TUMBLE DRY LOW • TRAVEL ADDICTIOn • Switzerland

We spent the night at Luzerne, at one of our favorite places of lodging: the Bed and Breakfast, run by a wonderfully friendly woman who spoke English and put us at ease. We splurged on the junior suite room, which was a huge space in the attic, and breakfast was stunning: yogurt, cereal, fruit, eggs, wonderful breads, fresh jellies, fruit juice, and fruit. If that weren’t enough, the night before we feasted on a tower of beautifully presented Indonesian food at Gado Gado (Obergrundstrasse 19, 6003 Luzerne, Tel. +41 41 210 2010), a newly opened restaurant just a few blocks from where we stayed. I wish we had two nights here, to explore Luzerne’s medieval center and its medieval town wall. But instead, we just had about 1 hour from when we left the Bed and Breakfast and had to catch the train—so we put on our packs and raced across the city, thinking this is great training for the Alps. We sped through their reconstructed medieval covered bridge, sped through the medieval downtown, climbed a few flights of stairs to the watch tower (Schirmerturm), heard bells ringing out as we gaped at the view (mountains in the distance over the lake). We had about 15 minutes to appreciate the sounds and all the old history around us, then we ran back downhill to the train station to catch our train to Engelbert.

Today was our first day of hiking, and I felt I was dreaming, after planning for this for nearly six months. The weather was sunny and clear so we would have pristine views. A fern had descended upon the Bernese Oberland, we later found out, keeping the rain away and making it at times overly hot—75 degrees F or so. The scenery, as we pulled away from Luzerne in the train, was unbelievable. The mountains were still new, so we fully appreciated them.

The moment we got off the train in Engelbert and started hiking towards the lifts, people started telling us ‘Grutsi” (the Swiss hello) or what sounded like ‘Grutsi mitgonommen” (which we’re still not sure what it means), which was really hard to respond to when you’re concentrating and also can’t really breath from the ascent.

The cable cars we would take continued all the way up to 10,000 feet—our first clue that hiking sure was different here in Switzerland. At Mt. Titlus there, they had an assortment of odd touristy things, like a revolving restaurants, or bungee cord jumping. We decided to take the lifts only up to Trubsee, and then would hike up from Trubsee to the Jochpass (Mt. Titlus was a little out of the way anyhow). Our first lift was definitely nerve-jarring—I didn’t realize the little bubble we sat in would rock so much, or be so hot because of the sun pouring through the windows!

There was a second lift we could have taken, the Jochpass chairlift, but we wanted to get something of a climb in, to limber our muscles. It was relentlessly uphill, and hot, and in the sun, and crowded (though most people seemed to be coming down!). But the newness of climbing, and the scenery, and the widening overlook below us made us sometimes forget the shadows of the chairlifts that passed over us every so often. And to reach the first pass of our adventure on foot…that was an incredible (and sweaty!) joy. We stayed at the top for a little, watching a Swiss pair of men beside us break out wine (who in the US hikes up a mountain with wine!), and watching groups of younger people who rented mountain bikes roll at alarming speeds down the mountains. We were rationing cliff bars (I only brought 5 from the US), but this seemed a worthy point to break out a peanut butter flavor and celebrate.

The remainder of the hike to Engstlenalp was pure pleasure – the sun had lowered and didn’t beat on us quite so hard, and a gradual downhill, no hikers on the trail, the new silvery spiky wildflowers to admire and some purple flowers, all nameless (I wasn’t expecting to see any wildflowers in September, so every flower I saw was a treat). It was perfect. We saw a few fisherman at the edge of a beautiful lake, and we even spotted our first wild life, a beaver-like creature (Harold thought it was a marmot, I wasn’t sure) running away from us, and two crow-like birds. We heard our first the cow bells, which reminded me of church bells, a sound that seemed right for these mountains.

And then…we arrived at Berghaus Engstlenalp. Sure, we had to circle the building 1.5 times before we figured out how to get inside (walk past the people eating on the deck), but what a pleasurable place! Despite the detailed descriptions of the Berghauses in our travel books, I was expecting them to be quainter places, the rooms small and rather old and historic. Some certainly were like that—but our room was modern, clean, huge, and warm, a view of the mountains from the windows. Trying to conserve money, I had told my reservation-making husband Harold not to get rooms with private bathrooms—but he got rooms with private bathrooms, and after a hard half day of hiking, was it ever worth it to take as long a shower as you wanted.

I’ve never been any hotel (okay, except the one night I spent at the Banff Springs hotel for my honeymoon) with such a perfect view—the Swiss don’t put window screens on their windows either, so it was like the mountains were in our room with us. The crowd was a typical Berghaus crowd—non-English speaking (we rarely met anyone at these places who spoke English as a native language), Swiss and German generally 40’s, 50’s and 60’s. We’re in our late 20’s and were generally the youngest.

Dinner was ala carte off the menu—here I was introduced to the lovely Gemischtersalat, these little mounds of little vegetables nicely cut up—and with some fried cheese, it was a perfect post hiking meal. We still had the energy at this point to try and do all the ordering and payment for our meal in German. After dinner, Harold got in the habit of having an incredible amount of energy and wanting to go for small walks. I was feeling the slight soreness of the day’s earlier ascent, but we wandered around in a small way—to a bench giving the perfect view of the setting sun and of a lonely cloud that got trapped on the near side of a mountain. We spotted the cheese shop where we would buy Engstlenalp cheese (cheese is named after the place it’s made) and yogurt the next day.