Italy! Molto bene!

Finally we had to say farewell to the dramatic valleys and mountains of Switzerland and make our way to northern Italy. We caught the train to Interlaken, which was startlingly different from Wengen in spite of being only a dozen miles away as the crow flies. Interlaken had traffic, and dozens of shops selling expensive watches (but, as I discovered, not watch bands, although I did eventually find what I needed), and swarms of families strolling along eating ice cream...a fun enough place, I guess, but a very different atmosphere from the quiet, hiker-oriented, pedestrian-only towns we had quickly grown used to. But we weren't there for long: we picked up our rental car and hit the road, first time in a car since we used a taxi to get to the train station in Paris weeks before (and it felt like months). 

A few hours driving took us over, or rather through, the alps, and into northern Italy: the Valle d'Aosta, famous for its wines and its ski destinations.  We found a hotel in the city of Aosta itself, a somewhat down-at-the-heels place that seemed a bit unkempt compared to the places we'd been in Switzerland, although it still has a fine pedestrian area and we had no problem finding a good restaurant with homemade pasta.



Display at a restaurant in Aosta. Regional wines, cookbook, and a carving of an ibex.

 

We came to this area for hiking, and this display told us we were in the right place.

 The Bernese Oberland area (see our previous post) was gorgeous, but it didn't really feel wild: from every vantage point you could look down and see pastures with sheep, or little towns nestled in the valleys or hanging on the edge of a cliff. This area of Italy is different, or at least parts of it are: although the main Valle d'Aosta is quite developed and has large towns and major roads running through it, some of the valleys that run into it from the sides are much less developed, and some lead through national parks. That's why we came!

Juliet's dream comes true.

Our trailhead was near Champorcher, at a little place called Chardonney that doesn't show up on most regional maps. Unlike the wide, glacial valleys of the Bernese Oberland, with their spacious meadows, these riverine valleys are narrow; if you want a horizontal patch to grow crops or graze cattle, you make it yourself with hundreds of hours of backbreaking labor building terraces. A hard life, and not a rich one, and the towns of small stone houses reflect that. (Sorry, thought I had uploaded a photo to illustrate this, but I didn't, and I'm not going to go fish one out now. Take my word for it). 

In Chardonney we met up with our friends Hal and Brigitte, and set off on a three-day hut-to-hut hike in Mont Avic National Park and Gran Paradiso National Park. 

Climbing an old royal hunting trail. We marveled at the amount of manual labor that went into building this steep trail. Some of the individual stones must have weighed several hundred pounds; moving a single one into position must have been a massive undertaking. Moving hundreds? Mind-boggling.

Lunch break. The field behind us was aswarm with marmots. Unlike marmots we've seen in Yellowstone, the ones here are very shy. We think they are hunted, either for sport or by farmers who don't want their cattle breaking legs in marmot holes. But admittedly we aren't sure.

The scenery was, of course, stunning. Every now and then there was a little collection of stone huts, mostly abandoned although there are still some people living up here with their cows.

Lots of hiking routes pass through this area. We're following the triangle 2, one of the high routes that we could follow all the way to Mont Blanc (a.k.a. Monte Bianco) if we had time.

This little fellow wanted an apple or something, but we didn't want to spoil his supper. The building in back is part of the alpine hut system (you can see it's not really a 'hut'; the biggest ones can sleep 150 people!). We didn't stay at this one, which was only three hours out from our starting point.

Above the snow line! Brigitte made a tiny snowman.

Here's our 'hut' (on the left). We were the only guests this night, the very start of the season.



'Our Lady of the Snows', an attractive little lakeside chapel that looks like it's been there for hundreds of years. Actually it was built in the 1960s.





And here's why we were among the first people on this route this season. Shortly after I took this photo we ran into some very hard going, post-holing unpredictably as we tried to navigate a scree field that was covered by several feet of snow. It took us an hour to go the last 3/4 mile to the pass.



We did eventually reach the pass, and were glad to see that the other side was clear of snow.

We took time to smell the flowers.



It's all downhill from here. We hiked all the way down into the valley. 



 In the end we only spent the one night in a 'hut', because this day brought us to the little town of Valnontey, where we stayed at a very pleasant hotel. The next day we went out on a terrific day hike.



Brigitte and Hal were ready and willing to do anything and also happy to participate in the decision-making. Even the best of friends don't necessarily make the best traveling companions, but in this case we couldn't have asked for better. After several weeks in which Juliet and I only had each other to talk to, it was great to have friends around.

Although the photos show only us, in fact this was a popular trail and we saw dozens of other groups (whereas we were almost completely on our own the previous two days). Easy to see why, though: again there were dramatic views, and we saw chamois and possibly ibex. It's a great area and we could easily have spent more time here.

As you can see, this was a second consecutive 'we did this / we did that' post. We are soooo far behind (I'm writing this from Scotland, and we were in France for several days in between) that I feel like we need to catch up on the chronology before getting cute with the themes.

So, here endeth the tale of our three-day hiking trip in the Italian Alps. (Actually we did some more hiking a couple of days later, but that's another tale). Thanks for reading!

The Bernese Oberland

Several people have commented or emailed to let us know that you are reading our blog. Thank you! 

At the suggestion of our friend Hal, we are trying something new: stuff Phil writes will be in this purple color, and Juliet's will be in this red color. This way we won't have to keep saying things like "I (Phil) thought this was interesting..."

I know we can't expect sympathy for this, but we are having trouble finding the time to update this blog! We don't want to sit indoors blogging on a beautiful morning, so we get up, have breakfast, and go out to do things. Then there are logistics of traveling: packing and unpacking, trying to find ways to clean and dry some clothes, getting hiking maps, etc. And we've been so lucky with the weather --- I'm writing this on only our second rainy morning in almost a month --- that we have had hardly any days or indeed hours where we haven't wanted to be out and about. And by the time we get back to the room in the evening we are too exhausted to do anything more than critical emails and phone calls. We're busy people! Pity us!

Nevertheless, here we are with another update, and this one is a type that we have decided not to do very often: a "first we did this, then we did that" kind of post.  But we've gotta catch up a bit, so this post is just an account of our several days in the "Bernese Oberland" area of Switzerland. (We're writing it while in France, though, having been in Italy for five days in the mean time!)

Catching the train from Lauterbrunnen to Wengen

The gradient is much too steep for conventional trains, so these are "cog railways": the train has a toothed wheel/gear on the bottom that engages the cogs in the middle of the track. 

The area is spectacularly beautiful, and they go to great lengths to protect it. All of the parking at the train station is covered, and the parking garage has a grass-covered roof so you don't notice it from way up high. It really does make a difference, as we saw later in some towns with big parking lots.

To continue a refrain that you have heard already many times in our posts (we will likely become completely unbearable on this point, but nevertheless we will repeat it endlessly):  these countries really really value car-free areas, and promote fantastic train and bike and pedestrian transportation options, so you can get to and around nearly every area without a car (and easily.  On time.  Brilliantly coordinated connections. You get the idea).  In the Bernese Oberland, we stayed partway up a gorgeous mountain below the Jungfrau, in a ski town called Wengen (site of a notoriously difficult World Cup ski event every January - more about that below).  The town is entirely car-free, with the exception of little golf-cart-like vehicles and a few jeeps that year-round residents use for hauling stuff. Across the valley, there's another town just like it (Murren); in both cases, you take the cog train or a gondola up, and then you are blessedly free of car noise, fumes, parking lots, etc. - and left instead with glorious green meadows, wildflowers, and trails to explore and enjoy.  Bliss.

Told you it's spectacularly beautiful! The whole area is a UN Natural Heritage Site, a designation that we've found to guarantee that it's a great place to visit. (We could never do this in the U.S. because, by law, we don't allow anyplace to be a UN Heritage Site of any kind unless 100% of affected property owners agree to the designation. The only Heritage Sites in the U.S. are government-owned, such as National Parks.)

The railways go right up to the high mountains, far above the tree line. That mountain in the back is the "Jungfrau" (The Virgin). It's right next to the Eiger ("The Ogre") which is far more famous in the U.S., but in Switzerland it's Jungfrau this and Jungfrau that. 

You can take the train right up into the very high mountains; you can also bike (as Phil did) or hike (as Juliet did). 

We met up at the mountaintop ski area of Kleine Scheidegg, just a half mile from the base of the famous North Wall of the Eiger.  I posted a photo of the Eiger on Facebook and jokingly commented that Juliet and I were about to attempt to climb it...and some of my friends believed it! Click the "Eiger" link in the previous sentence to see how unlikely that is, even if we were climbers!

Hiking in the Swiss Alps (and then the Italian Alps this past week) has highlighted some key things about Europe.  

