 |
Just as we were turning back, the
sun started to break through and we caught glimpses of freshly fallen snow
high on the Wetterhorn.
We also saw briefly, but quite clearly, Jo's first glacier. It's not shown here because it was dull and dirty what with George Dubya (& the rest of us) messing up the global climate 'n' all. More on this. |
Switzerland's glaciers melted by a record amount during 2003.
|
Nearby was an old chalet-style building so entirely built of wood that even the roof "tiles", overlapping to a depth of 4 x 1cm thick, were wooden. We pottered on down past a few similar buildings, each with its fabulous great log pile stacked under the eaves on the leeward side.
Despite nearly every dwelling seeming to have its own log-pile outside, in Switzerland I noticed only one very small area of that hideous clear-felling which is so common in Britain, Unobtrusive woodland management obviously presents no problem for the Swiss, nor the French either, come to think of it. |
|
We sat on the hotel terrace, (below the R in Jungfrau --->), and from several veggie items on their menu we chose Spiegelei mit Rösti, (two fried eggs on thickly shredded potato with chopped onion mixed in and fried). Very nice and unhealthy it was too. Oddly enough the waitress spoke no English.
Oh, look, there's the ring!!!!!!!! There too is part of the paper "place mat" on which our food was served. With permission we took our place mats and we have them here. Reality check 1: On the outskirts of Interlaken we shopped at a Migros supermarket. The staff wouldn't accept a Visa card. |
|
 |
Back at the camp site we watched
the E, M and even the J separately sneaking into view, (little sneaks,
eh?).
Here, hauled well in on the big lens, is the cheeky little Monk. |
Reality check 2: Our fridge was working too well and had frozen the French olive oil.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Next morning I woke very early with the beastly backache and the mizz'rable mozzy bites, (I mentioned those, did I? Yeah, the old ones, no new ones). I watched the sun coming up from behind the hills south of Brienzersee and striking onto the EM&J.
|
|
It slowly worked its way down into the valleys in the middle distance. Keep looking and you'll see all three peaks. These certainly aren't award winning photographs, but I can still feel that very special and, at that time of day, very private atmosphere of the dawn coming up. The brighter it became the less special it was and soon enough the joggers, tractors and mopeds started to interrupt my view. You won't be surprised that I took several more photographs though?
|
|
This one was later, of course.
|
|
<----- That water is falling about 400ft. In glorious sunshine, (not forecast until the next day), we drove back up to Lauterbrunnen and its modern railway station. I was surprised to find that the van was only 10cm too high to get into the multi-storey car park. Motorhomes were signposted to a free car park 1km away. For the first time I used my new steering lock bar.
We parked near to two t25 hightops and walked back to the station. I felt sorry for the East European chap trying in English to calculate the cost for him and his friends of a train trip all the way up to the Jungfrau Joch. The ticket office staff did seem to appreciate me trying out my very rusty German. Like many of the tourist-oriented folks we spoke with, they would allow you to stumble along for a while and then they'd continue in very passable English. |
