Switzerland travel notes: our short vacation in Bernese Alps, plus more: Aletsch glacier, Mont-Blanc and Geneva. Part 2.
This is the second part of my travel notes about our short vacation in Swiss Alps in August of 2007. Click here for Part 1.
August 9, 2007. Meiringen: meringues and Sherlock Holmes. Aare river gorge. Trümmelbach falls.
The reports on TV the following morning were even more frightening. Roads, bridges and houses broken by sliding ground; swollen rivers and flooded valleys. The hotel's camping was completely emptied - it's no fun to sleep in and under water. We've checked which roads were closed - it looked like we could get out of Grindelwald and take a drive east from Interlaken, along the lake and further, to Meiringen.Meiringen is known primarily as the place where meringues, crisp cakes made of sugar and eggs, are coming from (at least that's what the entire town claims). My English dictionary says that "meringue" is a French word of unknown origin, but as every stray cat in the town will tell you, it's its name that went into that of cake. And the meringues are on sale everywhere in backeries:
Actually, we've learnt about meringues later, and went to Meiringen for another reason. Our ADAC travel guide said that there is a museum of Sherlock Holmes. Myself, and my wife, we've read so many stories about Sherlock Holmes back in our school years that we wanted to see the museum. The museum is situated in the small church you see behind the statue of Sherlock Holmes on the following photo.
If you wonder what is the connection between the Conan Doyle's hero and Meiringen, just read the inscription in the plate, on the photo below (click on the picture for larger version).
Yes, I even remember that moment in one of the films I saw (somehow I remember this in the film version better than that in the book). That was actually the episode in which Conan Doyle had to resurrect Sherlock Holmes. The story where he was thrown into the Reichenbach Falls by Professor Moriarty doesn't have a "happy end". But by demand of numerous readers, Holmes appeared in the next story, telling Dr.Watson about the fight and how did he trick the elusive crime professor.
Unfortunately, we arrived pretty early and found that the museum of Sherlock Holmes opens much later. We didn't want to wait - the small town doesn't offer a lot of other attractions, except shopping.
We could go either see Reichenbach falls, near the town, or drive slightly further to Aareschlucht - gorge of Aare river. We thought we may do both but after the Aare gorge we didn't feel we need to see the falls.
Walking path along Aare is built similarly to the glacier gorge in Grindelwald. But this path connects two entrances, both with parking. You can either go end-to-end and go back along the gorge, or take a forest path, as we did.
The path near the end where we parked, with smaller parking right on the road, is interrupted by stairs. We saw a family with someone on wheelchair coming from the other end - this is definitely the right decision - otherwise you have to turn back. The other end also has more parking lots and a restaurant.
The river was swollen with rain. Small waterfalls, that probably don't exist in good weather, were to be seen everywhere.
We've decided that our last visit in this part of Swiss Alps will be Trümmelbach falls - Trümmelbachfälle near Lauterbrunnen, that we could not visit the day before. We've bought tickets and were taken to the top on an elevator, elevator's shaft broken through the rock. You can go up by the stairs, and most of visitors go back down on the stairs, but I took the elevator again, not wanting to take the risk of going on slippery stairs with kids. I asked the guide and lift's operator how old was the place as a tourist attraction, and he said that all that was constructed about a hundred years ago.
The waterfall is actually a powerful stream that made its way inside the rock. The stream going from glacier was helped by additional rain water. Inside is pretty dark, in some places all sounds completely deafened by roaring water. I guess this is how would you feel inside of the hydro power generator. The Web page says that there flow up to 20,000 liter of water per second. I bet that during that rainy weather it was much more. The photo below shows one part of the stream but it's impossible to express this feeling on the silent picture.
Water was everywhere, with small streams flowing in the tunnels and on the stairs. I forgot to put another pair of shoes that were already wet, and ended up with the second pair all soaked with water. We understood then why some visitors had covered themselves head to toes with those plastic coats. We rushed to our hotel for dry clothes and socks.
August 10, 2007. Grimselpass, Aletsch glacier and going to France.