First, trail-routing is based on the "shortest feasible distance from A to B" approach.  So the whole idea of designing gentle switchbacks to ascend and descend mountains is not seen as a necessity in any way.  Convenient if it happens to exist naturally, but definitely not an obligatory trail construction goal.  This is excellent both for aerobic conditioning overall (critically important when juxtaposed with the nutritional/dietary choices prevalent in this region, as you will see below), and for maintaining a very very tight tush.  In laymen's terms, the mountains below the peaks of the Jungfrau (Swiss), Gran Paradiso National Park (Italian), and Matterhorn (Italian side), have kicked our booties into prime shape.  Speaking from a woman's perspective, this is the achievement of a lifelong dream.  I think many of you know what I'm talking about.

Second, hiking poles rock.  We're now addicts.  Why we never used these before on a regular basis is beyond me (perhaps because in the US we do employ gentle switchbacks), but the Swiss and Italians really know their stuff on this score (Phil's mother, Mary, gave us some terrific ones a number of years back, but they were stolen when our car was broken into eat a state park in the Bay Area.  Never replaced them.  Until now.).

In Wengen, where I purchased my pair, I received a detailed instructional lecture by the salesperson on exactly how to use the poles (proper positioning, hand entry, weight distribution...seriously), including required practice of these various techniques, until he was certain that I was adequately capable in employing them (potentially somewhat frightening in his rigor on all this; he was genuinely earnest about ensuring my proficiency, but at moments his face registered grave concern at my lack of basic hiking pole knowledge.  I'm thinking, "What if I don't get it?  Will he refuse to sell me the poles?  Will he keep me here until I meet Swiss standards?"...probably more pressure than I've ever felt in a sales transaction).  

Finally, (and maybe most important): hiking up and down vertical alpine trails has tremendous caloric benefits. Which is good because for starters, the Swiss and Italians eat (and serve) more cheese and chocolate than we would have imagined possible.  Might I venture to say that rich food in general is highly prized in this region.

This is a big pan of "Rosti" being cooked. At this point in its preparation it's just like hash browns.

...And here's the finished product: browned potatoes covered with cheese and fried eggs. Under other circumstances it might be kind of gross, but after climbing from Wengen to Kleine Scheidegg it's absolutely awesome.

Hills never look steep in photographs, it seems. This is a spot on a famous downhill ski race route,  the Lauberhorn. Or at least it's supposed to be famous if you follow downhill ski racing. Anyway, trust me, it's very steep indeed...and the route goes through that 15-foot-wide arched bridge off to the left. Supposedly this bit is terrifying even to the professionals.

Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, we can show you the "ideal line" for the skiers.  Well, actually it's not modern technology at all: Ten or fifteen years ago an artist named Daniel Zimmerman laid out thousands of wooden slats along the ideal line, and photographed them from various locations. You can now stand at some of those spots and look through a viewer at his photos --- or, in this case, you can stick your camera into one of the viewers and take a picture. Actually you should check out his web site about it, it has much better photos and you can see how steep it is.

The area is a popular one for all kinds of thrilling sports, such as whitewater rafting, climbing, and "paragliding".  This pilot is laying out his wing, getting ready for launch. In fact, he's about to take me for a ride!

And here we are soaring over the cliff. Remember the James Bond film in which Bond is on skis, being chased by enemies with machine guns, and he skis off a cliff and parachutes to safety? That was here. Very popular spot for BASE jumpers. 

We took a gondola almost all the way up to the paraglider launch point, then hiked up from there (with the pilot carrying the gear, a good workout for him, which he does 4 to 8 times per day).  On the way up, he told me about a client he'd had two days before. The guy was rather nervous, and kept reiterating that he wanted a safe, quiet ride with no tricks. Fine. As they were about to get on the gondola to go up, the pilot looked up and saw a BASE jumper in a wingsuit jump off the cliff. The pilot pointed him out to his client: "look, look, he just launched".  Then client looks up and sees the guy come zooming down the cliff, then use the wingsuit to angle himself out in the valley to where he'll deploy his chute...except his chute doesn't deploy, he just disappears into the trees. The client freaks out. The pilot, thinking fast, says "No worries, no worries, that guy was an expert, went into the big airbag they have over there." The client is somewhat mollified but still shaken. They get on the gondola to go up for the ride up to their launch point, and while they're on the way up a helicopter comes flying up the valley and lands near where the jumper had disappeared. Client freaks out again: "You said he went into an airbag, why did they send a helicopter?"  Pilot says "Oh, these rich guys, they don't like having to wait 45 minutes for the gondola, they have a chopper pick them up down below and bring them back up. They'll do it all day." They eventually got to the top and did their nice, safe paraglide. The pilot doesn't know if the client later heard that yes, the jumper had died. 


(I know, it's a bit macabre to tell this as a funny story, when it involves someone dying. Sorry.  They don't know what went wrong. Best guess is that his drogue chute was caught in a bit of turbulence behind his body so it didn't do its job in time; the drogue chute was deployed but the main chute wasn't). 


Other than the one paragliding adventure, we stuck to hiking and biking. Lots of hikes with great scenery, and we even saw some chamois.

Lots of hiking and biking routes too. The signs all give time estimates rather than distances, which makes some sense because "5 km" wouldn't tell you all that much: it can take two hours to go that far if you're going up a staircase-like trail such as the ones Juliet mentioned above! In fact, one of the "2 hour 30 minute climbs" goes to the upper end of a gondola ride, and if you do it in under 1:30 you get to ride down for free instead of having to pay $25. 

And here's Juliet on the steep climb mentioned above, although not at the really really steep part yet. We did not try to do it in 1:30, and would not have made it if we tried.  

Although this doesn't fit with the narrative above very well, I just had to include it. This is not a bear, it's a dog. He's waiting for the train, like us.

Phil goes uppity up up, he comes down diddly down down

Our only fan seems to have abandoned us, given the lack of comments on these posts. Perhaps that's understandable, considering we're only updating the blog a couple of times per week, not really enough to keep people coming back. But what can I say, our days are packed and by the time we get to the room at night we just want to go to sleep...and then we get up in the morning wanting to get up and do stuff.

But here's a very short post about biking in the hills along our route.

I (Phil) and a friend (Hal) intend to ride one of the stages of the Giro d'Italia next week. After a long flat section, that route has two "category 1" climbs, so I could not get in shape for it just by riding along the Danube bike path. I did have a couple of opportunities to work climbing into the daily riding, as in the photo below: where the main bike route follows the Danube (off in the background there) in a big curve around some hills, I came up the hill to a monastery, then down the other side. The load on the bike made this a bit of an extra workout.

Another opportunity came up a couple days later, outside Vienna, where a castle looms over the town of Visegrad. I got up in the morning and rode up to the castle...a good steep slope to get the heart pumping, but only about 15 minutes.  Which was fine, since I had a full day of riding ahead of me towards Budapest.

It wasn't until Zurich, after the Danube portion was done, that I had time for a multi-hour ride without a load on the bike. I stopped by a bike shop to get advice on where to ride --- I wanted a 3-hour ride with plenty of climbing --- and was a bit nonplussed to find that they couldn't suggest a ride for me. "Don't you guys ride?," I asked the guy at the counter. "A little," he said with a shrug. But he did point me towards a park just outside the city, where there was a labyrinth of interconnected fire trails, gravel roads, etc., some of which were so steep and/or gravelly that I had to push the bike up some sections. This led through some beautiful scenery, as you can see from the photo below. After I descended from the park I had about an hour of road riding.

Returning through the outskirts of Zurich, I encountered a signal of a type I wish we had at several places I ride near Berkeley. The road that I'm on continues straight ahead, and another road T's in from the left.  If you're in the bike lane at the far right side of the road, there's really no reason you should have to stop here: you aren't interfering with traffic entering from that other road. In the U.S., you either break the law(but with no risk of an accident) by continuing, or you stop just because you're supposed to even though it makes no sense.  But at this intersection outside Zurich, the bike lane still has a green light! Berkeley has very good bike infrastructure by the standards of U.S. cities but we are way behind most cities and towns that we've run into so far on this trip.

As I write this, we are now in the Alps above Interlaken (staying in a town called Wengen), and I've gotten out for a couple of good, grueling rides here too. I'm not really in shape to enjoy riding two Category 1 climbs as part of a 120-mile day, as Hal and I will try next week if weather permits, but at least it's something.

When Gnomes (& Other Tchotchke) Dream, They Dream of Austria

Three weeks on the road, dear readers, and we're thinking that day-by-day trip diaries may start to get a bit boring for you.  And timing seems ripe; though we don't like to generalize, we're seeing some clear patterns in our travels, whether in country character, food tastes, signage, and more - so I (Juliet) am making a radical editorial call here: thematic posts.  Just to shake things up, you know...  ;-) 

And I believe that there is possibly no better way to leap into the fray than with a photographic essay on....gnomes.  Garden tchotchke, if you prefer.  And frankly, lots of other tchotchke. 

