Franziska Keller’s Blog

The Finest View in the Bernese Alps: from the Schynige Platte to First above Grindelwald

August 24, 2010 – 4:11 pm
Posted in hiking, What to do in Switzerland when you're bored
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That one is a classic – a five- to six-hour hike above the Lake of Brienz on one side and Grindelwald on the other, in front of (and almost the whole way with a beautiful view on) the three most famous mountains of the Bernese Alps: Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau. Admittedly, unless you want to add another couple of hours of steep ascent or descent, it is also a rather expensive hike – both the train up to the Schynige Platte and the cable car down to Grindelwald cost around 15 USD (if you have a half-price ticket or a GA – else it is double the amount).

An old-fashioned train with staff in quaint uniforms

But the train to the Schynige Platte does not just offer an impressive view and passes by steep ravines – it is also one of those very old-fashioned trains that resemble an open-air museum, and you’ll be able to take some stunning pictures of the Lake of Thun below and the mountains above. Plus it saves you 4 ½ hours of climbing almost vertically. It’s probably worth it.

And now… the hike in pictures. This time I try to integrate pictures and instructions, although finding your path is pretty straightforward. Unless it’s off-season and the weather is bad, just follow the other hikers. Otherwise, assume that any path leading distinctly downwards before 4 hours of hiking is probably not the right one to take. And here’s a link to the hiking map.

Once you get off the train (636186, 166878), enjoy the panoramic view of Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau (from left to right – click to enlarge, as always)

Then head for the Japanese tourists near the Oberberghorn (636181, 167628).

While going around the Oberberghorn, you temporarily lose sight of the Lake of Brienz (which you’ll soon regain) but never of the Louchernhorn (637811, 168233)…

or the famous trio:

Before circumventing the Louchernhorn, the Jungfrau is once more in plain sight:

Across one of those meadows reminiscent of Heidi movies you’ll enter the Sägistal (639186, 168703):

You’ll hike high above the Sägistalsee and make a U-Turn (640906, 169273) through a rough, rocky valley up to the Männdlenen shelter, where you can sit down and have an (expensive, as they have to fly up all the goods via helicopter) drink.

Another steep ascent later (641481, 168813), you regain sight of the Faulenhorn, which you can luckily by-pass (642891, 16933), and might feel yourself above the clouds:

Now the Schreckhorn and Finsteraarhorn are clearly visible while you follow the white-red-white hiking trail signs:

Leaving the Faulenhorn behind to your left, you cross another meadow, the Gassenboden (643201, 169028).

And will soon be able to take a picture of the Bachalpsee in front of the Wetterhorn:

Follow the trail downhill and walk along the Bachalpsee (644826, 168800)…

… or just sit on the bench and enjoy the scenery:

On the way to First (647071, 167764) you might also encounter the famous two-headed cow:

or just the regular kind:

And after five or six hours, you’ll probably be happy use the cable cars down to Grindelwald.

On a related note: may I add that our train back from Interlaken East to Thun didn’t leave because of both an engine AND a door defect and we had to wait for the next one? Oh yes, and the AC in our coach was defect. And then the connecting train was 15 minutes late. The Swiss Railways are loosing it.

Up and Down: a Halfway Hike in the Emmental from Langnau to the Lüderenalp

The Swiss railway network has the highest density of any such networks on the world. It is also one of the most intensely used networks. This of course means that a train breaking down or a part of the railway not working properly can have quite a domino-effect. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it usually follows Murphy’s Law.

This morning’s hike got buried deeply under domino stones in the train station of Bern, after a blocked railroad switch in Gümligen managed to block all trains between Thun and Bern (a part of one major North-South axis) and Bern and Luzern. Unfortunately, Marbachegg, our destination, is located exactly between the latter two. We decided to do this the Kyrgyz way, be flexible and go hiking elsewhere. As there was a train until Langnau, we picked a hike from there to the Lüderenalp. However, the bus from and to Lüderenalp only runs on Sunday. And it was Friday. Further improvisation was required, and we did half the hike and then turned around.

And even though the Emmental is not well-known for snow-capped mountains, we had quite some pleasant views while hiking across the forests, meadows, valleys and hills (and mushrooms) the Emmental is so famous for.

Do It Yourself:

The map of Langnau and surroundings. Once you exit the train station (626452, 198630), head North, up the hills and follow the only “Berner Wanderwege” (Bernese hiking trails) sign around until you reach Lüderenalp (629612, 205760). In our case, we only got to a nice pick-nick spot after Egg (628292, 203130), backtracked a bit and then descended to Gohl (628332, 201290), from where there is a bus back to Langnau running also during weekdays.

Hiking to Castle Tarasp and Soaking in the Bogn Engiadina Scuol

On our final day in Scuol, the weather forecast was less than thrilling and we were tired from our long hike across the Fuorcla Champatsch anyway. So we decided to take a walk to the nearby castle Tarasp and then go to the Irish-Roman hot baths. Our impromptu hike turned out to be quite well-designed nevertheless: We walked up the Clemgia river almost to the border of the Swiss national park and then turned around to ascend, through those bright green meadows below fir trees so common in the Engadin valley, to the small lake “Lai Nair” on a high moor plateau.

From there we headed down again to the Lai da Tarasp and the nearby Castle Tarasp.

And after a short bus ride, we jumped into the hot and warm pools of the Bogn Engiadina Scuol, let the jacuzzi massage our tired muscles and fell into that completely relaxed state that you can only achieve through a couple of stints in the sauna.

Hiking instructions with map: Cross the big bridge in Scuol (818362, 186463) to the camping site (818232, 186033). Follow the river in the direction of Plan da Funtanas until the ninth bridge (818023, 184075). Cross it and follow the path back to Avrona (817833, 184915), where you take the path to Lai Nair. Walk past the lake and turn right (at 816585, 184446) towards the Lai da Tarasp.

Across the Fuorcla Champatsch and Down the Val Sinestra

There are several vallies in the canton of Graubünden which “face” the neighbouring countries. If you walk down the lower Engadin, for instance, you’ll end up in Austria, if you take the bus down the Bergell/Val Bregaglia, you cross the border to Italy (at least temporarily – if you take “Palm Express” Bus, you will re-enter Switzerland and arrive in Lugano, but that is a different story).

For some reasons, those are also some of the most beautiful places to hike, as you will soon see. We arrived early in the morning in Scuol and left most of our luggage in the beautiful new, but also rather expensive, youth hostel right next to the train station. Scuol is also a winter tourism destination, but luckily a rather small one and thus there are only a handful of ski lifts that could mar the landscape.

The hike from Motta Naluns, the final station of the cable car to the old Hotel in the Val Sinestra is variegated. Leaving the ski lifts behind, we walked through meadows with flowers, cows…

…and – more surprisingly – yaks:

When we turned around to throw one last glance on the cable car station and the ski lifts, we noticed the paragliders who took advantage of the sunny slopes and their strong upward air current:

Further up, the grass gave way to a dry, almost martian landscape (in which the last remaining ski lift stood out like a science fiction contraption):

Shortly afterwards, we reached the Pass of Fuorcla Champatsch and had a rest enjoying the view on the upper range of the Val Sinestra:

After crossing snow field and sliding down steep slopes with loose gravel, the grass and flowers made a reappearance, and with them also the butterflies and other colorful insects.

From the mountain pass, I had spotted a small lake a bit to the left of our path, and made a beeline for it. When I saw the lonely rock in the middle of the crystal clear water, I just couldn’t resist. I took off my shoes, rolled my pants up to my knees and started wading towards the rock. The water wasn’t even that cold, but somewhere in the middle I overestimated the length of my legs and was suddenly a bit more than knee-deep in the lake. But the pants already started to dry while I was still enjoying my little rock kingdom in an alpine lake.

A miracle!

And then, on the way back, to the dry shore, I started walking on water. But that’s again a whole different story.

We moved steadily downwards, crossing some fearsome rivers on the way and shortly afterwards heard again the familiar sound of cow-bells and marmots whistling.

We passed some pastures and alpine chalets and were soon below the tree line again, descending further through sunny fir forests on a dirt road towards the river “La Brancla” which has long ago formed the Val Sinestra and shaped the strange rocks near Zuort below.

Odd rock formations

Further down, the last 1-2 hours of the hike were again completely different, as we were now following the wild mountain stream at the bottom of a narrow valley, crossing it several times on regular and rope bridges until we arrived at the old-fashioned hotel and “Kurort” Val Sinestra, where we enjoyed our well-deserved ice-cream while waiting for the bus to drive us back to Scuol.

A shaky path: rope bridges

If you want to do the same hike, click here for a map. You start in Scuol and take the cable cars up to Motta Naluns (816187, 188388). From there you roughly follow the next cable cars until a path branches off to Fuorcla Champatsch (at 815647, 189218). Follow the path up to Fuorcla Champatsch (815247, 192258) and down the Val Laver to Zuort (820447, 195208). Cross the river and follow it down on the eastern side to the Val Sinestra Kurhaus (821007, 193128), where there is a bridge to cross again over to the western side.

Chasing Marmots above Davos

I distinctly remember the first time I realized that despite all my protests, I am a little bit Swiss inside: It was in my first year in China, in Yunnan Province, in a small village called Lijiang over which the mighty “Yulongxueshan” (Jade Dragon Snow Mountain) towers. I looked at the snowy peaks and suddenly realized I had missed the mountains.

Avalanche barriers protect Davos

Ahem. So unsurprisingly, it was in Kyrgyzstan where I finally shed my childhood trauma of being dragged into the mountains for a hike on Sundays and found out that hiking is actually quite fun. So when I returned to Switzerland with the prospect of having some actual holidays for at least a couple of weeks, I was determined to go hiking as often as possible – after all, New York is famous for many things, but not for its mountains. Luckily, Changjiang quickly picked up the habit as well, and soon was just as eager to explore the Alps as I was.

One of our first trips was to the canton of Graubünden, a hiker’s paradise, and more specifically to Davos. Davos is nowadays probably more well-known for its winter tourism, and this shows. It’s not as if you can get rid of the ski lifts in Summer…

For some reason, Changjiang was intrigued by the ski lifts and took plenty of pictures

Still, the hike from the cable car station above Davos to the Gotschnagrat and back to Davos again has nice views down two valleys and on the Lake of Davos. It also features a stunning array of flowers in all colours and some cheeky marmots. I took this picture from about a meter away, and the marmot didn’t even budge – and is it just me or is this marmot a lot smaller than the one we spotted near Köl-Tor in Kyrgyzstan?

Swiss marmot

If you want to walk the “Davoser Höhenweg” yourself, have a look at the map here. Take the Parsennbahn (from Davos Dorf, not Davos Platz ) up to the Station Höhenweg (if you get a “Gästekarte” from your hotel, the trip is free). Hike along the slope northwards below the Salezer Horn, across the Meierhofer Tälli (782102, 189622) and the Totalp (782292, 190602) to the Parsennhütte (781982, 191622) and then to the Gotschnagrat cable car station (783722, 192562). Walk along the ridge down to the Schwarzseealp (784742, 191622) and descend further to Unter-Laret (785076, 190583). The train station is a bit to the north (785633, 191433).

Protected: Four Weddings and (hopefully) no Funeral: Part II – Paris

August 13, 2010 – 10:29 pm
Posted in France, What to do in Paris when you're bored
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Protected: Four Weddings and (hopefully) no Funeral: Part 1 – Altdorf meets Hong kong

August 10, 2010 – 9:31 pm
Posted in What to do in Switzerland when you're bored
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Men and Horses, a Sheep Carcass, and Plenty of Mud: Kyrgyz National Horse Games

August 8, 2010 – 8:04 am
Posted in Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan, What to do in Kyrgyzstan when you're bored
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This is a common scene in ulak tartysh: everyone and their horse crowds one spot. If there is any action, it is hidden from the viewers. The heap of tyres to the right is the goal, by the way.

You probably expected me to comment on the most recent developments in Kyrgyzstan – the ethnic clashes in the South this June. But I haven’t done that, and don’t plan to. One reason is purely technical: When it happened, I was sitting in a hotel room in Dubai with a very slow internet connection, swamped with work and worried about the family members of former colleagues who were hiding in their homes in Osh and Jalalabad. No blog post from my side would have provided any insights or additional information.

Unless the teams move towards the spectators. Then you will see more of the action, not necessarily more of the sheep though.

But there is another reason as well: You might have noted my slightly irreverent attitude towards politics, which doesn’t even stop at a revolution with a certain death toll. I feel that very few things in life should ever been taken completely seriously – if you take politics seriously, you just start killing people. And no matter how you look at it, killing people is not funny.

Given that there is a referee, one would assume that there are rules and prohibitions. Grabbing someone else's horse's reins is apparently not among them.

So I really wouldn’t know how to write about ethnic violence in this blog.

Instead I will write one last post about Kyrgyzstan, on the national horse game “Ulak tartysh” or “Kök Börü”, because I stumbled over a couple of pictures that I had taken on Nowruz, the Central Asian (and Persian) new year.

By Western standards, Ulak tartysh is a bit… well… odd. And generally not well-known in Western countries. At least not until in Rambo III, the eponymous hero tried to impress the Afghans and enlist them in his fight against the Evil Empire. Back in real life, lifting a sheep on a horse isn’t as simple as you might think. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Some say Ulak tartysh (or Buzkashi, as the more well-known Afghan version is called) resembles Polo: You have two teams of men on horseback trying to bring a ball across a field into a well-marked area. Only that in Ulak tartysh the ball is actually a sheep’s carcass. The latter is apparently called “ulak” – just in case you always wondered.

Now this is how you hold a 20kg sheep - not with a outstreched arm at a 90 degree angle, Rambo!

I’ve never seen Polo, but this game rather made me think of American Football: You have long periods when absolutely nothing happens (while everyone tries to grab the sheep or prevent others from hauling it off the ground), then there is a sudden shuffle and if you’re lucky, someone makes it off with the dead animal. He will usually get stopped at some point, upon which there is a big chaos of hooves and heads. Then the referee intervenes according to some unclear principle and things start anew. It can get pretty rough and muddy, and the participants are only sturdy young men. Except, well, there are horses. And no cheerleaders. Also, the teams in American football apparently have some complicated strategies involving all the team members. Can’t really remember seeing any strategy more elaborate than “grab the sheep and gallop off as quickly as possible”.

At some point, one of the players will have managed to grab the dead sheep...

Still, once things start going, it is actually quite entertaining – and so I’ll leave you with more impressions on “sheep rugby”.

Although one should probably not think too long about the fate of the sheep in the whole affair…

Or the horses.

... and head off with the rest of the field in hot pursuit.

But picking it up in the first place requires some acrobatic stunts...

...especially as the opposing team will try to tackle you or make their horse thread on the carcass when you try to pick it up.

But with the right timing...

... and your trusty, agile Kyrgyz horse, you might just make it.

Unless, of course, you get into an argument over who actually has the sheep.

In which case the whip might come handy.

But at that point, the referee will probably intervene, the object of desire will be dumped somewhere random in the mud, and two horsemen will engage in horseback wrestling (with the referee looking on).