Switzerland Day 4
Day 4 (Wednesday) - Meet Fritz
Day 4 started with clouds rolling in. The weather was taking a turn for the, slightly, worse, but we were determined to make the best of it. The clouds meant that visiting mountain tops would not be on the agenda today, instead it was time to put on our hiking shoes. Step one was to find an appropriate trail to take. This is where my trip preparation comes in. I had bought a great trail guide, a map, and also printed out some maps I found on the web, and all of that was . sitting right on my dining room table in North Attleboro, DOH!
Fortunately, the rental house had some trail maps, and so we picked a trail from there. We were headed to Staubachbänkli, taking the lower blue trail in the map below. The red arrow points to our destination.
This was a relatively flat walk for Switzerland. Little ups and downs, but no real altitude gain or loss. Along the way we got a real flavor of semi-rural Switzerland.
We also met Fritz, a local Wengen resident for 92 years. He was quite a character, straight out of central casting, complete with Edelweiss suspenders. He was a former ski instructor and mountain climber, spending his whole life living in Wengen. We all instantly fell in love with him. I kept hoping to see him again in our travels but it was not to be.
Fritz became a common touch point for our conversations for the rest of the trip. Any time a question about Switzerland or Swiss culture came up we said, we’ll have to ask Fritz that one if we see him again.
We finally made it to Staubachbänkli and discovered it is just an overlook with some weird benches that all point in the same direction, like you’re on a school bus or something.
Yup, Squeakie came on the hike!
This area of Switzerland has a lot of farm animals, a lot of flowers, and a lot of waterfalls.
The hillsides were dotted with small huts built in the traditional Swiss style.
If you didn’t know any better, looking around you might think you were in the 1940’s Switzerland of my mother’s youth, or maybe even 1800’s Switzerland. It was frozen in time. A lot of this is the same Switzerland that I visited as a young child. I recognized the narrow streets, the gutters on the side of them, the green everywhere, the cows, and even the slugs that came out after the rains. And I recognized the primitive but sturdy wooden buildings, built by a people that knew what they were doing, that were connected with this land and knew how to live in concert with their surroundings. They knew the land’s rhythms and its dangers and they could fashion buildings that blended into it, buildings that belonged. Out here you could tell that everything was built for a reason, every aspect of the construction had a purpose, the techniques seemed to be honed over centuries. As an outsider, we didn’t know the purpose, but it was obvious to us that the people like Fritz knew it, they knew it all.
After the hike to Staubachbänkli we decided we should take this opportunity to see some waterfalls, so we set out to see the Trummelbach Falls, which we thought was a giant 1000 foot waterfall that we could see from our house, but that was a slight mistake. Trummelbach was actually the waterfall that runs through the mountain, carving out a path through the solid rock via that incredible force of nature called erosion.
To get there, Lori and Kristin took the train, and Paul, Chris, Katheryn, and I hiked the trail. There is a saying that goes “its all downhill from here”, and I’m going to tell you that if someone says that to you be warned that you may be in for a world of hurt. The trail from Wengen to Lauterbrunnen is all downhill, but it is no walk in the park, nor is it a picnic or day at the beach. It is steep so that with every step you need to stop yourself from just tumbling forward down the hill. Its just switch-backs all the way down, and by the end, all of our legs were rubber, our thighs were burning, and my knees were definitely worse for the wear. But this is Switzerland, and in Switzerland you walk. The locals around here (still trying to find where the locals are) must have legs like tree trunks.
At the end of the trail, just outside the train station is a bridge over the Lochbröcke river. It was the final leg of the hike, and the only flat part of the whole thing. I now understand why the train to Wengen has cogs.
At Trummelbach, you first take a lift up 300 feet. From there you walk up through man-made caves carved out of solid rock. Along the way you can see several waterfalls, as the water makes its way down from the mountain and through this crazy carved out rock.
The water is squeezed through small openings which increases its speed and power to unfathomable levels. The sound is deafening as the water sprays through the opening and crashes into rock, shot through openings in the cave like a canon. Pictures can’t do it justice. You need to stand next to it and feel the raw power of nature as it cuts through solid rock over centuries carving out rounded cathedral-like shapes, leaving behind perfect arcs of smooth stone. Don’t lean too far over the railings, if you fall in, there will be nothing left of you after you make your way through the world’s most powerful natural blender.
After the falls we stopped at a local eatery in Lauterbrunnen to grab some dinner. It was now raining steady, and we were soaked, so we hit a place that would welcome our bedraggled selves - the Hotel Steinbock restaurant. We had a whole room to ourselves. The room we were to dine in was filled with taxidermy of all sorts. Raccoons, beavers, there was even a fox walking on its hind legs carrying a pheasant in one fore-paw with a shotgun in the other!! If you want a place with unique character this is it.
After we got home, we had our chocolate tasting. Everyone had bought different types of Swiss chocolate and we sampled them all. There was one type in particular, it was called “Minor” and it came in a package that looked like a single kit-kat bar. It had hazelnut and little crunchies. As soon as I bit into it I immediately recalled this chocolate from my childhood. I hadn’t remembered it nor thought about it since then, but it took just one taste to trigger long ago locked down memories. Memory is a strange and wondrous critter, its all just sitting somewhere in the mind and who knows what will trigger its release.
