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From the “Top of Europe” you take a brief train ride. And you are so high up — just over two miles above sea level — that the train station doesn’t bring you all the way down to the valley floor. You take a gondola, the Eiger Express, to get you down to Grindelwald, a village of about 3,000 people that sits at 3,392 feet above sea level. You are, after all, in the Alps.
And this is what it looks like, coming down on the cable car. Enjoy.
Tomorrow, it’s all about the Olympics.
Today we hopped a train and then a gondola and then another train to the top of Europe. Jungfraujoch is the highest train station in Europe and … well, just listen to the narration in these two captivating videos.
Whoever that guy is, he can lay down a VO.
Seriously, you just don’t get quality voiceovers like that everywhere. We’re pretty lucky to have stumbled upon something of that stature for the site.
Here’s another thing about Jungraujoch. Two-plus miles of elevation is a lot of elevation. A lot, a lot. The highest elevation I’ve ever lived at is about 804 feet. Depending on the source, we currently live at 43 feet or 48 feet. (And those five feet are important, right? That’s almost a 12 percent increase.)
But up there, on Jungfraujoch, anything more than walking around can make you feel a little lightheaded. Your lips will go purple. You will measure your steps. You’ll occasionally lean on a wall. But it’s all worth it for these views.
And I could write more about the views. I could write hundreds of words. I could torture us both with poetry about them. But, instead, here are 15 photos. Enjoy.
Those views are pretty great, no? The next post will show the scenery from our way down the mountain.
Our starting view for the morning — at least after a one-stop train ride.
Click to embiggen.
That’s Interlaken, which is where we rented bikes today. We ditched the in-laws — leaving them sitting happily by a lake from their balcony view — and rode all over Switzerland. Including by the same lake.
We took a wrong turn, because we don’t know the roads here, of course. And so that added a climb we weren’t anticipating. We don’t climb a lot at home anymore, living just 43 feet above sea level and all. But we found a lot of barns. Here are a few.
It looks like a livestock area, but we didn’t see too many animals.
Here’s one that looks abandoned. Or close to it?
OK, last barn, a closeup.
Look at this beautiful waterfall!
Those photos were all from this beautiful valley.
We’re riding rented gravel bikes — for some reason — on a single track there. We’d started with e-bikes, but those weren’t going to get the job done for the course we’d planned. And the guys didn’t offer us roadies. Maybe he didn’t have any, I’m not sure. Anyway, gravel bikes, for the uninitiated, have a similar geometry to road bikes. They’re slightly heavier, offer a bigger tire for gravel and such. The difference is the difference. You notice it. It behaves fine, just not quite like what you’re used to. And that’s the story I’m sticking with throughout the day, on both downtown roads, the highway, and these single track paths.
The next time we go through a valley like this, I realized, I am going to have to ride ahead for photos like this. But these are good too.
At the foot of the day’s big climb, I did something I’ve never done before: I broke the chain on my rental bike. I tried to switch into the smaller gear on the front and suddenly found myself freewheeling and fighting to get unclipped before I fell over. When I stopped, the chain was behind me. Behind me came a Frenchman, and I asked him if he would share this news with my lovely bride, who was a bit ahead of me — no phones! — and he did. After a time, she came back for me, and we found a train station and rode back to the town where the bike shop was. I freewheeled the thing, like a balance bike, back to the shop. They repaired it with no fuss, but the delays ruined our intended plans. So our second ride was called Plan B.
Also, it was 90 degrees today, and we didn’t have enough water. Fortunately, we ran into a couple of public fountains. Public fountains are awesome. Douse your head. Slam a lot down into your belly, then have some more, because you’re a rule breaker. And then fill up your bottles, hoping the next fountain isn’t too far away. Because public fountains are awesome.
Not that we were staring at the lakes and waterfalls and making ourselves thirstier or anything.
It’s a beautiful area to ride in, even on this made up route that we improvised. And the drivers here are much, much more respectful here than what you get in most any place in the U.S. Plus, the color of this water …
We just got to ride alongside that lake for a good long while.
Totally worth it, she said.
And, look! Proof I saw it all, too!
Too bad I ruined the intended ride. Then again, who can climb big climbs anymore? Maybe I did us a favor?
Tomorrow: We go to Jungfraujoch!
We got in one of these things today. Gondolas are amazing. But let me back up.
We took a train, and then had a short walk. And then there was the meeting with a tour guide, Rolf. A curly coiffed man of chiseled stature that should have landed him on stage. Perhaps it did! But now he is here, leading this most isolated life. Meeting people for a few minutes, giving them a sticker, telling them which bus to get on, doing 11 minutes of patter on the bus, which includes several reminders to not leave things on the bus, because we aren’t returning, and then dealing with the lady who left a diaper bag on the bus. And then he directs us to those red gondolas. And then to another, larger cableway lift. At the top of the tour, he says, in his pleasant, practiced, kindly authoritative way, “We will be meeting here at 3:30 to depart at 3:45. If you have any questions I will be in the cafeteria for about half an hour.”
You wonder what he’s eating there. He brought a sack lunch. What’s he reading? Or does he just stare out the window, dreaming of after shave smells gone by?
That’s what he looks like. He looks like a man who enjoyed splashing on that smell every day. His skin looks like it looked forward to it. There’s just no other way to say it. He would have been the 45-year-old who would have been unironically cast in the part of a 30-year-old in a 1974 movie. A bit too handsome and mature for the part. And a Hai Karate aficionado. Old Spice for the really big days.
Anyway, a few of the views going up to the top of Pilatus.
The four of us walked around up there. My bride and I went on two of the outdoor walks. Her parents appreciated the views from indoors. It’s full of rich views. As rich as the lines now gaining way onto Rolf’s face, rugged and firm as the mountains themselves. Have a look. Pilatus’ highest peak is a modest 6,983 feet, but everything up there offers commanding views of Lucerne, below. The descent from Pilatus involves the Pilatus Railway, named the world’s steepest cogwheel railway. We did it in 2022 and, honestly, it was better. The cogwheel had older cars, which made the gradient — at one point, 48 percent! — feel much more adventurous. At the end of the cogwheel ride the lady caught up to her diaper bag. Rolf was the hero he’d always been meant to be. So was Eddie, the plucky young bus driver with the hip hair who should probably be on a beach and not a bus. We never saw him again. With Rolf, though, and that diaper bag, we all crossed the street from the cogwheel station at the base of the mountain and walked over to a boat. Here, we enjoyed a nice, quiet boat ride that completes what they call “The Golden Round Trip.” It’s a nice boat ride. The views are scenic. But it does feel a bit tacked on to the rest of the experience. I spent much of the time trying to stay out of the sun, and enjoying the breeze. We had dinner at a lakeside cafe. I had some German-inspired currywurst. Quite tasty. And then we caught the train back to our hotel. Whereby I marveled, as I do, at the everyday beauty of this place.
The cars were steam until the 1930s. What we rode a few years ago was from the 1970s. They were hyping the new cars on our first trip here, and something has been lost with the upgrades. It’s just another closed-air thing you can do. Then it felt — there’s not a word here, thinner, smaller, less substantial, shabbier, none of these work — like the ride itself and the machine you were on, were full of character. Now the steepness is the only character, and even that visceral feeling is mitigated by modern glass. 
What must it be like to wake up each morning and see a waterfall out your back windows? Or be surrounded by these lake and mountain views each time you come home?
The human mind has a weird capacity for adaptation, but how long would it take to get used to something like this? “Ho hum. Again. Yes, yes. It’s hilly and mountainous and rugged. But I’d enjoy a change of pace. I could sure use some flat.”
I wonder if that every enters into the minds of the locals. It will surely come to my mind tomorrow. We’re riding bikes!
Up early this morning for a small Italian breakfast, then a short walk to an Italian train station — most of Italy’s transit workers are on strike, we found out two or three days ago and got lucky with a backup plan. Our route looked like this.
We arrived in Interlaken, as planned, in what is almost the center of Switzerland. Definitely it is one of the tourist centers. And who could blame the tourists for coming to places with views like this?
And that’s just on the way there.
After a quick bus ride we arrived at our hotel — a small little place run by a kind, small man and his family, with Swiss efficiency. There are maybe 16 rooms. This is the balcony view we’ll enjoy (but not slow down enough to see often) for the next few days. That view is not bad.
Click to embiggen.
If you just look down at the water, it is awfully inviting in the middle of this heat wave.
We took a ride back into Interlaken for dinner. And by “we,” I mean my lovely bride and her parents. This is an in-laws trip, which I don’t think I’ve mentioned. Here they all are after dinner.
A few years back, 2019 in fact, we decided we should take a trip, and this year we were able to do it. And now here we are, in beautiful Switzerland.
Tomorrow, we go up a mountain.
