Wanderweg

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The next day we hiked four hours on the “Wanderweg”, an intricate, mindblowingly well-organized system of trails through the region.

We traipsed through snow-covered hills, wooded forests, afternoon shadows and past Swiss of all shapes and sizes, some on skis, some with dogs, some with toboggans. Following at all times our "gelbes rhombus" - instead of our more familiar AT white blaze.

We had set our mind on a destination called “Egelsee”. I was thinking: expansive, still sea with waterside café and twittering winter birds. What we found: barely noticeable, still sea with weathered sign and: ourselves another 1+ hours walking from civilization (all of the trail distance signs were designated by hours, nary a kilometer in mind).

We found that civilization in some town, whose name we still don't know. The Wanderweg dropped us out in a small “dorf” or village, just one kilometer shy of a highway shopping mecca. Emerging from our temperature-dropping hillside adventure, we were relieved. Now we had to figure out how to find a bus to get us back to where had started, our cozy Baden.

Julien insisted I ask for help (against my normal travelbug ways), so I obliged and practiced my German a bit. The loveliest and most helpful of all was a woman and her daughter. The woman, outlined in blue eyeshadow, crimped hair and a bulky wintercoat, smiled and encouraged us to follow her to the bus stop. The girl in the meanwhile, pale and smooth-skinned, smiling from ear to ear, delicately repeated what her mother said, and then some, enjoying helping these foreigners who had fallen out of the woods and into her tiny village. I played the role - continuing to ask questions, allowing the girl a chance to explain with those matter-of-fact, pearly eyes of hers.

There were many more people along our trajectory to the bus that I “had to” ask directions of. Usually we were but footsteps from our destination, and my questions were greeted with either obliging bafflement or outright condescending brevity - pointing out the obvious markers right under our noses.

Before getting on the bus (which, runs every 30 minutes or so through these hamlets - on a Sunday! oh, the efficiency!) We found ourselves some croissants and hot chocolate (I gulped down an entire glass of milk, yes). We froze until boarding our bus which took only about 25 minutes to get back to Baden, but we were still impressed with our hike. Especially given the bitter cold we had not prepared for, and yours truly left her hiking boots behind.

I must say, I'd be game for coming back and hiking across Switzerland via the delightful Wanderweg, for though the signage does leave you to chance once in a while, the characters you meet along the way are worth the trek alone.

Check out these images of the Wanderweg: (sorry, haven't been using the camera much)

http://images.google.fr/imgres?imgurl=http://www.dirk.herz.ms/image/518112_9&imgrefurl=http://www.dirk.herz.ms/&h=320&w=240&sz=27&hl=fr&start=24&sig2=nDlAyzAmaS7rfMbuRD3frA&um=1&tbnid=KCge4hRoapRJNM:&tbnh=118&tbnw=89&ei=d09NR7uzFJLG0QTu_s3sDA&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dwanderweg%2Bswitzerland%26start%3D18%26ndsp%3D18%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Dfr%26sa%3DN

Back to Zurich.

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Photos

storybook 3
all lovely single family homes, like the ones we saw on our wanderweg - though these are smack in the middle of zurich