I’m going to Grindelwald Not imminently, like; at the end of August. For the past month or so my family have been debating where to go for their annual walking holiday, and I have finally steered them towards going to Switzerland on the grounds of cheaper flights. I had actually hoped to go fly to Geneva at bargain basement rates, but my mother wasn’t having any of it So, now we are flying via Zurich for £165 return which is more than I wanted to pay, but nevertheless cheap for a return flight to Zurich with Swiss. It isn’t a budget airline, you do get food.

I am particularly excited about going to the Bernese Oberland. As a rule I wouldn’t have chosen to go somewhere so frequented by British tourists, but I am hopeful that by the end of the summer a lot of them will have gone home. I have been to Grindelwald before, several times, but only in winter and so it is hard to imagine what it will look like without a thick covering of snow.

We used to go there at New Year when I was younger, for winter walking. We didn’t used to stay in Grindelwald, which is an expensive ski resort, but in Interlaken, which was cheaper. It’s only a short train ride to Grindelwald from there though, and we used to go quite regularly to use the cable cars. There is one gondola called Männlichen, which is the longest in the world, and there is another called First which probably has the most beautiful view I have ever seen. I burned all the skin off my nose on First once, having gone up without sun cream by mistake, and half my face disappeared beneath an ugly blister which took a lot of explaining once I got back to school

Above Grindelwald sits Kleine Scheidegg, a tiny hamlet of four buildings directly below the infamous north face of the Eiger. The Eiger is, I think, the most inspiring sight in Switzerland. Or possibly the second most, if you’ve been to Zermatt and seen the Matterhorn, but I haven’t The mountain is, in fact, just below 4000m, and thus dwarfed by the Jungfrau and the Mönch, the other two members of the trio which makes up one of the most formidable sights in the Alps. Nevertheless, it is still awe inspiring to stand beneath the notorious Nordwand which towers for nearly 2000m in an uncompromisingly vertical manner above Kleine Scheiddegg. In German they actually sometimes call in Mordwand, because of the number of people who have died on it.

These days, of course, you can actually go inside the Eiger as part of the Jungfrau railway. This amazing piece of late nineteenth century engineering takes passengers from Kleine Scheidegg to just below 3500m at the Jungfraujoch by means of a steep tunnel within the Eiger Nordwand itself. This is officially the highest you can get by public transport in the whole of Europe, and it certainly beats the 50 bus Whilst most of the journey takes place in the pitch black of tunnels only a few inches wider than the trains, there is a stop partway up where braver types are allowed to exit the carriage and feel their way along dark labyrinths until they are confronted with the world’s most amazing window; a sheet of glass inserted in the North Wall of the Eiger, looking out to the valley beyond. The hole, and a second one higher up at the Eismeer, were blasted into the mountainside during the construction of the tunnel for the purposes of removing rubble. These days they serve not just as a useful gimmick for the tourists, but as a route by which attempts can be made to rescue mountaineers in difficulty.

It will be nice to go back to Switzerland I’ve enjoyed more recent walking holidays in Germany and Austria, but Switzerland is so much more organised. The trains are truly amazing and the food is delicious, even if the people do speak an incomprehensible language and everything is rather pricey. Having spent the weekend looking at holiday apartments, my mother finally booked one earlier in the week. It looks absolutely lovely, 122 sq m with no fewer than three bathrooms There’s been a slight hitch though in that she thought it was within our budget, then it turned out that she was quoted a price in Euros rather than Swiss francs because it’s let by a German property firm. Plus when I looked at the photos on the web it turned out the two main bedrooms have double beds, which is fine for my parents but slightly less fun for me and my sister who now have to spend ten days sharing

I’m totally not a fan of the exchange rate situation at the moment. Last time I went to Switzerland there were 2.4 CHF to the pound, now there are barely two. As for Euros, I’ve always done currency conversion in my head on the basis that a Euro is two thirds of a pound. Not any more it isn’t; as of this morning Oanda puts a Euro as worth 78p

CH, by the way, are not only my initials but also the country code for Switzerland, should you ever find yourself needing to know that in a pub quiz. It stands for Confederatio Helvetica or something like that, which is what the Romans used to call it I think it comes from a tribe of people called the Helveti, although I couldn’t swear to it…

It’s just occurred to me that I will be going to Switzerland much sooner than I expected, because it’s only two weeks until I go to Geneva I seem to be having a mental block which is preventing me from thinking of Geneva as Swiss, something to do with it being on the wrong side of the Röstigraben

Tags: Grindelwald, holidays

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 5:18 pm and is filed under Holidays and outings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.