I Can See My Car's Ass From Here
August 31 - September 13, 2020
Switzerland left a sour taste in our mouths after our first visit. To us, it felt like “a country-sized club for rich people,” with afternoon train rides in and out of Zurich running $100 per person and a burger and fries in a restaurant costing upwards of $35. It made us feel poorer than we actually were, hamstrung by exorbitant expenses, and though we don’t consider ourselves in any way to be high rollers, we didn’t particularly enjoy the feeling of being bumped down to a lower caste. Though the time we spent in the mountains on that trip was fantastic, neither of us were particularly motivated to return to Switzerland, opting instead for more affordable and less grandiose destinations in the following years.
September shoulder season is arguably our favorite time of the year to travel, and we usually go someplace warm for one last bit of extended summer before the autumn chill arrives. We didn’t leave Berlin at all in July and August, spending our pandemic summer in parks and along the canal and never in bars and restaurants. We watched the number of Coronavirus infections in Germany rise as irresponsible travelers crowded beaches in Spain and then returned home to share molecular souvenirs with their countrymen. All summer we wondered whether or not the situation would change enough for us to feel comfortable getting on a plane in September to fly to Crete, where we would hike through the Samaria Gorge and eat grilled octopus and drink ouzo on the beach. By the end of summer, we felt exactly the same way as we did in June: The only responsible way to travel was to rent a car, camp in a tent, and spend our days sequestered in the mountains. We’d already vacationed in Austria in the first shoulder season of summer. Switzerland seemed the obvious choice for the second.
We made it to the eastern edge of Lake Constance on the first day after 8+ hours of driving, right where the borders of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland combine. We’d chosen a place to stay right on the Swiss side called Camping Bruggerhorn and arrived to find that it was not actually a campground but a glorified trailer park - a situation we’d come across on our last road trip as well. We asked if there were pitches for tents, and the man walked us over to a children’s playground area around back where there was a patch of grass that looked at a derelict building. We said thank you, but no, absolutely not, and drove 30 minutes back into Austria to Camping Dornbirn, which offered what we were looking for. Though it wasn’t particularly scenic, the pitches were flat and surrounded by trees, the facilities were modern and clean, and the restaurant had an outdoor seating area with tasty - albeit racist - beer. There was a torrential downpour that night, and even with the extra tarp over our tent much of our gear was soaked through by the second day of our two-week trip.
At this point, we hadn’t even fully decided where we were going yet (one of the most crucial freedoms offered by traveling in shoulder season). We’d bought some hiking books and gotten advice from our avid mountaineer friend Shelly, but it was hard to make a decision with so much amazing stuff on offer. So, we chose to chase the weather, and drove down to the southeast corner of the country to a region called the Engadin where the upcoming week was sunny and blue, though the nights looked frightfully cold. Remote and not heavily visited by tourists, this region is known for its massive glaciers, with its largest city of St. Mortiz serving as a base for both outdoor enthusiasts and wealthy oligarchs wearing sweaters that cost more than our entire vacation. The girl who gave us hiking brochures at the info center was wearing a uniform sponsored by Maserati, among others.
In heading to the Engadin, we apparently drove south through the entirety of Lichtenstein without realizing it. Once we were in Switzerland proper we discovered that our EU phone plan didn’t transfer here, and that there would be excessive surcharges for using data. Thankfully, the rental car place had upgraded us for free again on this trip, not to a BMW like they did in Austria, but simply from the cheapest base model car to one that had GPS navigation and a surprisingly massive trunk. Though it looked like a regular sedan, the Opel Insignia they gave us was deceptively long thanks to the fact that it had the fattest ass; the sort of car you think should be able to pull a U-turn and then gets stuck halfway. We named it “Longboi” and marveled ad nauseam at how much junk we were able to fit in its trunk.
Camping Morteratsch was unlike any other campground we’d visited in Europe. There were hundreds of spots spread out along streams in a deep, wide valley, with all of the pitches on the southern end offering a picturesque view of the Bernina massif. Showing up on a Tuesday in early September, we were able to score an amazing camp site looking straight up at the glacier, with every intention of staying all the way through the weekend. Just a short walk down the path from our site was a waterfall trail, which offered a nice way to stretch our legs after two long days in the car.
The weather wasn’t supposed to clear up for one more day after we arrived, so we chose a first hike in the woods that wasn’t entirely reliant on panoramas. Starting in nearby Pontresina, we parked the car at the train station and walked directly up the side of a mountain to Mouttas da Schlarigna for views of the valley, lakes, and mountains. From an early peak, you make your way slowly down the mountainside through old pine forests to the lowland lakes, then back through the forest to Pontresina. The highlight of this hike was definitely a 1,400-year-old stone pine tree on the trail, the oldest in Switzerland. It was the sort of ancient, wizened tree that instantly evokes fantasy and wonder, the sort of place you can imagine the animals of the forest congregating for important woodland matters.
We had prepared for the weather to be cold at night, but even knowing how low the temperatures dropped in the Engadin beforehand, we weren’t ready for what it meant in practice. We’d underestimated how cold it got in Austria, so this time we brought multiple layers of thermals, down coats, and a thick wool blanket to drape over our sleeping bags. Mazz had even bought a new, fancy down sleeping bag that was good to 20° F, but in the end it all still wasn’t enough to keep us comfortable. As soon as the sun went down the temperature would drop dramatically, and each night we shivered through sleep in layers of warm clothing and wool hats as our exposed faces froze inside the tent. Both of our lips immediately chapped over and became coarse and crusty. The car was covered in frost in the morning. After two nights of terrible sleep in the icy cold, we weren’t sure how much more of it we were willing to endure.
We woke Thursday to a bluebird day with the glacier standing starkly in the distance. With the promise of clear skies, we splurged on a funicular ride up to Muottas Muragl for a hike along the panorama trail. The word “muottas” is Romansh for “hill.” Romansh is one of the four official languages of Switzerland but is specific to the Engadin area, with only around 60,000 active speakers. Nearly everyone on the packed cable car wore masks, though obviously there had to be at least one wealthy, late-middle-aged white woman who refused, even when confronted by the attendant. When we heard people speaking a language on the train we couldn’t place, we realized it was likely Romansh. Exiting at the top, it became instantly clear why the parking lot and train to the summit had been full, with stunning views of mountains, glaciers, and pristine lakes opening up in all directions from the platform.
Our path took us along ridges for two hours overlooking the valley until we reached the Alp Languard cable car station. We stopped for lunch, and with the day still young and no real desire to figure out how to take the bus back to our car from the bottom of this gondola, we chose instead to hike back the way we came to Punt Muragl and see the valley from the opposite direction. It was warm, our trail legs were soft, and the hike back up to the funicular station was slow going, but that made the post-hike beers at the top that much more rewarding.
Though we had planned to stay in Morteratsch for five nights, we were only able to tolerate the extreme cold for three. When we packed up Friday morning and checked out early, the attendant knew why without us even having to tell him: “Colder than you expected, huh?”
The weather was perfect again that day, so we moved Longboi down the road to the parking area for the glacier for a hike up to the Boval Hut, a trek outlined in our Cicerone Guide “100 Hut Walks in the Alps.” This trail takes you along the edge of the alpine forest up into the base of the Morteratsch glacier. The hike goes up and up and up, with the final sections ascending rocky switchbacks with guide ropes bolted to the sides of the stone wall. At the top, the Boval Hut sits perched away from the trail in the rocks with an unimpeded view of the ice and the surrounding peaks. Not knowing exactly what we were ordering, we got two “röstis” fully loaded and two large beers. Turns out, a rösti is basically hash browns, and ours came covered in cheese, bacon, and eggs. It was a delicious and filling meal, and only cost about $70 USD for the experience of eating a Denny’s Grand Slam at the top of the world.
Our next destination was Ticino, a southern canton that shares a border with Italy where the residents speak Italian. We’d been told it was different there, but exactly how much the culture and climate changed in only a 2-1/2-hour drive was shocking. When we got out of the car at Campeggio Al Censo the weather was muggy and warm even though the sun was setting. We set up our tent in front of a palm tree and sat around comfortably in tank tops into the night. It was like we had been magically transported to the Mediterranean.
Our friend Shelly took the train down from Zurich the following morning and we picked her up from a nearby station. The weather was fantastic, so we decided it was a good day to pay for a lift up a mountain, opting for the Ritom funicular to take us up to the Piora Valley lakes. Though this cable car ride was extremely steep and long, it cost less than half of other funiculars we took in Switzerland due to the fact that Ticino isn’t a particularly touristy area. We were a little bummed to discover that Lake Ritom is actually just a dammed lake, so we continued on uphill to the natural alpine lakes situated further above. We stopped for lunch at Lake Tom, where there were small crowds of people picnicking, fishing, and swimming. Shelly put our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to shame by pulling out a candle-lit raclette cheese melter, fresh bread, and a jar of pickled vegetables. Though we’ve known Shelly since our time together in Seattle, we realized then that she had gone unequivocally native after multiple years living in Switzerland. The hike continued over a saddle to Lake Cadagno and the adorable village set at its base, where we spent the rest of the sunny afternoon soaking in the green hillsides.
As a Welcome to Switzerland treat, Shelly brought all of the items necessary to make fondue, as well as a small mountain of her own camping gear. She’s used to hyper-minimal superlight backpacking trips for days on end through unforgiving terrain, so when we told her space wasn’t an issue because our car had the fattest ass, she went ahead and brought along seemingly everything she owned, including three bras for a two-day trip. Longboi was unfazed by the added cargo. The woman who ran the campsite didn’t speak English and her German was only a little better than ours, so communication was a little rough. When we asked if there was any way to cool down the white wine Shelly had brought along, all we really understood from the woman was, “Stick it in the water.” Not knowing what water she meant, we borrowed a watering can from a junk corner and filled it up to use as our fridge. It worked well enough, and was extremely classy. Shelly prepared an excellent feast, and then we drank a little too much and got shushed by the old Swiss-Italian woman. If you want to see Mazz get super peeved, give her a couple drinks and then tell her to be quiet.
Our hike for the next day was a suggestion of Shelly’s that we probably wouldn’t have discovered on our own. The hike through the Bavona Valley takes you up through a lush forest into a string of tiny villages filled with rustic stone houses that look like a vision of the distant past, yet are still mostly inhabited. We parked Longboi at a bus stop on the main road, hoping to make it to the top village by the time one of the two remaining busses that day came back down the valley. Shelly had brought along a bag full of raclette and cooked potatoes for all of us, so we stopped to make lunch at the base of the waterfall towering over the village of Foroglio. As soon as we pulled out our gear, the rain started to pour and we were forced to continue on for a drier place to cook.
We made it to the next town, Roseto, and noticed they had a bridge leading over the river. The decision was immediate: we would be cheese trolls. Under the cover of the bridge, right on the Bavona River, we melted our Swiss cheese by candlelight and poured the bubbly goodness over potatoes and bread, with pickly stuff on the side. The rain showed no sign of ceasing, so instead of pressing on further after lunch we just walked back to the restaurant in Foroglio for a beer and caught the bus from there. It was absolutely packed with Boomers on day trips, and the bus driver blew past the stop where we had left Longboi even though the stop light was illuminated, driving all the way into town miles below. Luckily, the bus swung right back around for its final ascent of the afternoon only ten minutes later, so it wasn’t too big of an inconvenience. Had it been the last bus of the day, we would have had a lot more walking still ahead of us.
The weather was slated to stay wet in Ticino for the next few days, so we packed up and made our way north to the Bernese Oberland, where the skies were supposed to be clear for most of the week. Going over Susten Pass we drove directly into a cloud and then emerged on the other side as the grey was just beginning to dissipate over glacial pools. We stopped to take in the sights and were surprised to hear what sounded like fireworks exploding in the distance. It took a few moments to realize that it was the sound of the glacier itself, creaking and breaking.
Since it was still going to be cloudy that day we decided it was a good time to check out the town of Lauterbrunnen. Surrounded by immense cliffs with 72 waterfalls, the Lauterbrunnen valley is supposedly the real-life inspiration for the elven town of Rivendell in The Lord of the Rings books. It was indeed a magical place, with a small central village that quickly gives way to charming farmhouses that sell homemade goods from self-service kiosks and even automated vending machines. It was easy to spend hours wandering though the valley, wondering how deep it goes and how high the cliffs rise above.
We camped in the valley below the nearby town of Grindelwald, well-known for its numerous access points into the Bernese Alps. To take the gondola to First, we were able to leave Longboi parked at the campsite and walk to a bus stop that would take us to the gondola station, but finding the bus stop proved to be exceedingly difficult. There were not one but two different sets of signs pointing people looking for the bus to the Firstbahn in the complete wrong direction. After some strained conversations with construction workers tearing up the entire area around the false signage, we were finally on our way up into town on the local bus, which stopped at the gondola entrance.
The ride up to First is a noteworthy activity in this area, so getting on the gondola required us to wait in our first touristy line of the trip, but boy was it worth it. After a 25-minute ride up and around the mountains, you are dropped off directly in front of a series of snowy, imposing peaks that make you instantly realize why Switzerland has the global reputation it does for mountains. The small crowds of people walking up the trail to the Bachalpsee couldn’t do anything to mar the immensity of the surroundings, though the first stretch hardly felt like a “hike” when people were attempting to push strollers up the rocky path. Bachalpsee is the final destination for the majority of the people who took the gondola up: Two incredibly Instagrammable lakes surrounded by snowy peaks. As soon as we continued past the lakes after lunch, the number of people on the trail thinned to almost no one, opening up incredible views of Wetterhorn, Schreckhorn, and Eiger as you descend into the valley.
“Are you talking to me?”
“No, my son is also named Bort.”
Though we were initially weary of the steep descent required to get down to the gondola station named “Bort,” it was necessary for a mountain activity that seemed too good to pass up. From Bort, you could rent scooter bikes and zoom your way all the way down paved, winding roads back to Grindelwald. It only took a brief test on the scooters to realize that these things were really, extremely dangerous. They went uncontrollably fast unless you were squeezing down on the brakes the whole time, but if you squeezed too hard, they jerked to an instant halt. Once we got the hang of it, the scooters were a blast, and we arrived back at the Firstbahn station all jacked up on adrenaline. Then we saw an old lady on the side of the road selling mountain cheese and goat sausage and bought a bunch of it. Pro tip: Always buy whatever food the old lady is selling on the side of the mountain road.
When we arrived at Camping Eigernordwand, we were warned to pack away all of our food and cooking gear inside of the car, otherwise foxes would get into it. We verbally agreed, but both of us were silently, deeply interested in befriending these garbage foxes. After hiking at First, Kirb was cooking some pasta, and when he went to drain it where the edge of our campsite turned into a big field, some of the pasta spilled out into the grass. Instead of cleaning it up, he decided to leave it as a gift for the foxes. They would surely be pleased with this offering, and may even guide him to a shrine as a reward, improving his stamina. That night we were woken from our slumber when something bit Mazz on the foot through the tent. The bite wasn’t hard enough to pierce the nylon, let alone her sleeping bag or socks, but it was forceful and inquisitive nonetheless. We sat up with a start and saw the perfect silhouette of a pointy-eared fox head checking us out from beneath the rain fly. It scurried off, and Mazz wondered aloud if it was going to try and steal our sandals, which were sitting just outside the zipper door. Still groggy and tired-eyed, we didn’t bother opening up the tent to bring them inside. When we woke in the morning, we found that the fox had indeed taken our sandals, though only a small distance from the tent. It didn’t steal them; it just ruined them instead. That bad dog had completely chewed through Kirb’s leather Birkenstock straps, gnawing them into small chunks, rendering them unusable. On Mazz’s sandals it had merely chewed one of the three straps apart - the same strap on each sandal - which left them disfigured but still usable. On the edge of the campsite, the pasta lay untouched. What a jerkass fox.
Until this day, things had gone swimmingly, with no real hitches. The fox proved to be a portent that lofty expectations must occasionally be tempered. On our second sunny day in the Bernese Alps we decided to take a different cable car up the other side of the valley to Schynige Platte, which offers not only mountain panoramas but also an aerial view of Interlaken and the two lakes that surround it. Unfortunately, we didn’t properly plan out what we had to do to get up there, and the little we did plan wasn’t effectively communicated between the two of us, so we kinda screwed it all up. Not knowing that there was a big parking lot the other side of town expressly for people taking the train, we paid for very expensive coin parking behind a grocery store. It was a 2.5-hour hike, so Kirb bought 4.5 hours of parking and put the ticket in the car. He did this not knowing that the rickety antique train that lugs you up to Schynige Platte takes almost an hour each way. We barely got on the next train, which thankfully was departing not long after we arrived, but then the train had to stop, and was very old, and took an extra 20 minutes. When we finally reached the top, we basically speed walked onto the trail, now on a timer to see as much as we could before the last train possible back to Longboi before the parking expired. We didn’t know how much a Swiss parking ticket costs - surely a lot - and we didn’t particularly care to find out. Instead of luxuriating in some of the finest views in which one could ask to hike, we rushed through the experience, always checking the time. It wasn’t cheap either, costing around $100 for the two of us to get up and down the mountain, including the 30% discount we received by using the Grindelwald Guest Pass given to us by our campground.
When it became clear that the Schynige Platte trains ran on their own schedule independent of the times they provided customers, we cut our lovely lunch of old-lady mountain cheese and goat sausage short to make it back down to the parking lot in time. Luckily, we were able to spend the long ride back down chatting with a nice couple, one of whom lived nearby, and she offered up several options to spend the rest of our day. Not quite so luckily, following her recommendations resulted in an afternoon of tedious hours of driving that never culminated in arriving at a place we actually wanted to hang out. As far as “bad” days go, it was not very bad at all, but somehow everything about it just felt defeating, exacerbated by the fact that it felt like we kept defeating ourselves.
