Zermatt

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My first day back to Zurich I got in late and did no have a solid plan for what to do the next day. But I had mentioned to Anna Marie that I was thnking of the calanda and maybe the Matterhorn, and Jeffery was going out of town to Finland to watch ice hockey so my plans were in the wind. I woke with them having a stake in the ground. Anna Marie had looked at the weather and it was the last day Zermatt, where the Matterhorn is, was to be nice for a while. So I packed a day bag and headed real quick to the station. I caught the train to Visp where I meet Corina, she was a Swiss girl that worked in hotels and the season just ended for her so she was looking around her homeland. She had never seen Zermatt either. She was one of the few Swiss that spoke the fourth national language of Switzerland, it's called Roulch or something and it only makes up half a percent of the nation. So we switched trains to the only way into the. City of Zermatt where there are only electric cars! The trip in was beautiful. I could slowly see the alps and glaciers grow in front of me. Corina and I got off the train in the valley of Zermatt and had not seen the Matterhorn yet and were hopeing we did not have to catch another lift or something to see it. I turned a corner to see the great monolith above us even though it was miles away. We decided to do a hike toward it an see how far we could get. Along the way Corina pointed out everything we could eat. There were many berries and leaves to make tea out of. She grew up learning more about these things from her grand parents than most I learned. We hiked toward the rock obalisk having the best weather there was only a wisp of a cloud that formed on the point of the rock. I understand that the weather can really be a problem here so we really got lucky. We hike for awhile and Iust say Corina is quite the hiker, I was getting tired when she was roaring to go still. It was also fairly hot until we got heligh enough to get the glacal air. We made it to the small village of Z'matt. Corina told mehat the old houses, that were about 200 years at the oldest, could be told from the store houses by the rock pilars with flat rocks on the top to keep out mice and animals. We had a great view of the horn and started down. Corina caught a eairlier train and I continued for a short hike before hopping on back to Zurich. Corina invited me to come and hike in her home town of Brunnen if I was around still by the end of the week. I think I will be in Italy by then however.

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