switzerland

Good Morning, Monday!

August 22, 2011 by admin

This week I am pondering an upcoming vacation. We’re visiting the small town of Sils in southeastern Switzerland, which we get to with two plane flights, a four-hour train ride, and a bus. Sils captured our hearts earlier this year when we visited so I could attempt cross-country skiing. My husband, Henry, chose the location because we could ski on the frozen lakes, giving me a nice, flat surface to practice on. I’m from Houston, so I’m not used to going downhill. Or uphill, for that matter.

At any rate, we are looking forward to getting away from the relentless Houston heat and drought so we can hang out outdoors. On our last visit, we noticed that, as in other parts of Switzerland, the hiking routes are carefully documented. Signs point hikers to other towns, indicating with colors and stripes the degree of difficulty, and estimating the time needed to get from point A to point B. Though the locals zip by us, the time estimates seem to be aimed at those who walk at our speed, even allowing for time to stop and take photos.

The end of each hike is marked by the presence of a restaurant. Now THIS is civilized hiking! In fact, Henry has found a hike that advertises several restaurants along the way. I’ve learned to love seeing the Swiss flag out in the middle of nowhere, which signals food, drink, and a restroom ahead.

Edelweiss Photo — Edelweiss Hotel Restaurant in Sils

Not only that, but we don’t always have to go back the way we came. We can hike to a point, then take a train, bus, funicular, or gondola back to our starting point.

If only life were as easily mapped out as a Swiss hike! Imagine if you could get up and know the degree of difficulty you were going to face that day. You could look at your to-do list and know exactly how long each task would take. And, at the end, someone brings you a fabulous meal.

Of course, Swiss hikes are not always predictable. We have encountered sudden rainstorms, steep climbs with slippery shale underneath, and wintery winds whipping in October. Then there are the pleasant surprises, such as turning a corner to find a breathtaking ridge that rivals anything from The Sound of Music. No, I haven’t twirled and sung atop a ridge, but I imagine that I could.

As I’ve worked on this blog, I try, with varying degrees of success, to create the efficiency of the Swiss hiking system, pointing us in the direction that we will go for the week. This week we will have some fun with The Sweet Potato Queens on Book Discovery Tuesday. On Wednesday we’ll look at ways to keep inspired on those days when we’re too tired, cranky, or discouraged about manifesting our dreams.

Hopefully, though, the road map of the blog won’t keep us from also encountering some pleasant surprises along the way. One of the things I love about the Thursday Blog Recommendation is that we can go off in a variety of directions, both fun and serious.

The only thing I can’t furnish is the restaurant. But who knows? Last night I made a gorgeous lavender chicken with goat cheese and blueberry chutney. Today for lunch we’re having crab cakes with a black bean, mango, and tomato salad. One of my obsessions is to find healthy but delicious recipes. As a woman in midlife, I find that maintaining weight is a greater challenge than it used to be. Maybe I can throw in a few cookbook recommendations!

Have a great week! Thanks for checking in and sharing part of your day with me.

Firmly Perched on the Mountain

October 15, 2009 by admin

After four days in Leysin, we feel a peculiar effect: no desire to go down the mountain. Do we want to visit Lausanne? Gruyeres? No, not really. What is it about this sleepy mountain town that lures us, that seduces us, that has caused us to lose interest in anything else? I have no idea.

I think the yogis would say that the place has strong prana, or life force. There is a reason it became a healing place for TB patients early in the previous century. Even though I have had a cold, instinct tells me that getting outdoors is my best cure…and we have.

Today we took a long but gentle hike through rolling hills, forest-cushioned paths, and the occasional climb to pathways filled with hard ice. Our total walk time was about four hours, but it felt as effortless as an afternoon stroll. We didn’t take a lot of pictures. Most of the views we saw are views we have already recorded in some form. So it’s not like we are making new discoveries on our walks. They…just…feel…good.