The next day we wanted to go in the direction of Geneva through the Goms valley that lies between Bernese Alps, where we stayed in Grindelwald, and Valais (Wallis) Alps in the south. At the bottom of south slopes of Bernese Alps lies village of Fiesch, where we wanted to take cable car to Eggishorn mountain and see the biggest glacier of continental Europe - Aletsch (Aletschgletscher).The sky was clearing, but the weather at the other side of Bernese Alps was worrying me. Our hotel had a computer with Internet for visitors' use, so I could check the weather conditions at Eggishorn. Webcam pictures were kind of discouraging, but we had to go to Geneva anyways, so we hoped that couple of hours later, the weather could change.
We had to go down to lake Thun and then east, where the road goes south, through and around mountains, to Grimselpass, elevation of 2,165 meter.
Mountains there are relatively old, but not so old to start to crumble, as those mountains we saw on our way from Gap to Orange earlier this year.
At Grimsel Pass, everything was under snow - looks like summer never comes here. Those who like eternal winter can stay at the small hotel overlooking a small lake.
The road down from Grimselpass is narrow and steep. There are no emergency stop "pockets" so I drove very carefully till we reached the valley. There, the road is pretty straight, with nice Alpine landscapes lying on both sides.
We've reached Fiesch shortly after noon. The cable car goes every half an hour or so. We've bought tickets, being disappointed that the Junior Card we had for our older son wasn't valid here, but this was helped by the girl at the ticket booth - she gave us a small discount for him. At the ticket office there is a TV linked with camera at the top. We've noticed it only on coming back. Was it before, we would probably drive away. But actually, we had a bit of luck, with sky half cleared when we were at the top.
The first cable car takes you to the intermediate station. There are many hotels at this level, so it's actually not that high in the mountains. Then, you take the second cable car to go to the top, elevation of 2,927 meter at the Eggishorn peak.
Aletschgletscher, the glacier you see as a white river in the middle of the following photograph, has the area of 115 km2 and is 25 km long. The ice is about 900 m deep at its deepest point and the glacier is losing about 10 meter of ice per year in its depth. Obviously, if global warming accelerates, by the end of the century, Aletsch will be gone.
If you look in another direction, you enjoy the panorama of Alps in the region where Switzerland, France and Italy meet. This is where Mont-Blanc is, that we thought about visiting the next day.
I've read in the travel guide (and on the Web) that you can take a hiking tour to the glacier. If you travel with kids, that would be sure difficult.
Getting back, we continued to drive west, and reached French border on Geneva lake (Lac Leman in French) in early evening. Somewhere on our way the transition from Swiss German to French happenned. This part of Switzerland looked like France: similar architecture, landscape and even French-brand supermarkets.
The border didn't look like one. Though Switzerland hasn't implemented the Schengen agreement yet, and on the border with Germany you have to show your ID normally, on the border with France it's completely relaxed, up to missing border guards office completely, as it's on the Geneva lake.
We stopped to look at the lake; this was near the town of Evian-les-Bains, which is known with its bottled mineral water. The lake was very calm, sun ready to set down somewhere behind the Swiss coast.
The hotel, as we found, was of the older style of Premiere Classe, no gallery but dark corridors instead. Well, it's only two nights here. For the next day, we planned seeing Mont-Blanc. And the day after - Geneva.
August 11, 2007. Mont-Blanc.
The day was starting with dense clouds, but we thought we'll try to do it. And this was right - clouds cleared one hour later, with shining sun that made us stop at a supermarket and buy sunglasses for our kids. The day before, on Eggishorn, the light was unbearable, though it was relatively cloudy with short periods of sunshine.We didn't take the tollway that goes directly from Geneva to south-east, to Chamonix-Mont-Blanc. We went first by smaller highways, enjoying the beauty of landscape around. At Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, which is the starting point for cable cars taking your to Mont-Blanc, there is a huge parking, where you can even stay in your trailer for longer if you wish.
Going up is not cheap of course, we paid about 110 Euro for two adults and one child (the youngest rides for free). And, unless you arrive really early, you have to wait for maybe 45 minutes in total, first to get the tickets and then for your turn for cable car. The company that is managing all that has a Web site with useful information but it's French-only.
Ascend is done in two stages. First, bigger cabine to the intermediate station and then smaller one, taking you to Aiguille du Midi - the end station. On the following photo you see one of those smaller cabins hanging above the valley.
