Pfiffelspritz

People are very fit here. The folks who seem to be local all look skinny and muscley and like they spend every hour of every day hanging off the side of a mountain. Even the dogs are fitter than any dogs I've ever seen anywhere else.

Hiking times on signs or in maps are not at all the same as in the US. Back home, if a sign says that a walk can be done in 20 minutes, that means that it will usually take me and Steve about 10.

Here, a hike that the sign said would take 50 minutes took us well over an hour. These people don't hang around. They don't walk, they power walk. They Nordic walk; everyone carries massive poles and they swing their arms and puff their chests out and give you dirty looks all at the same time.

I asked the guy at the front desk of the hotel for a nice walk that would take about an hour. He sent me up the North Face of the Eiger, and expected me to be back by lunch.

Our last Swiss town which we visited today is called Pfingstegg, and it afforded some pretty spectacular views of the valley below. It was sort of a perfect finale to our time in Switzerland: the sun was shining, the temperature was about 75 degrees, there was a light breeze, paragliders sailed in the distance, and we had this amazing view before us of mountains, glaciers, thick green grass, the river and the villages below.

It would have been an absolutely perfect day had my beloved hubby not spilt an entire beer stein directly into my lap at dinner. He couldn't have aimed it better if he'd tried. It was quite an impressive cascade that came toward me, and I couldn't even move; all I could do was stare at it in fascination as it poured over me, foamed up and then settled deep into my jeans and the lower part of my shirt.

The hotel was just a little too far away for me to want to walk back, change and then return to the restaurant. Plus it was still warm out so I decided just to sit with it through the meal. My legs got very cold at one point, but then I didn't notice it too much.

The worst part came after the meal when I had to walk back to the hotel. I hadn't had that sensation since I was about 5 years old, and I couldn't get my leotard and tights off quick enough and just wound up peeing my pants.

I was too embarrassed to tell my teachers so I just put my pants back on and waited for my mom to pick me up. As she followed me out, she asked why I was walking so funny. I told her I had sat in a puddle.

To her credit, she didn't call me on it, but since I'd been inside the school all day, and the outside of my pants were dry, I'm pretty sure she knew exactly what kind of a puddle it was I was talking about.

Waterfalls!!

We have had a wonderful couple of days in Switzerland (in spite of the expense of the place), exploring some lovely small villages and seeing some great sites.

Wengen is a very nice pedestrian-only village which sits on a mountaintop at 1274 meters. To get there, we took a train, then a small ski gondola, followed by a larger ski gondola.

I had never been in a small ski gondola before, and it was very cool, but Steve, forgetting who he had married, made the mistake of telling me the delightful tale of the helicopter that flew too low and clipped a gondola wire sending many people crashing down a mountain to their deaths. Why, why he ever told me that story I will never know.

The ride on the big gondola was the best, though, because it was a cloudy rainy day, and the gondola started very high up in total cloud, and then descended through the layer of cloud to the green valley below. It was very Lord of the Rings.

Today we went to what I think is the most beautiful Swiss town yet, called Lauterbrunnen (this photo as well as the one at the top), which is just Southeast of Wengen. This town is known for its waterfalls, and they really were everywhere. The woman at our hotel suggested we walk to a place called Trummelbach Falls.

I was expecting to walk through the woods into a clearing where a large waterfall fell into a glittering pool and people surrounded it saying oohhh and ahhh.

Boy was I wrong. This place is a major tourist attraction, with bus and carloads of people flocking to it. I can honestly say I have never seen anything quite like it in my life. They talk groups of you up in what feels like a cross between an elevator and a gondola up into the side of a mountain. It was kind of like what I imagined going into a mine shaft would be like.

When you get out of the elevator, you then walk up loads of steps which are essentially cut into the mountain, and the most amazing waterfall I've ever seen cuts through this mountain in incredible ways.

This is no peaceful waterfall; it is crashing, spraying, slate-colored water, twisting, turning and cutting its way the mountain with an immense show of power.

According to the website, the Trummelbach is actually made up of ten glacial waterfalls, and it alone drains the glacier walls of the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau mountains with an astounding 20,000 liters of water per second!

I forgot to mention the goats. At one of the train stations, there are goats, just hanging out everywhere. The sit, they stand, they run, the chew things, they try to smoke people's cigarettes, and they poop and pee everywhere. Very un-Swiss.

I believe I also forgot to mention that the transport pass which allows you access to the trains, busses and gondolas in the area cost 500 Swiss Francs for the two of us. That's a lot of Bratwurst!!!