Hiking paths in Switzerland are marked with yellow signs, and some intersections display an impressive number of options. On the right-hand side of each sign, the side with an arrow, a color-coded indicator tells us whether the hike is easy, moderate, difficult, or prepare to die, fool. On today’s adventures, our path was not so clearly marked, and we took several wrong turns. We shrugged our shoulders. So what? We found our way back, often without having to totally backtrack. In Leysin, meandering matters. There are no goals here, no accomplishments to be had, no place we have to be, other than to make sure we get to the restaurant while they are still serving lunch.

So we walk and we eat and we rest. We stay in the apartment in the evening, eating lightly after a big lunch. It also keeps our food bills down…restaurants here are profoundly expensive if you don’t like the fixed price option (which is a bit high, but more reasonable). Today’s fixed price options at our restaurant of choice included horse meat or baby pig, so we decided to order from the regular menu! We see horse troughs everywhere but no horses, seeing them only on the menus. We have eaten other meats we wouldn’t normally, such as veal and venison (both excellent, I might add), but neither of us is ready for horse. Funny how we’ll eat a cow without question but feel indignant about other animals. The cows around here are mighty cute, especially with their bells.

We have internet television, but channels are limited, and as I write this the internet is down, so we are even more isolated. I had tried, during my convalescence, to pull up a few American television shows, but most prohibit viewing outside of the U.S. The Daily Show is the only one I successfully watched.

So, here we are, isolated, away from civilization, cut off from our usual toys and distractions. Henry, who needs the internet to work, busied himself after our hike fixing the problem (which he did, obviously). For me, though, there was not much to do. I spent some time writing, letting new characters introduce themselves to me and whisper their stories in my ear…I read…I just stared out the window and watch the clouds drift by the mountains, sometimes at our eye level. Time to breathe. Time to dream. Time to invent.

The Type “A” part of me, which I honor as important, can take over every now and then and wreak havoc. Here in Leysin, with its fresh air and absolutely nothing to do, there is balance.

Loving the Lord (Byron, that is!)/Leysin

October 11, 2009 by admin

Henry has wanted to visit a castle in Montreux and has talked about it for some time, even before we left Houston. Although I felt certain I would enjoy such a visit, I have focused more on being outdoors in my beloved mountains. Castle? Okay, whatever.

Then, last night, I leaned over as he looked at their website, and a word jumped out at me. Chillon. THE Chillon? The word transported me back to seventh grade in DePue, Illinois, and the poem that made me fall in love with words.

My hair is gray, though not with years, nor grew it white in a single night as men’s have grown from sudden fears. My limbs are bowed, though not with toil, for these have been a dungeon’s spoil.

That poem, Byron’s The Prisoner of Chillon, was inspired by a friar who was imprisoned in the castle for six years. I imitated his style with my own epic poems written in the privacy of my room, pages and pages long since discarded. For me, the lonely New Kid in Town at an age when everything about me felt awkward, Byron’s poetry took me to a place inside where only grace and fluid joy exists. It would take me many years to understand that I must write, if only for the sake of writing, to access this special place from which the rest of my life springs forth.

We have bumped in to Byron previously on our travels. Between he and Mark Twain, we will have decades of traveling to do to keep up with their adventures. However, this visit today, this castle visit, takes me deep into the heart of Byron. What a blessed life I have to be able to walk in his footsteps.

Getting to Chillon was an adventure in itself. Yesterday, we traveled for five hours from Grindelwald to the village of Leysin, where cow pastures are replaced by vineyards up and down the hills, and even in the middle of Aigle, another village on the way here. For two hours of the trip, we rode a panorama train, elegant with wood trim and tables on the inside. On each table sat a small lamp that illuminated the interior of the car with soft light during trips through tunnels. We ate cheese (what else? It’s Switzerland!) and drank Swiss wine on our journey, and chatted with three Swiss ladies who were planning a ladies’ day out in Montreux.

From Montreux it took two more train trips of about 40 minutes total to get up the mounain to Leysin, a sleepy French-Swiss village. We know we’re in the French part, because the restaurants open late for dinner!

Our apartment is beautiful, and where the Grindelwald chalet was quaint and cute, this one is sleek and modern, with every techie gadget one could dream of. Henry is in hog heaven! We have a 1.2 mile walk into Leysin for all our needs, so we get a good walk in just going to and fro.

