Old world Switzerland dazzled my young eyes

More from the 26-year-old travel journal, in which a Midwestern girl sees her first proper mountains, discovers duvets and tastes muesli and proper coffee for the first time.  While I doubt there are still people in local costume cutting their fields with scythes, a Google search shows there's still a goat parade in Zermatt.  Good to see some things don't change.  

June 21, 1986

Today we experienced the full grandeur of the Alps.  It is hard for me to describe, especially since I have never seen mountains before.  (Yes, I've driven over the Appalachians on the way to Florida, but they're nothing like this.)  Each new turn brought another craggy peak, another magnificent waterfall, another glacier glinting blue-white in the sun.

Through the first mountain pass to Brienz, where we stopped at a wood carving factory. It was swarming with bears; the animal is the symbol of the canton. I bought one, of course.  We're in the Bernese Oberland, known for spectacular scenery.  Farmhouses dot the green slopes and people in native costume cut grass with scythes.  This really is the old country.

We stopped at Interlaken for lunch.  It's a chic, English-speaking resort beneath the peak of the Jungfrau.  Trying to save money, Mom and I hit a grocery store for picnic supplies again, where a cute English man showed me the local beer.  We ate in a daisy-filled meadow looking towards mountain tops.

On to Bern, famous for its bear pits, the barengraben. The bear is part of the legend of the city's founding, and is everywhere.  The bears here eat carrots, and dance when the guides wave to them.  Beyond, it's an old-fashioned town with large markets, distinctive fountains and government buildings.

The scenery flattened as we approached Geneva.  As the view outside the bus windows became less spectacular, everyone caught a nap.  We finally came out above the lake, but haze made it difficult to see anything.

The city is French speaking.  The hotel tolerable.  The city tour wasn't included; that cost us $10 each.  We saw UN buildings, the Red Cross, embassies, old palaces across the lake and the famous fountain, the jet d'eau.

We had dinner at the Movenpick where, surprisingly, I ate the best tortellini I've ever had.  We've come to town at the same time as a national costume fest, held once a decade, so we just looked out the window at the crowds, their costumes and the lake.  People were singing and dancing, lots of diversity for one small country.  It was a parade of great faces, all showing pride and joy at their togetherness.  We walked back to the hotel, deciding on our way that it's in a rotten neighbourhood.

June 22

Back along the lake to Zermatt.  We left the bus and took a cog wheel railway up the mountain, from which I had my first sight of the Matterhorn.  Thanks to all those childhood visits to Disneyland it's a familiar profile, but so much more magnificent in reality.  The chug-chug of the train mixed with the hum of conversation and the clang of bells (goats? cows?) in the fields. 

In town there are no cars; people with carts collect our luggage.  We walked around the town of stereotypical Swiss chalets, but our eyes were constantly drawn to the mountains around us, glinting with waterfalls from the summer melts.  The sun set between two peaks, putting on quite a show. In the local graveyard we see how dangerous those mountains can be.  Many of the tombstones commemorate people who died trying to scale the Matterhorn.

Dinner most memorable for discovering the local Cardinal beer and ending with really magnificent coffee.  Wow.  It doesn't taste like this in America.

June 23
Great night's sleep with the windows open and mountain air pouring in.  Strange beds: no sheets, just a down comforter.  But very comfortable.  Breakfast also very different, more what we'd call lunch.  Lots of rolls, sliced meats and cheeses, plus a big bowl of very rich, thick yogurt and some granola-type stuff with lots of nuts and dried fruits they encouraged us to try as a topper to the yogurt.

Off to the grocery store, we picked up a bottle of wine, more cheese and sausage and some local bread for our lunch picnic.  The bread has a really hard crust (they warned me I'd need the saw on my Swiss army knife to get into it), made so that you can carry it while hiking for days, and the bread inside stays soft.

Up the Gornergrat!  Breathtaking.  Up we rose past the tree line.  Snow.  Purple moss.  Hikers.  I pressed against the window of the train to see each new angle of the mountains.  At the top there's an observatory, a restaurant, and a slight climb to the peak.  Mom was scared, but made it.  Little wonder.  The world falls away, everything is hundreds and hundreds of feet below you and all that's at your level is air and space.  It's like being on the top of a really high skyscraper, but there's nothing else around you and you're in the open air.  No wonder Mom froze for a bit; it was indeed overwhelming.

It was sunny and warm, but we were so high up there was still snow cover, so we had a snowball fight while wearing shorts and tee shirts.  Strange.  We started down the mountain about 2:30, and I got off the train at the last stop with a guy named Sean to walk the rest of the way down.  We followed a cold, rushing stream through pine forest and dappled sunlight.  Gorgeous.  It took us about two hours to make it back to Zermatt, and when we entered town it was with the afternoon goat drive, when the local herders bring their bell-bedecked flocks through town.  Absolutely magical.  I was too tired to do much before bed.  We rejoined the others, drank Cardinal beer and all retired early.

24 June
A lot of driving with a nibble at Italy.  The air conditioning is not working on the bus.  We're getting a new one tomorrow, thank God.  More mountains, more scenery, then over the Italian border through deep crags of rock.  The guide switches the on board music from oom pa pa bands to Luciano Pavarotti.

We stopped for lunch at Locarno, a picturesque town on Lago Maggiore.  I'd been here before, when I spent the summer outside Milano with the Bozzi family.  (Who we're meeting later in this trip.)  We saw the boat dock to go out to Isola Bella, with its magnificent palace of the Borromeo family.  Oh, how I wish Mom could see it; she'd love it so much.  But we didn't have time.  We had to get to San Moritz for dinner.

Back over the border, then, to Switzerland.  San Moritz is a fancy ski resort, filled with a lot of upscale 19th and early 20th century buildings and many designer boutiques.  We walked around and gawped at some window displays.  Still surrounded by mountains and thus beautiful, but I thought it lacked charm and character.  I miss Zermatt!