at my walk back from King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard in Esch. I had no intention of keeping up the speed of travel that enabled me to see 4 countries in a 24-hour period. However, I wound up in 6 counties in a 72-hour period. In that span I spent a morning in Germany, afternoon in the Netherlands, night in Belgium, a full day in Luxembourg, a half day in France, and the night in Switzerland. It felt long, in a good way. However it wasn’t sustainable or desirable to continue like this.

From Esch I hit the road Monday morning traveling south, and crossed the border into France within my first ten minutes of driving. I had some ideas about what to check out in Alsace, the easternmost region of France that’s somewhat German influenced. Like many regions of France, Alsace is known for wine. I saw some representative spots but could’ve easily spent two weeks in the region, at least. The countryside was idyllic, and exactly what you would expect France to look like.

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I took a detour through the Parc Naturel Regionaldes Vosges du Nord, which was mostly wooded with some quaint teensy towns scattered in between. On the eastern edge of the park I stopped in the town of Ingwiller (about 45 minutes from Strasbourg) to stretch my legs. The two church towers stood out, being the only buildings in town above 2 stories. After those, the most interesting tall building in town had a clock that caught my eye. Rather than numbers I recognized the characters as Hebrew letters. Could it be? A synagogue in a French town with a population of 4,000 people? Yes in fact it was! I tried to enter, but alas, it was closed.

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I was getting hungry so I hustled to Strasbourg to have a fish dish and white wine for lunch sitting outside in Kleber Square. My first impression once I got out of my car was clothing. Lots of trendy patterns, everything with a modern fit, 95% of the people look very put together. A total juxtaposition from the scummier yokels of Esch. Like the fashion, the cityscape was relatively modern where I started out, but it got classic French quickly as I moved toward the destinations.

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Of all the things to do, heading to the top of the local Notre Dame cathedral topped my list. This’ll rank among the nicer churches I have seen to date.

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But what sets this Notre Dame apart the most is that you can climb the tower. Lots of spiral staircase steps later I got to see this:

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I was also watching the weather, and dreading Tuesday’s forecast of 100% chance of rain all day, ranging from France through Switzerland. I felt that Strasbourg deserved more than two hours. I really liked what I had seen, but I didn’t want to drive into the Alps at night nor in the rain. So it was now or never (or waiting 36 hours) to get to Switzerland, and thus I left Strasbourg mere moments after having arrived. Sorry France, next time I visit I promise not to give you “the Connecticut treatment.” (You know, connects New York and Massachusetts and I cut through it)

My drive from Strasbourg to Switzerland was largely a breeze. I had two slow downs, initially briefly hitting my first rush hour traffic of my trip, and at the Swiss border where the customs agents only interest was that I buy a $40 toll/window sticker. Basel is at the nexus of France Germany and Switzerland, where I was entering Swiss territory, so I got to experience it from the highway. Much like experiencing Boston from I-93, I was largely underground and the parts that I was able to see didn’t impress me. With that said, Switzerland is a beautiful place to drive through, with my surroundings getting more and more pleasant further south as the topography came to life.

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I then drove through Bern, a city I didn’t even notice because the Alps had come into view in the distance. I started to get excited to find myself there, destination: Interlaken. Part of my abrupt departure from Strasbourg was that I had hoped to get to Interlaken before dusk, both to see the sunset and avoid driving at night. Silly me, it’s pretty tough to see the sunset when surrounded by mountains, so it didn’t matter that I was 10 minutes late because I was in the shadows for the previous half hour.

The drive into Interlaken was amazing. The name translates to “between the lakes,” but the title fails to acknowledge that it’s also between the mountains. I had romanticized Interlaken ever since I met backpackers on my 2008 Europe trip, who at the end of their multi-month sojourn, declared it their favorite place in Europe. It didn’t disappoint (aided by my expectations being somewhat lowered that it’a a tourist town). Given the ways it caters to tourists, and was located in the valley with good transportation to about 750 hikes, Interlaken is a good base point from which to visit the even more picturesque and more ‘authentic’ nearby Alpine towns.

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I picked somewhat randomly from a handful of hostels and checked in to a place called Balmer’s. This happened to be a 112 year old institution, that in the late 40’s “brought backpacking to Interlaken.” Since Munich, the next two hostels I had stayed in were relatively unsocial, but I picked well to reverse that fate in Interlaken. There was lively conversation in English in one of the common rooms so I joined a group that included two other Americans, 3 Australians, a New Zealander, and a Belgian. I opened a bottle of Alsatian Pinot Noir that I had picked up in Strasbourg as we spent the night chatting for a few hours about a litany of topics.

Tuesday morning I wanted to explore the nearby towns of Lauterbrunnen, Murren, and maybe take a life up to the Schilthorn, one of the mountains in the Alps, which is home to the restaurant featured in the 1969 James Bond film Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The Schilthorn was covered in clouds, so I opted to stay in the valley. I walked around Murren for a bit:

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Then back to Lauterbrunnen , mostly to see more waterfalls there. The two towns were similar in landscape, though Lauterbrunnen had more buildings and Murren had more cows. Despite having less open space, Lauterbrunnen also had more waterfalls:

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I had given Danny, the Nee Zealander, a ride into Lauterbrunnen. On the way back we drove through Grindlewald to check it out. It was touristy and looked like it would be a fun spot during ski season, but didn’t offer us a reason to park and get out of the car. Then back to Interlaken to run errands in the rain and later play games in the hostel with the crew that had withered to Danny, Gavin (Utah), Claudia, (Australia), J.C. (Colorado), and supplemented by another American and Canadian.

Fortunately Wednesday’s forecast was full sun. Danny and I headed to Wilderswil to take a train up to Schynige Platte. This train route began in 1893. It was slow, which was fine because we got to stare out the windows.

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We heard multiple endorsements of the hike from Schynige Platte to First, where we could take a gondola down to Grindlewald (and train back to Interlaken). Once we were up top it was utterly breath taking. If a picture’s worth a thousand words, here’s 15,000:

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We happened upon J.C. in Grindlewald on the way back, but unfortunately he and everyone checked out that day and the crew had disbanded. This set it up nicely for a lighter evening in the hostel with some tame dinner conversation and an earlyish night. I considered doing a quick lift trip to get back up to elevation after Thursday morning’s checkout, but I slept in (for the first time in a few days) and Italy had begun calling my name. I was very excited for this drive through the Alps:

I didn’t intend to take the 16.9 kilometer (10.5 mile) Goddard Tunnel but that’s how I wound up navigating. I’m not to concerned about what I might’ve missed because that first hour and a half of the drive up and down switchbacks from the valley above the snowline was incredible enough. When I emerged from the tunnel I had to keep double checking if I was in Switzerland or Italy. The town names, language, people, and architecture was all overwhelmingly Italian. Only the money was Swiss. I had known Switzerland to be half Germanish and half Frenchish, but didn’t realize how Italian it is beneath the Alps. It makes sense from a human settlement perspective if you think about it. On the Italian side of Swizterland there was much less snow, with steep Green mountains lining my route. I grabbed pizza for lunch in the Italianate Swiss town of Gorduno while en route to my destination of Menaggio, a small town on Lake Como, concluding the Switzerland leg of my journey.

If you’ll ever be in Interlaken, and know the lyrics to Roundabout, I challenge you to not be singing this song of the moment the whole time: