Europe 2013: This Alp or That Alp?

September 8, 2013

For today's adventure, we sent the kids off to hang out with the grandparents, and Juerg and I headed off to climb a mountain.

After a fairly lazy morning (meaning we were on the road by 9, so late!), Juerg piloted the family van across the border to Kammen, where there's a cable car (I can't think of the right word -- those capsule vehicles which travel by hanging from a cable between two fixed stations) up to the top of the mountain.

We had an interesting discussion running the whole day, on a variety of topics, typically revolving around employment and vacation differences between countries, the upcoming election and politicians, cars and desire for material possessions, marketing to Europe vs. marketing to the US, you know, the usual small talk. No decisions reached or changed of course, but it's interesting to get a viewpoint from a completely different direction.

The ride up the cable car was enjoyable, and we got an increasingly broad view over the Rhine river valley, where it empties into Lake Konstanz. The city borders were clearly visible, with broad bands of farmland between cities. Rivers ran through the centers of towns. I felt a vague desire to play tilt-shift games with some of the photos to make them look like miniatures.

When we got to the top, I felt an odd mixture of surprise and complete lack of surprise to find a nice restaurant hanging out over the edge of the cliff, with the best view of a sunset ever. We spent some time discussing the current topic (employment and vacation, I think) while looking out over the view, then we headed for the trail.

We didn't really hike all that far. Maybe 20 minutes each way, although that did include at least a hundred meters of elevation gain going one way, and maybe 20 the other. We passed between outstanding views of the valley floor and outstanding forest pathway. My head wasn't on quite the swivel it was yesterday driving through the Austrian Alps, but I was definitely keeping my eye open for good pictures.

One thing that I always forget about the Alps (all two times I've been here now) is that this is a country which is thoroughly civilized. I'm so used to the standard of US hiking: utterly wild country, where the largest nod you'll get to civilization is that the path is generally kept clear of fallen trees. Here, we were nearly 1000m up on a steep and forbidding mountain, and the paths were two meters wide and covered in gravel. There was a Gasthof (for our purposes, a restaurant) sort of randomly arrayed 10 minutes' walk from the cable car end-station. On the way back down, we stopped there and had some drinks. Very civilized.

After our wander up the mountain, we returned to the cable car station to find a 30ish piece brass band playing oompah music, as is traditional for a Sunday morning. Kids perched on the roof of the playground's little hut behind the band to watch them play. Waitresses lazed a bit sullenly in an open spot in the overhead walkway. It was surreal and amusing. I took a picture.

Then we headed down in the car, starting with a vertiginous drop almost straight down before the catenary curve of the cable started sending us laterally across the landscape instead of toward it. The woman standing next to me in the car made an "oof" noise which suggested she was gently chiding herself for her own unreasonable fear at the car's movement. I took more pictures.

Our next stop was Lindau, an island that is apparently a hugely popular day trip with Americans coming to drink themselves stupid in Munich's beer halls. It's a pretty little island on which every building looked like it originated at least 400 years ago. Even the train station, which couldn't have been more than 150 years old, looked like it had been there forever. We did a quick tour, and ended up in a tiny Mediterranean restaurant where I debated ordering something healthy, and instead ordered the four-cheese penne with cream sauce. Health, schmealth. I did have a salad to start, but that's minimal solace to my quivering arteries. And of course we had ridiculously tasty cheese fondue for dinner. So, today was the cheese day (even more so than normal).

Lindau conquered (and photographed), we headed back by way of McDonalds (a convenient meeting spot, as Juerg had to meet with his graphic designer for a hand-off of materials). We just finished up the dinner with Juerg's brother and his wife, who were here to pick up their kids. Everyone's kids were apparently with the grandparents today for a big annual grandparents-spoil-the-kids-rotten day. Oddly convenient timing for me.

It's very interesting to listen to the Swiss German being spoken. The last time I was here, in 1996, I heard Juerg and his brother speaking together, and couldn't understand a word of it. I was vaguely aware that it sounded like it had German routes. Now, perhaps because of my recent work speaking German in Hamburg and Vienna, I'm actually picking up 10-20% of what's being said. Not enough to get the meaning of the conversations, but I can understand some words.

Swiss German is more or less a very heavy accent and modified vocabulary compared with German, from what I can tell. It's somewhere beyond the difference between unaccented American English and Cockney.

The forecast today was for rain, which fortunately held off during the day. Around 6 pm, it started to come down lightly, and now it's raining steadily at 8:15. The forecast is for scattered showers tomorrow, so I'll just have to cross my fingers and hope for the best. As long as it's not a day-long rain, I'll be ok. I guess I'll get to test whether there's water leaking into the tank, since the bike is sitting outside right now, getting some of the residual dirt rinsed off.

One unexpected minor complication today was that the power plugs in Switzerland are, like everything else Swiss, just a little bit different. So I'm not able to charge the camera batteries (not a big deal), and I couldn't plug in my tablet to charge (potentially quite annoying tomorrow, if the rain prevented me from running the charger). Fortunately, Juerg had an iPhone charger available, so I should start the day with a full battery.

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Created by Ian Johnston. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net.