Austrians really really like tchotchke. Adorable, colorful, cute, and occasionally somewhat bizarre tchotchke of all sizes and shapes. Gnomes are right at the top of that list.  It's a fair guess that we saw more garden gnomes on our Danube biking trip than we've previously seen across our entire lives. 

Diversity is very important in Austrian garden figurine choices.  Note the wide array of tchotchke typologies present in just this small sample. 

Just your average gnome.  And why, we have a pig, too.  Apparently pigs are a common form of gnome transport.  We had no idea.

How did this fascination with Austrian garden figurines all start, you may ask?  See we were happily biking out of Passau, enjoying the wooded bike path, some open meadows, the charm of the Danube river on our flank...and then, oh my...oh yes...screeching halt as I pass by the Gnome Oasis. We're not sure this is it's real name, but we're pretty sure it should be.

A very very small section of the garden. I think you can count up to about 20 little garden figurines in just this one photo.   Don't forget to include the ones in the windows, people!

Phil was very taken with these mole miner representations, positioned as a small, elegant grouping among the more traditional gnomes.

Gnomes with pointy hats are barely scratching the surface of the imagery here.  

We're not sure what the origin of these amphibians is, but they showed up an awful lot on our trip.

 
For example, we spotted these nearly a week later, but clearly there's common ground here.

Contemplative gnomery. 

This is really the last place I was expecting to see Laurel and Hardy. 

And by god we MUST have gnomes with windmills.  Together.  Because you really really can't create an image more trite than that one.  

OK, gnome with smiling happy garden snail; that's close.  But I still say the windmill collection wins.

And no garden would be complete without the requisite ducks.

Now I know you're all thinking, "hey, so one huge gnome garden.  Maybe it is the garden where every tchochke in Austrian history is represented, but is that really such a big deal?"

In response, I give you the Melk accordion museum.  Yes, there is a museum for accordions (which is kind of cool, as you can see in the amazing display below), and I thought this would be pretty awesome to visit from a musical/historical perspective.

Accordions from many different decades.  For those who might be wondering:  Austrians are often depicted in illustrations and movies playing accordions, usually wearing Austrian hats, knickers, and vests.  This is not how Austrians actually appear in real life, but they do have a strong accordion legacy, it is true.

The detail on this piece is exquisite.  A labor of love to build an instrument like this.

Again, mesmerized by the workmanship displayed on the shelves in front of me.  Made the mistake of turning around to see more...Ok, we're back to gnomes and tchotchke, people.  Cases and cases of gnomes and tchotchke, and -  I bet you know where I'm going with this - ALL playing, yes, accordions!!!

For starters, we've got the clown-cum-accordion collection...

Oh but wait...SMURFS!  Praise god, I knew we'd been missing the smurfs.  And here they are.  

Bears, too - though I really liked the addition of the Disney-style mice to the left, and (more detail below)....

...yes, indeed, the singing (or in this case, accordion-playing) Disney birds.  Bambi is just a step behind, and Snow White will be following in a moment.

They had  several cases of clowns.  So here are some more.

And - sigh - a garden gnome.  Because you just can't build a home (or museum) without one.

Here's his friend, the clown gnome.

But it turns out that gnomes and garden figurines are just a small piece of the tchotchke scene in Austria. Same museum, same displays, and outside we get this... 

Contemporary, sophisticated garden-plus-accordion sculpture...

And we were totally charmed by this one-off, eco-based design on the corner of our ferry boat crossing to Ottersheim

Tanze in Linz, anyone? 

And here's Phil's Tintin motorcycle signage brought to life.

But here's where we start to get into - well - "less conventional" forms of Austrian tchotchke.  Say, perhaps, a new addition to your doll collection?

And hard to know exactly what's going on here (please do note the tightly-packed ball of baby heads to the far left)...

Aha...there's comfort in the familiar.  Another gnome collaboration closer to Vienna, on the bike trail - a welcoming, colorful sight for weary bike travelers!

Ok, so maybe not-so-subtle request for donations...

But how can anyone resist the cheery chipmunks or squirrels popping their cute heads out of the fake tree trunk?

Heee-llloo...uh...Ok, we saw one of these gnomes before, but I believe we have a whole new take on the innocent gnome angle.  Once again, Phil was fascinated...and felt compelled to photograph our favorite little gnome fellow of the whole trip, below...

...and if that image offends you, here's what the gnomes have to say about that: