Westwards

A long and sunny summer

We are trying a new format this week on the blog: a summary of the last three months in real life and on the blog. As we not only posted about current travels, but also did some blog posts on the UNESCO sites we have visited longer ago, it may not always be clear from the blog posts where we are right now, or where we have been recently.
It might not look like this, but after a longer Central Asia trip in June we spent the better part of the summer in Berlin working on two different guide books (Central Asia and Japan), only interrupted by 16 days of wonderful hiking and sightseeing in Switzerland.

We also did do some sightseeing in Berlin, though: for example, we joined a tremendously interesting tour through the building of the Ministry of Finance (another blog post for the future) on an open door day. We also met a lot of friends, went to the climbing gym twice a week and even managed to rent a kayak for half a day. And most of this was possible because of the ongoing sunny weather.

Natascha has meanwhile left for Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan for tour guiding work – a looong tour of 24 days going from Bishkek via Uzbekistan to the Pamir Highway.

And here comes a round-up of the last three months of blogging on WESTWARDS. We love to hear your opinion and answer any questions you have regarding our travel destinations. Have a wonderful autumn and for all of you in Europe an easy transition towards winter.

Switzerland: our summer holiday

• Affordable Swiss Alps – Isa's delicious pie charts
• Visiting the UNESCO Heritage of the Jungfrau-Aletsch-Bietschhorn Glacier
• Hiking from Chamonix to Nendaz (many gorgeous mountain pictures!)
• The terraced vineyards on the shores of Lac Leman – another UNESCO site

Iran

We travelled there for the first time in early summer 2015. We had wanted to go there for years and this year we went as a prelude to our research trip in Central Asia.

• Strolling through the gardens of Persia
• Iran – how much did it cost? (it was not as cheap as we had thought!)
• Persepolis – one of our all-time sightseeing highlights
• Some afterthoughts on travelling in Iran (what was good, what was bad?)
• The Naqshe Jahan Square in Isfahan on a weekend
• As a female vegetarian traveller in Iran (sometimes not so easy)
• The Golestan Palace in Teheran

Turkmenistan

We went through Turkmenistan on a five-day transit visa (the only affordable way to travel there) in June, entering from Iran, exiting to Uzbekistan. Our main reason for this trip was guide book research on some ancient sites.

• Kunya Urgench – the most beautiful dome in Central Asia
• Old Nisa – what is left of the old Parthian town?
• On a transit visa through Turkmenistan – how to do it
• Merv – an ancient walk-to-work city in the desert (and another UNESCO site)

Uzbekistan

We spent 8 days in Uzbekistan in June, mostly to catch up with business partners and friends as well as to research a few new hotels. And we managed to visit some out of the way sights.

• Finding Paikend and Varakhsha – two ancient Silk Road towns near Bukhara

Berlin

Yes, we wrote some posts about our hometown as well

• Airport without tourists – a visit to the abandoned Tempelhof Airport
• Vegetarian burger at „Glück to go“ („happiness to go“ - nice name for a burger joint, isn't it?)

Affordable Swiss Alps: Isa's delicious pie charts

Total cost of travelling in Switzerland for 14 days for both of us:
932 CHF, or 66.60 CHF per day for both of us.

Travelling in Switzerland, especially right now with a very strong Swiss Franc, is not cheap, but there are ways to make it affordable.

Altogether we spent 14 days in Switzerland. Seven of them we went hiking over the mountains, the second half of our trip we stayed in the Rhone Valley and at the Lac Leman, doing day hikes and some sightseeing. For the two of us these two weeks came to less than 1000 CHF (not including access to Switzerland).

Hiking in the Alps was the main reason for us to visit Switzerland and the hiking is free (no entrance fees for National Parks) – so no expenses here.

Accommodation: As we had our own tent, we stayed on campsites most of the time (ranging from 16.40 to 31 CHF per night for two people and a tent). While hiking, we also bivouacked above the tree line three times and we stayed for free with a friend for three nights

Food: Camping also meant that we could prepare our own food. We never went out for dinner, but we indulged in cake and coffee in mountain huts or cafés. In the Rhone valley and at Lac Leman we also had some glasses of wine while walking through the vineyards.

Transport: Since we walked into the country (from France) and had a train ticket from Lausanne back to Berlin (not counted in the CHF expenses), there were only a few short distances within Switzerland that we had to cover by public transport. Even this added up to nearly 170 CHF. We also walked one stage (17 km) of the Via Francigena – a pilgrims' route along the valleys – to get from Martigny to St. Maurice. It was a pleasant day hike and the train would have been 6.80 CHF per person. Walking, even if it is only a few kilometers, instead of taking the train or bus, can save a lot of money in Switzerland.

We took a flight with Easy Jet from Berlin to Genève (136.66 €) and an “Easy Bus” to Chamonix (37.24 €); the train ticket back was 164.60 € (traveling costs for both of us).

Sightseeing: During the second part of the trip we visited four museums in Martigny, St. Maurice, Vevey and Lausanne. Their combined entrance fees would have been 116 CHF, although we got free entry with our press card. The rest of the sightseeing, such as city walks, churches, Roman ruins and hikes through the vineyards, was free.