To get to Chillon, we went to the village of Villeneuve and walked another 30 minutes or so to the Castle. Our Swiss Rail Pass gave us free admission, and we splurged for the audio guide. Henry took all the pics today, so I will bug him to post his on FB.

From there, we took a bus to Vevey to walk around. Vevey is a curious place, and not entirely pleasant. It’s supposed to be very upscale and lah-dee-dah, but I saw evidence of some creepy drug use around the train station. Still, we had a nice walk along Lake Geneva and found a hotel with some awesome desserts.

This evening we are staying in and cooking at the apartment. Our host left us wine and other goodies, including eggs, so we will have an elegant French omelette dinner. In fact, Leysin lends itself to relaxation. For many years tuberculosis patients came to Leysin to recuperate, and we feel a sense of moving into the “slow travel” mode. We have a fabulous view to enjoy. This is a great place to just “be.” So, while we do have some hiking and other activities planned, we are slowing our rhythm…and it feels good.

October 8, 2009 by admin

Hiking does not get old here in the Bernese Oberland, at least from a sightseeing standpoint. My legs might beg to differ, but each day has brought surprising diversity to our trip.

Yesterday, we took a cable car to Pfinstegg, which consists of…wait for it…a restaurant. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but each hike, train, gondola, funicular, cable car, or God knows what else ends at a restaurant. One cannot stay hungry in this place–well, except for the fact that we don’t care for German food–but I digress. I will write more on our food challenges another time.

Anyway, from Pfinstegg we hiked for about an hour and a half with a 1,200 foot climb ending at…a restaurant. The point of all of this is to view a glacier on Eiger Mountain up close and personal. I was wimpy that day, with my legs bits of rubber underneath me, but the locals who zipped by me, some of whom are MUCH–even decades–older than we are, awakened my competitive streak.

From time to time we hear strange booming sounds, and we realized on this hike that these are the sounds of portions of glaciers breaking off (a normal and expected occurrence). On this hike, the sounds were particularly loud.

As an aside, we have learned that the glaciers are receding at an alarming rate…not trying to get political here, but I’m just sayin’…this made hearing and seeing them this close even more extraordinary.

We headed back down and skipped a second, and easier, hike, since it was a work day for Henry, and I needed to wash some clothes. We ate lunch in Grindelwald, then ate the leftovers for dinner (the food’s not great, but there’s a lot of it).

Today took us in yet another direction. Thankfully for our sore legs, we chose a more passive activity. That is, we took the train to Interlaken, then an hourlong boat ride on Lake Brienz, then a steam train to the summit of Rohthorn. Lake Brienz is an odd, milky turquoise color from the glacier silt. Clouds and rain gave the distant mountains an eerie feel. The clouds lifted enough at the summit to allow us plenty of photo ops. We ate lunch at the summit…yes, another restaurant. Then we took the train down, rewarded ourselves with apple strudel (okay, not all the food is bad), wandered around Brienz, and came back.

Tomorrow is our last full day in Grindelwald, so we are headed to Bern to get a taste of Swiss city life.

https://www.nadinefeldman.com/2009/10/08/395/

Big Hike, Little Hike, Inspiration?

October 6, 2009 by admin

The hike from Schynige Platte to First is considered one of the best in Switzerland. We were cautioned that it is strenuous, 10 miles with about 2,500 feet of climbing. We had planned to do it on Thursday, but the weather is expected to change, and this hike is a must-see.

We made the 6:49 a.m. train, then connected to the Little Engine that Could. Seriously. We were on a 100-year-old train that puttered up the hillside, and we wondered how we would make it. The train ride alone was worth the trip, though, with even the Swiss train employees gazing out at the beauty surrounding us.

After hiking for three hours, we stopped at a tiny bed and breakfast in the middle of nowhere for a snack. Clouds rolled in, cooling things off, which we didn’t mind. At first we felt too warm, and there are few trees to provide shade, so the cooling made the hike more comfortable.

After that point, the hike became a meditation. I needed single-minded focus to find the right placement of feet and poles so as not to lose footing on the loose shale on the steep ascent. And, of course, I had to remember to stop to catch the view. We took our time, ignoring the locals with their mountain goat nimbleness, and we made it through with no incidents.

Was it worth it? Oh, yes. 360 degrees of jaw-dropping splendor, from glacial mountains to Sound of Music meadows. Pictures are amazing but do not do justice to the sense of life and accessibility of these mountains. Will these mountains show up in my writing somewhere? Yeah, count on it. I just hope I can come up with some words by then to describe them.

Exhausted and with sore feet, but triumphant, we took a gondola from First to Grindelwald, where, looking and feeling like something the cat dragged in, we had to navigate through the town’s monthly street market. We grabbed pasta from a restaurant and hurried to the quiet of our apartment.

Today we decided to take it easy. We only hiked seven miles! This hike, though, was almost entirely on level ground. Our goal was to see the Trummelbach Falls, which collects runoff from three major mountains. The falls themselves are inside a mountain, so we took a lift that gave us entry inside, where we could view the falls from multiple vantage points. I shot a brief movie on my camera of the falls so we could capture their roar–if it turns out, I will post it on FB.

We then took a cable car to Murren, a charming village, where we ate lunch and enjoyed, yes, the view. Murren hugs a hillside with a 2,500 foot sheer dropoff.

Afterward we walked for another three miles among the trees. Ready to collapse, though not as sore as yesterday, we made it back to Grindelwald and home sweet home (until Saturday).

Tired as I am, I am inspired by the landscape and being out in it. Last night I drafted a synopsis of a new novel and introduced myself to several characters. Since it has to do with travel, this trip is research!

Swiss Explorations Part I

October 4, 2009 by admin

The sun streams in through open windows in our Grindelwald apartment. In the distance I hear the rhythmic chiming of cowbells. As I look out the window, a mountain rises up, with houses dotting the lower parts, and thick forest up above.

Yesterday was spent getting here, as the train ride from Geneva to Grindelwald takes about four hours. Along the way we had a great view of Lake Geneva and saw cows, goats, sheep, deer, and buffalo, all grazing happily in the open meadows. Initially everyone spoke French, but at Bern the train filled with backpacks, with everyone in hiking boots and chatting away in German. One woman was talking and switching back and forth between the two languages, and even threw in a little Italian along the way. (Even the Swiss whose main language is German seem to say “merci” when thanking customers.)

We found our apartment with the help of a cab driver, and spent the rest of the day exploring the town. We have already been to the grocery store, the bakery, and the cheese shop, so we’re right at home. There’s a sporting goods store on every corner and then some, so no problem if we need any gear! Henry wants me to add that the local cheese is excellent. “It really tastes like cheese!”

This morning we decided to tackle the Jungfrau, billed as “the top of Europe.” Standing nearly 12,000 feet, the icy Jungfrau intimidates. The train takes 1 1/2 hours to get to the top, where the vistas–and the wind–take one’s breath away. Dressed in plenty of layers, we stayed comfortable, although I didn’t enjoy walking down a path of sheer ice! I have several photos of ice sculptures from the Jungfrau, which I will post on Facebook.

On the way down, we stopped at Kleine Scheidegg, one of the many mountain villages dotting the landscape. We had been advised by those in the know to order the Rosti, or hash browns, at the train station restaurant. Full of potatoes and salad, we made our first hike, a modest three-mile walk to Mannlichen, another mountain village. The trail was full of people and dogs enjoying the fresh air…we hardly ever hear English here, so most of the tourists at this time of year are from nearby, speaking German and French. (We also saw several Japanese tour groups.)

At Mannlichen, we had a soda and took the gondola down to Wengen, which is the favorite village of a woman on Trip Advisor who has helped us with hiking information. However, Wengen closes down at the beginning of October until just before Christmas, when the ski season gets underway there, so it took us all of about ten minutes to scope out the town. From there we took the train back to Kleine Schidegg, had a snack, and then came back to Grindelwald. We will need to get up early tomorrow for our first daylong hike, so it feels good to rest a bit.