Fussen...

Fussen was our last big city (well, it's not a big city but...) on our trip. From here it was back to Munich to head home. However, we had quite a trip ahead of us before that happened!

Getting to Fussen was an interesting experience. Since we'd spent so much extra time in the Lauterbrunnen Valley, we got a late start to Fussen which was an 8 hr train trip - with 4 changes! First few legs were fine - Interlaken to Bern, Bern to Zurich, Zurch to Buchloe but once we got to Buchloe things got interesting. It was very late at night and in this area they're not as used to tourist so German is pretty much all you hear. Buchloe is a little run down train station that really only services local trains, we were all eyes and ears and just hoped we grabbed the right train when it got there. From Buchloe we were to take a train to Kaufbeuren and then from Kaufbeuren to Fussen. We finally arrived in Fussen at 12:30am and realized that it was teeny tiny little station with 1 track. We also realize that once we were there, we had no map and no clue where our hotel was! All we had was an address. Fortunatley there was a map at the station and we took a pic of it with our camera. Unfortunatley, it was of little help!

We started off in the direction we thought was the right one and walked for about an hour and realized that we couldn't have been in the right spot. So, at 1:30 or so in the morning we walked back to the last McDonalds we saw and asked two young ladies standing out front if they spoke english. One did a little bit so we asked her to point us in the direction of the hotel. Thankfully she knew and was able to give us directions - however, they didn't make total sense, so we went inside and asked for a map. No one inside spoke english so we were using hand signals and my very very limited German:).

Finally we had our directions and started off. We had to walk thru a very dark street so I pulled out my head lamp and walking stick. Not that I think Fussen is a bad area, we just didn't know. We finally found our hotel and were hoping and praying that they had someone on staff to help us check in. They did, but he spoke NO english - again, we were down to hand signals:) Finally in the hotel room we crashed!

The next days plans were to walk to Neuschwanstein castle and take lots of pictures. What we didn't realize was that it was a 5 mile walk from where we were to the castle. Regardless, it was a nice walk and we had some nice views as we approached the castle. We'd not intended to take a tour but figured that once we were there we figured we should do it - how many times do we expect to be at Neuschwanstein?

After touring the castle and the surrounding area, we caught the bus back to Fussen and went searching thru town for dinner. We managed to stumble on a great little Italian place that had reasonable prices and big portions. After that we made our way back to the hotel room and crashed. We still had half a day or so tomorrow to hang out and sight see before we had to catch the train back to Munich.

The next morning we did some sight seeing and then made our way back to Munich - amidst a monsoon. The last day in Munich was uneventful. We visited the Hofbrauhaus one last time and then headed back early get some sleep - our train to the airport left very very early.

Lessons learned:
1. The S-bahn doesnt run from 3am - 4am for some reason. The U-bahn however, does. It starts running at 3:00am - perfect for catching the S-28 to the airport for our 7AM flight.
2. Print out maps and directions to hotels from the train before going to the city - or arrive in the city earlier than 1:30am:)

The Eiger...

Well, it was a miraculous recovery for the weather! The weather man was right for once and things did as they predicted. When we woke up at 3:00am for a bathroom break, the clouds were still hanging around and that had us worried. But at 7am when the sun started streaming in thru the curtains I grabbed my glasses and ripped them open only to be greeted by robin blue skys!

This day marked our last day in the Lauterbrunnen area and since it was the first day of good weather we had to make the best of it. Our intended itinerary was just to hike the mountain trail back down to Lauterbrunnen and hop the train back to Interlaken to start our journey to Fussen. But, with all the beautiful weather, we detoured a bit and decided to extend our trip and do the tourist thing.

The hike from the pension to the cable car was beautiful! We had perfect vies of the Eiger, Monch, and JungFrau almost the entire way. The skys were blue and the clouds sparse! We ran into a herd of young male cows that were entirely too curious for our tastes. They followed us around and blocked our path in a few places. Thankfully they're used to humans and move with a bit of prodding. Once to the cable car, we headed down and boarded the next train up to Kleine Scheidegg instead of out to Interlaken. We figured we'd take the train up and over to the next valley and then on out to Interlaken. That way we get a good view of the Eiger and the rest as we ride the train.

Well, at the Wengernalp station, the view of the Eiger was so amazing that we just had to get out and have lunch. We sat on a brick wall overlooking the hiking path and looking directly at the Eiger, the Face of the Monch, and the shoulder of the Jungfrau. After lunch we just couldn't get back on the train, we wanted to hike the rest of the way to Kleine Scheidegg - about an hour. We arrived at Kleine Sheidegg and found that we had about 30 min until the next train left so we just wondered around and took picks. This station was the launching point for folks going to the top of the Jungfrau via train (about 100 Eur round trip from this point - and something like 2 hours). We didn't have the funds nor the time for that so we hopped the train back down to Lauterbrunnen and then Interlaken so that we could catch our train to Fussen.

Now, that was a trip that was interesting - to be told in my next entry.

Lessons Learned:
1. Sometimes it's okay to do the tourist thing - taking the train up and over was the best decision
2. Be flexible - we'd planned on taking the train the entire way up and over but decided to hike - another great decision!

Blumenthal...

