Grindelwald
Most of our Alpine time was spent in the Austrian Tirol, only passing
through Switzerland on our way to other places. But in May 1994, for the Memorial
Day long weekend, we all took a family trip to Grindelwald, Switzerland, in the
Interlaken area. We began the drive down on Friday afternoon, and made it over the border
into Switzerland before stopping for the night in a quaint old inn by the side of the road
in Klein Andelfingen. I had calculated how much money in Swiss Francs we
would need, based on using the credit card fairly often, but this first place was out in
the boonies and didn't take credit cards, so most of my available Swiss cash was used the
first night! For the rest of the trip, I was trying ATM machines and looking for places to
change American and German money into Swiss Francs! We survived, but I didn't have a lot
of green folding cash of any country's currency in my pocket when we returned.
We arrived in Interlaken via Zurich on Saturday around noon, and drove
up one of the side valleys to Grindelwald, where we had reservations at a
hotel. Grindelwald is a popular resort town, famous for skiing in the winter and
para-gliding in the summer. As a matter of fact, the para-gliding World Championships
were being held in Grindelwald the weekend we were there, so we saw lots of crazy people
hanging in the sky all weekend!
View from the Cog Railway Car
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To our surprise, the hotel we had made our reservations in was under major
renovations, which helped explain why the price was so good. The renovations only affected
the first floor, where the bar and restaurant were, so we had to go elsewhere for our
dinners and booze! Once we had checked in, we walked to the train station. This train
station was like two train stations in one. One side had traditional trains coming and
going from the big cities around Switzerland and Europe. The other side had cog trains
that travelled all over the mountains in this region. We bought a cog railway ticket to
the Kleine Scheidegg, which is a switching station for a lot of the cog railways
that travel the region. It also is the starting station on the Jungfraujoch Railway,
a cog railway to the highest railway station in the world, at the top of the Jungfrau, one
of three major mountains in the Grindelwald area; Eiger (13,025 ft), Jungfrau (13,641
ft), and Mönch (13,448). |
The ride up the mountain to the Kleine Scheidegg was spectacular. There was
some serious rain clouds coming in once we got up to the Kleine Scheidegg, so we
only stayed up there about an hour, and didn't hike around like we had planned to do. That
evening we tried one of the traditional Swiss meals in this area, fondue. We got two kinds
of cheese fondue (one straight cheese, and one with bacon in it), and lots of bread cubes,
and some pickles and onions and small potatoes; all to spear and dip in the fondue sauce,
which was so hot it was glowing! We over-bought on the fondue, but we also decided
unanimously that it was too rich and too much cheese for a main meal. We would have liked
it better as one part of a more traditional meal.
Reichenbach Falls
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The next day, we drove down into Interlaken
to look around, but while we were there we had a torrential downpour, so rather than sit
in the car doing nothing while we waited for the rain to subside, we drove to the other
side of the Thün Lake to the town of Meiringen, where we visited the Reichenbach
Falls and the Sherlock Holmes Museum. In the last book in the Sherlock
Holmes series, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has Holmes die fighting the Napoleon of Crime,
Professor Moriarty. In the story, the two of them fell to their deaths from the top of Reichenbach
Falls in Meiringen. There is a fernicula up to the base of the falls, and a walking
path (or rather a showering path - you get quite wet walking beside a giant
waterfall) up to the top of the mountain where the falls begin. It really is quite a
spectacular waterfall. At the base of the fernicula there is a plaque and bust
commemorating Holmes' death, and in the center of the town is an entire museum devoted to
the fictional character! |
They have a full-scale mockup of his 22B Baker Street living room (tell me - how do you
do a mockup of something that never existed?), and a display of letters that people have
written to the famous detective, asking for help solving mysteries. That night, back in Grindelwald,
we had a more traditional meal - Italian - in a restaurant across the street from our
hotel.
The next day was Monday, so before we headed back to Stuttgart
we drove up to the end of the Grindelwald valley to take a 20 minute walk to the Oberer
Grindelwaldgletscher (a glacier) above the town. The glacier is one of two
glaciers that come within 800 meters of the town of Grindelwald. The
glaciers are no threat, since they have been retreating for many years, but this glacier
in particular has had a cave cut into it, and ice sculptures made inside. They call it the
Blue Ice Grotto, and it really is a rich sea-blue color inside the ice where the
sun can penetrate. We walked in to the back of the cave, about 100 yards in, where no
regular light penetrates. Even on this warm day it was cold and the ice was not melting
deep inside the cave. We spent the rest of the day driving back to Stuttgart
up the western side of Switzerland, up to Basel and home from there. |
The Blue Ice Grotto
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