"Switzerland is a place where they don't like to fight, so they get people to do their fighting for them while they ski and eat chocolate." - Larry David

Since Seattle is always so sunny, we couldn’t wait to see clouds and got up early on Thursday as we headed to Lauterbrunnen, a little town in the Berner Oberland Swiss Alps of Switzerland. We arrived in the pouring rain and got lost walking to our hostel that was two minutes from the train station. Neither of us had umbrellas, so we were both in great moods. We checked into our hostel and got out the one thing that never fails to make us happy: food. We had a nice little lunch / Phase 10 tournament outside on the covered patio as we wished with all of our mights that the clouds would part so we could see farther than the green field in front of us. It was actually very peaceful until a crowd of about 40 Korean students also sat down in our area. As the ambiance changed from serene Switzerland to hungry Asian tourists, we decided to head out on our walk, rain or shine. 

Borrowed umbrellas in hand (mine a Marilyn Monroe beauty with only two metal spokes sticking out of her face and Whit’s was a knockoff Burberry that broke in half during our walk – that’s what we get for secondhand hostel wear), we decided to walk to Trummelbach Falls along the Valley Trail. We managed to get lost three times in Lauterbrunnen, a city that takes 10 minutes to walk from one end to the other. We also clearly had appropriate footwear with Whit’s canvas shoes and my tennis shoes sloshing against my socks with each step. 

The walk was beautiful. The clouds raised enough for us to see cows and then hills and then huge cliffs. There were waterfalls everywhere we looked. It was like walking along the bottom of a really lush and green Grand Canyon. I've never actually been to the Grand Canyon, but that is neither here nor there. 

At one point we stopped to admire a beautifully bright green hill. We talked about how peaceful it was and wondered what one could possibly worry about living there. Then we read the sign next to our favorite little hill, and apparently it was a landslide that had ruined and buried multiple homes. Relaxing. 

We made it to the falls, and they were unbelievable. There are 10 waterfalls inside the mountain, pouring from the three large peaks in the area. As we stood in line we wondered why everyone exiting was various degrees of wet. Soon we found out why.

First, we took a cog-wheel train thing up through the inside of the mountain. Then we walked up through the mountain to all of the waterfalls. It was so loud that we could hardly hear each other talk. Maybe a good thing after spending every minute of two weeks together, though. The waterfalls were unbelievably powerful, and the pictures don’t do it justice at all. We soon figured out why everyone was so wet given the heavy mist and dripping caves, so Marilyn came out to see the falls for a bit too. 

 

On our way out of the falls, we finally saw the tops of the Eiger and Jungfraujoch, two of the mountains that people generally go to that area to see. We took our pictures, which was good because it turns out that would be the only time we would actually see the mountains. 

Our next destinations were Gimmelwald and Murren. Both are small farm towns higher up in the mountains, so we had to take a gondola to each one. We started with the bigger one, Murren, and the views were incredible.

The mountains and cliffs were beautiful, but the clouds were moving in quickly, so we stopped to take some pictures. We asked one man to take our picture with the Alps in the background. We smiled brightly with one of the most beautiful scenes behind us, and the man took a picture of us and a tree. It looks like we are standing in Woodinville. 

We also found a stump that had the quintessential view of the cliffs and valley. When we walked up there  was a mother and daughter taking a picture, so we waited. And waited. And waited. They each took so many pictures that by the time they finished, the clouds had moved in, and we got a picture that looks like we are just sitting in the clouds. 

 

Once again, we turned to food to comfort us. We each purchased Swiss chocolate, and almost two years to the day of my arrival and only five days before my departure, I found my dream Swiss chocolate bar. It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved before.

As we strolled back to the gondola station, Whit noticed that there was no one else around anymore. It was a ghost town, and neither of us had checked the gondola schedule to see what times it would go back down. For about the thirtieth time in a week, we thought we might die. We would suffer from a slow death that night stranded on a Swiss mountain, not even with a nice view.

Thankfully the gondolas were still running, and we lived to see another Swiss cow. We went to the town of Gimmelwald next, which was just the cutest little Swiss town imaginable. All of the homes are from the 1500s when the cows and goats used to live in the basements. And it still pretty much looks the same. Our favorite was the old cheese hut that was built on stilts so the mice couldn’t get to it. To give an indication of the town, Rick Steves’ book has a “Nightlife” section for each town. Gimmelwald’s nightlife section said “See Murren”. 

We returned to Lauterbrunnen that night to eat Swiss things like sausage, rosti, and raclette. We are basically locals.

 

As we fell asleep that night in our 8-person mixed dorm room, a la Europe Trip 2005, our bunk buddy let out a little good night fart. Our other favorite part of our hostel was that there were no shoes allowed in the “house”, so they had a basket of slippers at the door to change into. I never knew how much I love wearing dirty stranger slippers. And they were sexy to boot. The husbands should be happy our bunks were twin. 

We dreamed dreams of bright sun and stunning mountains, but when our bunk mates woke up at 5am to get ready for an hour, we glanced outside, and the fog was socked in. We wanted to go up to the very top of Schilthorn, but we decided that it would have been a waste of money since we can see clouds at home. So we hopped on our train, stopping in Interlaken for a cold quiche breakfast with horrible service, and then headed on our merry little way back to Geneva.