[🏔️ yodel ⛰️] Day 8: Schynige Platte and Grindelwald
Fellow friends, it is 6° celcius right now in Grindelwald. Yes, it is getting quite nippy. SD is outside on our balcony having a smoke and I'm inside writing. It's not very warm because we've got the balcony door open as some sort of natural air-conditioning but it's honestly more like a freezer. I think there is a small space heater in the room, and a larger one thats actually turned on. I never thought I'd needed this in the summer but this is Switzerland for you.
OK, I've been made to go outside and join SD on the balcony because he says "it's a vibe". So here I am typing furiously in the freezing cold, a slave to my craft and to my man. My UNIQLO Ultra Light Down is not helping with the cold. Not surprisingly, my space heater of a 2017 MacBook is keeping me toasty.
I'll admit, it is a vibe.
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We left Interlaken this morning after a haphazard breakfast of very sweet baked goods. Saw these in the supermarket yesterday night and how could I say no? I really, really, really love Ovaltine/Ovomaltine, even though the European name makes me think of eggs (ovo). The custard and berry jam pastry was delicious too.
Baggage storage at Interlaken Ost wasn't as straightforward as Lucerne. We took a queue number at their info counter, only to be turned away and asked to use the lockers. Luckily, they have humongous lockers (large enough for two 63L suitcases in a single locker) and there were a couple still available! The downside was that the lockers only take coins. We had some, but a bunch of other tourists didn't. Coins are a rare commodity in Switzerland, especially if you're paying for most things by card. We've been hoarding all the big coins (1, 2, and 5 francs) because they're great for things like toilets, laundry machines and luggage lockers. Keep lots of coins on you!
DOG INTERRUPTION:
He was on the bus with us and kept shaking his fur out. I love him.
The only way of getting up to Schynige Platte (other than hiking) is on their historical cog railway. We've been taking a lot of historical railways in this trip, because we're small transportation nerds. Small in the sense that we'll devour YouTube videos about modes of transport, transport routes, train journeys, tunnels, and anything else really. I particularly like Tim Traveller, who doesn't cover only transport-related stuff, but just really odd facts about Europe.
The old railway is a beauty.
Besides hauling people, it also transports waste back down from 1,300+ metres up in the mountain. There's a hotel and two restaurants there, so there is quite a bit of waste. I wonder how alpine sewage works.
The journey up took nearly an hour, which is slow when compared to other cog railways that we've taken so far in the trip. But as usual, there's lots to see. Like sheep! Which seem to prefer the shade. Alpine cows love the sun. They're always out there in the open. These sheep though were content chewing grass under the shade of the tree when we went up and descended.
Here are some views from the train. Some mountain huts (which I assume are for the cowherds) now have solar panels for electricity.
And this is what awaited us at the top. Look at those snowcapped mountains! We are in the Alps! This is THE Alpine view! A L P S in caps!!!!
It's Alpine enough that there's a bona fide Alpine Garden here, where they farm alpine plants and herbs. I am also, a small lover of plants (meaning that I know random things about random plants) so the alpine garden was a must-visit for me. In September though, most of the plants are struggling to stay green. It was nearly zero degrees up in Schynige Platte when we were there in the late morning and the area had a lot of perma frost. If you want to see the garden in full bloom, I'd recommend proper summer months like July and August. June might be still be too cold even.
Did you know that mountain hare = scheehase?
The Alpine Garden has interesting warning signs, which are super graphic and bewildering.
It took a while for me to figure out why the fuck an elephant's in the Alps, and then I realised that they were telling people not to trample on the flowers.
Obviously the larger-than-life hands mean that God will punish you.
I don't want God to punish me in a place like this:
Look at all that perma-frost!
They had these little signs all over, telling you what sort of plant you were looking at.
I can't believe we're up here. There were people hiking on that tiny trail in the left hand corner/
Chunks of perma frost, which were like little crystal pancakes. They said not to touch the flowers, but nothing about touching permafrost — so I touched them.
The plants are unreal! Sedum and other succulent-like plants still thriving in this cold.
The alpine garden trail went all over the mountain ridge, and I found it difficult at times to ascend and descend. The paths were basically rocks.
But I still tried to get up to at least half way! These glockenspiel bells were calling out to me:
There were higher vantage points that were too strenuous a hike for me to get to. Too steep and too cold.
We climbed back down to where the hotel was and explored a little.
By the time we were done with lunch (warm bowls of soup and a peculiar wurstsalad), it was mid- afternoon and time to head back down.
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And so here we are, in our surprisingly large room in Grindelwald. A much needed change from our tiny room back in Interlaken. We'll be spending 5 nights here, so we shelled out for a superior room with a balcony and a mountain view.
It's larger than our own bedroom back in Singapore!
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I'm going to call it a night. My battery's down to 5% and SD's run a bath for me. More from me tomorrow about our adventure from Jungfraujoch, the top of Europe!