Aiguille du Midi, "Midday pointer" in French, is a smaller peak that you can ascend with an elevator (price is not included in the cable car ticket) to have the real panorama of Alps. But we were quite satisfied by the panorama you get at the station. The difference in elevation is, I would say, about 50 meter.
Mont-Blanc is not some sharp peak as one may think of, knowing it's one of the highest peaks in Europe. You see it on the next photo. It's the mountain in the center, white under snow. Not that, with partially open rocks, but the one behind.
The light was not that harsh as we thought it will be, you can even survive without sunglasses there. Because you are assigned a particular time to go down, I could take many photographs without hurry. Those that I particularly like are below (click the images for larger versions). There were many alpinists going on the snowy paths. I think you can even descend down on your own without taking the cable car, but of course it's not for everyone.
August 12, 2007. Geneva.
That was Sunday, streets almost free. In Geneva, there are still border controls on selected streets. There was one French customs officer on the French side. When we slowly approached the Swiss one, he just said "Merci" seeing us. We went to the center, where we left our car in an underground parking. Actually, if arriving early on Sunday, as we did, you can leave your car for free on the streets.Our first impression of Geneva when going up from the parking in the city center: piles of trash. Trash everywhere. Oh my, we thought! But then noticed several guys with brooms and very sour faces. It looked like the day before Geneva had some big feast. And yes, there were countless pavilions around, almost all closed as it was too early.
We tried first to follow the signs pointing to the tourist information office, just to find that it's closed. But actually it was not the main tourist office. The main one was not far away, said the poster on the closed door, but we've thought we could do without. We went to see the streets around. On Sunday everything was closed, but I could confirm that there are lots of Swiss banks, boutiques selling Swiss watches, Swiss Army knives and Swiss chocolates in Geneva. If you don't trust me, look at this small shelf, one of a dozen, of just one boutique:
With my great respect for rail transport (though I can't say it's my passion, but sometimes it makes that much of fun), I could not miss to photograph a tram (streetcar) in Geneva.
We have little interest in urban architecture (though of course I have some personal preferences), so we didn't risk hurting our necks looking right and left. It was during our visit to Toronto in 2006 when things looked unusually. Geneva, at least those streets in the downtown, looks like most of other European metropoles. But some buildings (more exactly, decorations) were interesting. Like this painted wall:
When we went back to the lake, the feast pavillons were starting up for the new day. We went along the shore and then noticed that the street we arrived on was blocked. It looked like there will be some more attractions today. My first thought was about some marathon, but as we've seen soon, that was for the small rally of vintage cars.
It was quite hot a couple of hours later. We went along the lake, took some streets away from it and after a long promenade decided that the city, just like all others, is too tiring and we are ready to go further north, to our last hotel in France, in Mulhouse.
It took us the rest of the day to reach Mulhouse. We went past Basel, then north, and when in Mulhouse, it took me some time to find the hotel. We stayed there on our way south in April. Now, everything around looked different. Receptionist offered us fresh apples, and when to went to our rooms on the other side of the building, we understood why. There was an old garden with several apple trees. All that looked empty and still sleeping several months earlier. Now the big juicy apples were ripe, not those standard size you get in a supermarket, but real apples, making excellent complement to our snack dinner.
August 13, 2007. Going home.
The hotel was near a shopping mall, where I wanted to replenish my supplies of cider and buy some food you don't see everywhere in Germany (except you are ready to pay to be served in gourmet shops).The hotel in Switzerland where we were staying the first days, had some special cheese for breakfast, served in finely cut (actually, scrubbed) "roses", as you see on the following photo.
We've never cheese like that, and it was very delicious. I asked what the name was: Tete de Moine (Monk's head). The hotel lady said it's a Swiss specialty and told us how does it take this form. The cheese is put on a special device, with a spike going through its center and then scrubbed with a blade winding around the spike while being gently pushed down. The device is called "girolle".
We have found this cheese in the hypermarket near hotel and enjoyed it several days after our return home. And not only this one. We never miss buying our favourite sorts when we visit France. Have a look at my "Cheese obsession page" in the "Food" section to get more of our tasty impressions.
Part 1: Grindelwald, panoramic promenade Männlichen - Kleine Scheidegg, St.Beatus cave, Gletscherschlucht.