Sunbaking in the Snow

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Today we've got our eagerly awaited trip up to the Jungfraujoch. It's overcast but not cold. Our tour bus picks us up near the station outside the ubiquitous McDonald's, which somehow seems a bit incongruous in clean, green, culturally sophisticated Switzerland. Our guide introduces himself as Kid, and he's from Burma, so maybe it's going to be an incongruous day. His accent makes him a bit hard to understand, but he seems to be very well organised, and Issy says that he's got rave reviews on TripAdvisor.

We head towards the town of Interlaken. There doesn't seem to be any shortage of tunnels along the route, including one five kilometre long monster. It seems, perhaps unsurprisingly, that Switzerland's very big on tunnels. We're told that the Gotthard Base Tunnel, which was opened in 2016, is the longest road or rail tunnel in the world at a staggering 57 kilometres. I'd always thought of Switzerland as a bastion of peace, but the army base we pass suggests otherwise. We're told that all Swiss men are conscripted into military service, generally when they turn 18. Initial training is for around 26 weeks and military obligations continue until you turn 34. The country maintains a policy of "armed neutrality". It only joined the United Nations in 2002, and has elected not to join the European Union. We pass several airfields. There don't seem to too many bits of flat land here, but we've noticed that every decent sized valley with even a moderately flat bottom seems to have a landing strip in it. There's a large net across the end of one of the runways. We hope that's not because it's not quite long enough, but we've got a nasty feeling that that might be exactly why. The water in most of the many lakes is a strange pale blue colour, and whilst they might look small we're told that some are over 200 metres deep.

We stop for a short break in Interlaken. Kid tells us that if we need to go to the bathroom we should go to Hooters Bar, where the toilets are free; he says we'll need to pay if go to the public ones. The name Hooters Bar sounds vaguely familiar. All the staff seem to be female and it somehow comes to my attention that they all seem to be wearing very short shorts. Hmmm. I remember now; I've seen Hooters featured in more than a few crass American movies. ... Yep, it's definitely a day of incongruity......

There seem to be lots of paragliders landing in a small paddock next to the main street. There's lots of buildings nearby, so I hope for everyone's sake's that these guys have perfected their landing accuracy skills. One of the shopkeepers tells us that this is all part of the lead up to the Interlaken Marathon, which apparently involves large groups of self-flagellators running most of the way up the 4,000 metre Jungfrau.

We head a few kilometres up a steep windy road and we're then shepherded onto a train for the next leg of the ascent. The trees disappear and all we can see above us are clouds shrouding the mountains. We reach the end of the line at somewhere around 2,000 metres. We seem to be well above any sort of regular civilisation, yet the station here's got multiple platforms, and the announcements don't sound a lot different to what you might expect in a station in the middle of a major city. It all feels a bit odd. We're shepherded onto yet another train, which takes us through a series of long tunnels under the infamous Eiger. We stop at another station up at over 3,000 metres. Kit says we need to stay here for a few minutes to acclimatise or we won't be able to breathe when we get to the summit. We're above the clouds now, and we get our first glimpses of the snow capped peaks through a large window in the side of the tunnel. Then it's back on the train again for the final push. We're guided through a series of tunnels and up a lift, and emerge into the sunlight onto a deck. The views are staggering. We're told that the Jungfraujoch is a saddle between the Jungfrau, and the only slightly lower Monch peak. There's snow and spectacular scenery all around us, and the Aletsch Glacier disappears off into the distance from in front of us. I'm glad we stopped to acclimatise. Even though we did, the air still seems a bit thin, and we're both feeling a tad lightheaded.

We're in the massive and space-age looking Jungfraujoch complex, which houses a restaurant and gift shop, and serves, amongst other things, as the train terminus and viewing platform. I’m giving my eyes a day off from contact lenses, so I'm wearing glasses with transition lenses for the first time. They turned really dark when we were outside and the sun was reflecting blindingly off the snow, but they seem to be a bit slow to transition back now that we’re indoors again. I can’t see anything, so Issy needs to guide me to prevent any nasty collisions. We head for one of the complex's other main attractions, the ice palace, which, as the name suggests, is a series of tunnels through solid ice. It's ridiculously slippery, so Issy's now got a very firm grip of my hand. I'm not sure I'm getting the best out of this experience - I can't see much and I feel like I'm at constant risk of falling over. I think the ice statues of penguins we pass might be cute. A man suddenly appears in front of me from an ice tunnel off to the side, well I think he does. I think he's trying to demonstrate to his partner that he can ice skate in his runners. He doesn't manage to do this particularly successfully; his runners get ahead of the rest of him, and he lands flat on his back. I ask him if he's alright, and whether he realises that today's Thursday. Issy tells me that I've just given the game away, and it might have been better instead to ask him if he knew what day it was, which is probably a fair point. Anyway, pedantry aside, he seems to have at least some idea what's going on, so we leave him to the care of his seemingly only mildly concerned other half.

We walk through another tunnel and out into the snow. Issy says that this is the very first time in her life that she's actually been in snow. We see people tobogganing further down the hill, and others are lying back on deck chairs looking like they're at the beach. Issy's keen to join the beach goers; she says it's very pleasant lying out here in the sun and that she'd prefer I just come and collect her when it's time to get back on the train. We walk back through some more tunnels and out onto more snow. There are now ropes all around us, and signs warning people not to go outside them or they'll fall down the mountain, which I suspect probably wouldn't end all that well. A lot of people don't seem to be taking a lot of notice. An Indian gentleman's taken off most of his clothes, and has wandered up the hill outside the ropes so that he can slide back down again on his bare skin. I hope he can reach around to his back to treat the frostbite. Another man's posing for silly pictures outside the rope near the edge of a precipice. Wait on .... it's Kid. ... hmmmm .. wasn't he supposed to be here at least partly to ensure our safety. It's ridiculously slippery and Issy and I hold onto each other to avoid falling over. I'm not sure this is a great tactic; if one of us slips we're now both guaranteed to take a tumble.

We go into one of the two cafes in the complex to get some lunch. The other one's called the Indian Bollywood, and, as we might have expected, it's packed with subcontinental tourists. Now that I think of it, most of the people up here seem to be Asian, and I now remember Kid telling us earlier that Swiss people don't usually come here because they think it's too expensive.

It's time to leave, so Kid musters his "team", for the return journey, the final leg of which is via a different route to the one we came up on. We chat to the couple opposite us. We don't quite recognise her accent. She introduces herself as Simona and he as Harry, and she tells us that whilst she's originally from Romania, they now live in Keilor in Melbourne which abuts our home suburb of Essendon. It sure is a very small world. They tell us that they're here nearing the end of their seven week honeymoon.

Meanwhile Kid's lost all sense of decorum. He opens all the train windows for everyone to take photos, and gets people to lean out so that he can snap them with their own cameras. He then starts dancing up and down the carriage flashing around the silly pictures he took at the summit on his iPad. It's a lot of fun, and it's now not hard to see why he gets such rave reviews on TripAdvisor. The views from the train up to the Eiger and the other peaks are again spectacular. We reach the village of Grund, and board our trusty bus for the long trip back to Lucerne.

We head to an Italian restaurant for dinner. We're too tired for meaningful conversation, but not it seems for flicking breadcrumbs back and forth across the table at each other. It's been a spectacular day.

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