The woman on the Schynige Platte train had one other piece of advice for us: don’t trust Google when it comes to the weather. She insisted that it was consistently wrong, to the point that it was an in-joke with locals. Our phones predicted rain coming the next day, and we had planned on leaving the area because of it, but she insisted the rain wasn’t actually going to happen. When rain comes in that area, she explained, the clouds build up and get trapped behind the mountains first; you can see it coming, and the clouds simply weren’t there. At the very least, it seemed guaranteed that it would be sunny in the morning, so we woke up early to get on the first cable car up to Männlich, which was only a ten-minute walk from our campsite. These cable cars were new and sleek, and from the top you were given a full view of the Grindelwald valley below and the Lauterbrunnen valley on the opposite side, with the rising sun still trapped below the peak of Mount Eiger. Though it was difficult to place at first, using landmarks to triangulate position we were indeed able to see Longboi’s ass from the zenith of the lift.
The path to Kleine Scheidegg is easy yet breathtaking, offering an unimpeded view of the three tallest mountains in the area: Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau. We checked in at the Kleine Scheidegg way-station to assess our options for getting back to Grindelwald and were aggressively informed by the Swiss Billy Eichner that it was significantly cheaper to take public transit through the valley than to take any of the quicker, privately-owned mountain trains through the pass. Doing this meant we had walk all the way down the other side of the mountain to the town of Wengen, farther than we had anticipated or particularly cared to descend, but we were willing to accept the challenge. Thankfully, the steep, rocky downhill sections were broken up by long, meandering strolls through the hillside, making the 12-mile trek quite pleasant, if a bit long for our taste.
In the end, we were glad to have ended up in Wengen, as it turned out to be a ludicrously scenic hillside village full of manicured chalets with a jaw-dropping view through the Lauterbrunnen valley and not a single car in sight. From this vantage point we were able to finally see the mountains that form the backdrop of the Lauterbrunnen valley that had previously been obscured by clouds during our valley walk. The weather stayed beautiful all day, and we were grateful we had listened to the girl on the train and not left Grindelwald early fearing rain.
Earlier this year, Shelly moved from Zurich to the small village of Rapperswil-Jona on the other side of the lake. A friend was leaving her spacious flat in a 17th-century building located in the old town, and she jumped at the opportunity to take it over. Situated on top of a small beer bar, her windows look out from the top floor onto the rustic backstreet, a view seemingly unchanged for hundreds of years. As far as we are concerned, it is the dream European apartment. Spending the evening together eating and drinking by the window, listening to the people laugh and converse in the bars and restaurants below, we were struck by how pleasant European living could be. Shelly’s flat did not look out on a rat-infested courtyard where mongoloid neighbors throw broken computer monitors in the compost bin. It became clearer than ever that we should really look for a new apartment in Berlin.
Instead of trying to rip off the 10+ hours needed to get home in one sitting like we did in Austria, we decided to split our return trip into two stretches this time around, allowing us to have a leisurely morning and lunch by the water with Shelly before hitting the road. We drove until evening near Bayreuth and stopped at a hotel off the highway, something we almost never do. Though the place felt like a ghost town on a Saturday night, there were plenty of cars in the lot. The safety precautions were strict, which we welcomed heartily. It seemed the Germans were taking the COVID-19 threat quite a bit more seriously than the Swiss. The restaurant was nearly empty for dinner. We weren’t allowed to fill our own plates from the breakfast buffet the following morning, instead simply pointing to what we wanted to eat and a masked hotel employee would gather it for us. After two weeks cooking our own food for every meal, dining in a roadside motel restaurant was a strange dichotomy of luxury and restriction.
We’re not sure what the rest of 2020 will hold for our ability to travel, but we wouldn’t be surprised if this is the last trip we are able to take. Like many, we fear what will happen to the infection numbers once people are forced indoors by the cold, and with a second wave in Europe the borders could well close again as they did in the spring. Hiking and camping are arguably our favorite leisure activities, so it feels strange that it was expressly because of the pandemic that we spent almost an entire month in the alps this year. It shouldn’t have taken the desire to stay self-contained, distant, and safe for us to have finally explored the Swiss outdoors, but somehow that’s the way it turned out. This time around, we left Switzerland with a much better impression of the place than after our first trip, likely because we were able to learn from our initial surprises and mistakes and make sure we didn’t repeat them. Switzerland is still an extremely expensive place to hang out, but when you stay in campsites, cook your own meals, and provide your own transportation, the only real hefty expense left is paying to get yourself up and down the mountain, unless you’re a masochist and want to do that part on foot as well. Every single time we stepped off a funicular or gondola up in the peaks we understood what all the fuss was about, and were happy to pay for the opportunity to wander around in such a magnificent landscape.