So, after a few days of just sitting around in the valley and waiting for the weather (and the food poisoning!) to clear we finally decided that come hell or high water, we were going to stay in a mountain hut even it if meant we had to hike through the clouds to get there. So, after a quick stop at the tourist office to make a reservation at our inn, a quick bus ride to the lift station and a lift ride up the cliff, we made it to the first of two stops for us that day - Gimmelwald.

Now, all the books and articles I read talked about Gimmelwald and how quaint and sleepy it was and they were totally right! Even with all the clouds moving thru it was cute and quaint and just an awesome place to walk thru. It's a working alp so there were farmers tending to their farms, cows, chickens, sheep, and the like on either side of the "street" (which wasnt really wide enough for anything but a tractor or golf cart. Now, it's built into the hill side so anywhere you walk you had quite the hike but it was so worth it. The pic above is of the hostel just off the lift - the Mountain hostel which is apparently a very popular place for young backpackers to stay as they hike their way around the valley.

Our destination for the day was up a bit higher outside of Gimmelwald in Blumental. It's definitley quite the hike up the hill but the pain was lessened by the scenery around us. The cows were cordial and the clouds that were running thru made for an ever changing set of scenery.

The above pic is looking down on Murren from our path up to Blumental

Lessons Learned:
1. Clouds don't always mean a runined day
2. Taking the trams up were totally worth it!

Lauterbrunnen Valley...

So, the clouds had socked us in and it was time to move on from Zermatt to our next destination - the Lauterbrunnen Valley. This valley would turn out to be our base camp for all activities in the Bernese Oberland. The original plan was to spend a day in the valley and the ascend the cliffs and spend the rest of the time hiking alp to alp and staying in mountain huts and inns. Well, the weather and food poisoning had other ideas which we'll get into later!

We arrived in Interlaken Ost to much rain. We wanted to walk around Interlaken a bit and find an internet cafe to check out the weather and figure out where we were going to stay that night. Interlaken is an interesting city and was much larger than I thought it would be. We had planned on seeing the lakes but they were so far away from where we were we decided against it. Instead we walked around town just to check things out and then headed back to the train station to catch our train into the Lauterbrunnen valley (another train that isn't covered by our Eurail pass - but is deeply discounted with it). Once in the Valley we dropped our packs and headed out to explore. We located the internet access, coop, and tourist info center and continued on down the valley to view some of the waterfalls (of the 70 odd falls they claim to have in the valley!).

As we reached Stechelburg we saw the boot with lavender above - it seemed to be a trend in the area. This one was at the post office/bus stop but we saw a number of others during our travels over the two weeks. At that post box there was a great place with all sorts of maps, hiking information and what not. We filled up on paper and continued on our way. One of the maps was a quick (or was supposed to be a quick) hike to three really nice waterfalls.

We decided to try to do the hike with the limited daylight we had left. After about a hour of going up and up and up we realized that we'd only made it 1/3 of the way to the first falls and decided that we're better off heading back and finding dinner (because it was at least a 3 hour walk back to town!).

On our way back we passed the Avalanche shelter above. Most of the valley had natural protections built into the hillsides and above the other towns, however, this area of the valley had very steep walls there they couldn't plant any tree breaks or affix any avalanche fences so they have to provide a place for folks to shelter in case there was an avalanche. These were every .25 miles or so for a while and were within a quick dash if one needed. Fortunately, it was summer here and there was no snow to be in any danger.

Anyways, the walk back to the hotel was uneventful. We capped our night off with some awesome fondue and a few beers (which, by the way, beers are cheaper than water in these places!) which was the perfect way to relax. We headed back to our room and just crashed. Hoping for better weather tomorrow!

Lessons Learned:
1. Internet connectivity at the tourist center is rip off!
2. The campsite at the edge of town has the best food prices - too bad it's an hours walk from our hotel.

Matterhorn Glacier Hike...

Well, today was supposed to be a bit of a rest day - small hike and recovery but we were wrong! After a quick trip to the Coop for Mark to get blister fixins and a short time for me to bandage up my poor feet, we were off and running again! The weather had come in as predicted so we were fighting with the cloud cover. We thought that if we went high enough we'd get above it so 60 CHF later we were on the cable car on our way up.

Well, there was no getting above this so we made the best of it. At times visibility was 50ft which made for interesting hiking but also made for really cool pics. The goal of the hike was to get to the base of the Matterhorn and walk along the glacier and back around to the valley. Well, the weather had other ideas. We got to a point where the trail was snow covered again and this time it wasnt passable (big cliff on the right, boggy glacial moraine to the left) so we had to turn around and come back where we came from. Fun part was that we got to glissade (kind of ) down a snowy part of the trail. It was actually quite cool!

Once we got back to the lift we had a few options to get back to the valley. Since we didn't buy a round trip ticket on the tram and we had a bunch of time left in the day, we decided to walk it. Clouds or not, we still needed to get down. The long way down consisted of walking from Scharwzee to Stafelalp then on down to Zumsee and Blatten. On our way we passed Zmutt which was a quiet little alp with lots of grass roofed houses. We even passed a reservoir that looks like a big bowl of milk!

We made it down just as the sun was setting which made dinner challenging but we did manage to find a place that served Brockwurst and typical Swiss/German fare (which by this time was getting a tad old:) )

Lessons learned:
1. You can still have a fantastic hike in the clouds
2. At a place the specializes in fondue - dont get the tortellini