Home from Europe

Wrapping up the Switzerland story... The day we tried to see the Eiger.

The guide books all said to wait for beautiful weather before heading to the mountains, so the first thing I did Tuesday morning was look out the window. Upon seeing scattered clouds and mostly sunshine, we took off for the hills. We set our GPS unit, affectionately named Betty, for the town of Muelenen so we could catch a tram up to Niesen, a peak nearby that was reported to have excellent views of the Eiger and surrounding mountains. After a few wrong turns on our part, the "scenic route," of course, Betty had to get a little creative and took us up a single lane grassy track that looked more like an under used driveway than a road. Persevering through our faltering faith in Betty, and not encouraged by the pedestrians' worried looks, waving hands, and unintelligible shouting, we eventually made it back to pavement and headed in the right direction.

In Muelenen, we caught a hundred year old tram up the side of the mountain. The track is so steep (66 to 68 degrees) the tram itself is built like stairs with multiple standing levels. The stairway next to the track, built for maintenance access, is the longest in the world with over 11,000 steps. It's opened once a year for a race and the fastest anyone has ever made it to the top was in just over an hour. Can you imagine running up stairs for an hour?? From the peak, the views were expansive in all directions. Looking to the northwest, we saw the town of Thun and could see the lakes along the north side of the mountain range. The Eiger was concealed in fluffy clouds that moved along quickly, but were quickly replaced. Even though we sat up there for two hours eating lunch (bread and cheese, of course), we only caught glimpses of snow fringed rock faces. Eventually we gave up and headed towards Thun for some lazy sightseeing before cruising back to Bern for the night.

Wednesday morning, we spent our time exploring Bern's historic old town. Bern was first built in the 1100s and a fire destroyed most of it in the 1400s, so what we could see was what had been rebuilt since then. The old town is nestled in large bend of the river that flows through and is full of neat restaurants and well known shops. As we headed back to Geneva, we stopped in Murten, which was a tiny, quaint version of Bern that was far more comfortable and fascinating. It's right on the border between the French and German parts of the country, so they literally have a French church on one side and a German church on the other. The old town is set on the shore of a lake and surrounded by a wall. We had dinner (Fondue!) in the oldest cave in the town, originally a wine cellar, and drank a white wine from the hillsides directly across the lake. After a long sleepy drive, we were back in Geneva.

Our last day in Europe we spent taking a tour of the UN, seeing where Warren had worked during his internship, and shopping. Meg and Warren took off for Paris to continue their travels just after lunch, and Zach and I wandered through Carouge, and found dinner in old town. I had the best dessert of all: pear sorbet in a pear brandy. Packing a bag full of wine, cheese, chocolate and Swiss Army knives, we ventured home the next morning.