This is summer!
5am rise and shine
6am Depart Zurich by train
7:04 Bern
8:05 Interlaken Ost
8:30 Lauterbrunnen
9:30 Klein Scheidegg
No real breakfast because the hotel cafe is not open at 5:30am.
The last train is a rack railway that rises through a tunnel to the top. Along the way it makes two 5 minute stops and we all de train and wander through the tunnel to some giant viewing windows that are set into the side of the mountain. The views are spectacular as is the engineering that has gone into this whole system. On the train we watch a video telling us it was started in the late 1800's as a tourist development. There are pictures of miners using pnumatic jack hammers to literally jackhammer their way into the mountain. With 500000 tourists per year it is probably profitable in its own right although I cant help but wonder if there was/is a military motivation for the complex.
10:30am
At the top there is a multi story visitor complex with several restraunts and more of those spectaclar views. Megan wisely suggests that we have a picnic to re energise us. This turns out to be our last meal as there are things to do that keep us from eating. We sneak into the "self serve" restraunt and start cutting up bread rolls and criossants. To give oursleves some legitimacy, I purchase three hot chocolates and a Macadamia and Chocolate thing that the fellow in the cafe insists is home made and contains no chemicals. It tasts good too. Over here it seems a hot chocolate means a cup of hot milk and a sashet of chocolate. I get two chocolate and one Ovaltine. There is universal agreement that the chocolate is better than the Ovaltine.
Then we start the walk to the "Snow play area". We leave the cafe area through two doors and walk down a long tunnel eventually exiting onto the snow covered side of the mountain. We throw the obligitory snow ball at each other. We observe that we can do various activities and so tickets are purchased. We all start with tubing. You sit in a tube that is a car tube in a cover so that it has a bottom then you slide track that winds its way down the hill. Its fast and fun and out of control and half the time you are going backwards. Marcus moved onto snow boarding and quickly regaind those skills he had developed in Australia. Chris, Dan and Jemma don skis and get in some skiing. Later Chris trys snow boarding and megan and I and Jemma try tobogganing. Tobogganing is fast and fun and has only marginally more control than tubing.
In the middle of all this Dan gets sick and vomits into the snow. He spends the rest of the afternoon sitting on a tube surrounded by our bags. He drinks some more water and throws it up sometime later too.
Around 3pm, we hand back the skiis and make our way inside. I take Dan back to the visitors centre and get him to lie and sleep on the floor of the self serve restraunt. I then go inserch of the rest of them and find Jemma sitting in the tunnel at an intersection where there is an elevator to the Sphinx. This is an observation tower another 100m further up on the peak of the mountain. Megan is up so Up I go but she was coming down as I went up so I missed her. The Sphinx was fogged in so I came back down and eventually located everyone having hot cocolate in the cafe with Dan sleeping on the floor beside them.
We then went and had a look at the ice palace. This is a set of tunnels dug this time in snow / ice and inside these tunnels are ice carvings. Freezing of course. Found a door to the outside. The weather has closed in. Took a quick photo. The wind blew and we Slid around grabbing for the rope at the side of the path. Gave up and retreated to the relative warmth of the tunnels.
At around 5:30 we hopped on the rack train to begin our journey home. After we come out of the tunnel, we are greated by more of the picture postcard scenery. There is just so much of that that one can take. More train changing as we get to progressivly bigger and faster trains. In one, Dan indicates he is going to be sick again. I struggle with a toilet door but cant get it open so Dan explodes on the floor. Lucilly its mostly water. The rest of the family move upstairs while I clean up the mess. It turns out this is a first class carrige and we only have second class tickets but we are too stuffed to move. A ticket inspector arrives and establishes that a nearby group of Asians also has second class tickets and they seem to have lost the ability to speak english and are not getting that they need to pay an upgrade fee. I send marcus off to find Megan who has all our cash. A second ticket inspector arrives from the other direction. I decide on the opposite approach to the Asian crowd and retain my ability to speak english and explain that we just established that it was first class and that I guess we will have to pay an upgrade fee. Marcus arrives back with the money and the fellow just wanders off and says make sure you are in second class next time. The first ticket collector then seems to give up on the Asians but makes them move to second class. We figure that we will just stay put as we are only 10 minutes out of Bern anyway.
Finaly around 10pm snuggled up in bed absolutely stuffed.
And all that snow fun in a pair of KT26's
No comments:
Post a Comment