Some other costs included fuel for the camping stove, a Swiss SIM card, and yes, we bought wine and cheese to take home (for about 100 CHF)

Summary:

Even at the current exchange rate, this was a highly enjoyable and quite reasonably priced holiday in Switzerland. If you skip the wine, the cafés, and maybe even some of the museums, you could reduce the costs even further (by up to 30%), but do consider that a buffer for cafés or staying in a mountain hut can be essential if the weather is harsher than it was this summer.

The Jungfrau-Aletsch-Bietschhorn Glacier region in Switzerland

After a few weeks hiking in Switzerland we feel like lingering there for a little longer – even if it's only on the blog - and doing another UNESCO post about the Jungfrau-Aletsch glacier we visited a few years ago.

The Aletsch Glacier was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage in 2001, and the protected area was extended considerably in 2007. As the longish title of the World Heritage site suggests, this is the backyard of the Jungfrau region: You get a look at the famous Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau rock massif from the Southern side instead of from the North as usual. Conveniently, this also means that you stay in sun-bathed Swiss canton of Valais with over 2000 hours of sunshine per year.

With a length of 23 km the Aletsch Glacier is the largest and longest glacier in Europe. It is not merely notable for its size, but also for the wealth of information scientists can gather here about the formation of mountains and glaciers as well as the ongoing climate change.

How to explore the Aletsch Glacier

We went on a day trip from Brig to see the Glacier. First we took the Matterhorn-Gotthard train to Betten and then the cable car up to Bettmeralp, a car-free village at 1948m altitude.

„Skiers should stick to the valley side and slide at moderate speed,“ we read on a traffic sign displayed prominently in the village. It seems that during the winter season, several ski pistes pass directly through the village. We then follow the „marmot path“ - no marmots to be seen at all – towards the peak of Bettmerhorn and from there continue along the so-called „ UNESCO heritage high trail “, an Alpine route / Via Ferrata with blue-white-blue pointers. The high trail runs above the glacier, which looks a little bit like a highway with its two middle moraines. Shortly before we reach the peak of Eggishorn we take another path that leads us back to the cable car station at Bettmeralp.

Is it worth going?

Well, of course it is. We would say that the Swiss Alps in general are always worth going. The Aletsch Glacier is indeed quite impressive for its size, but it is not the most beautiful glacier you can see in the Alps. On the other hand the mountains surrounding the glacier will leave you speechless. If you want to walk the UNESCO heritage high trail you will need some experience in Alpine environments as well as a head for heights. Rope and helmet are not necessary.

How to get there

Instead of hiking from Bettmeralp, as we did, you could take the Bettmerhorn cable car all the way up to Bettmerhorn (2874 m) from where you already have a good view on the Aletsch-Glacier. The return ticket from Betten to Bettmeralp is 19.20 CHF, the return ticket from Betten up to Bettmerhorn 39 CHF.

Hiking in the Alps from Chamonix to Nendaz: A variation on the Haute Route

Just over 100 km, but with an accumulated altitude difference of 6300 m – we spent 8 days in July and August hiking from Chamonix over the mountains to Nendaz in the Rhone valley.

The hut on the Col de Balme at 2191 m marks the border between France and Switzerland. It looks like an ancient relic from the early days of Alpinism and the caretakers are possibly just as ancient and quite grumpy. Nevertheless, they serve us a cup of hot cocoa, and we are glad for it as we have been walking up here in constant rain and fog from Argentière near Chamonix (France).

We arrived in Chamonix on a pleasant afternoon with a tent, warm clothing and a view to possibly walking all the way to Zermatt, from Mont-Blanc to the Matterhorn, on the famous Haute Route that crosses major mountain chains directly west to east. With 30 kg of luggage between the two of us, we would see how far we could get. The first day brought us to a fabulous campsite near Argentière on the end of the Chamonix valley, and the rainy second day was luckily the only one with really bad weather.

On day 3, a wonderful sunny day, we tackled the Fenêtre d'Arpette, a 2665 m high rocky pass popular with day walkers and organised international tour groups on the Tour de Mont-Blanc circuit. Our backpacks were quite heavy, but the hiking and the landscape amazing. We set up our tent in between and it took us two days to reach Champex, the so-called “Little Canada of Switzerland”.

For the next pass, the Col de Mille, we took again two days, hiking from Liddes over the mountain range to Lourtier and Champsec, with a beautiful campsite at 2100 m, overlooking the Val de Bagne valley and the resort town of Verbier on the opposite site.

Finally, we decided to turn off the direct Zermatt route and take another pass towards the Rhone Valley: Our last two days led us to Verbier and over the Croix de Coeur to Le Tzoumaz and Nendaz.

The village of Sarreyer halfway to Verbier we found actually far more charming than Verbier itself: cute renovated woodblock houses, and a similarly good location.

From Le Tzoumaz to Nendaz, we walked along a historic bisse, a water channel that the villagers took much effort to construct along the steep hillsides. Most of them dried out when new technologies made their difficult maintenance unnecessary, but the maintenance paths have recently been restored for hikers.

Practicalities

Not counting (sometimes unintended) detours, we have walked 102 km altogether, with 6300 m ascent and 5550 m decent. As we had the tent and camping stove with us, we could hike at our own pace. Wild camping is officially forbidden in Switzerland, but is tolerated in most cases above the timber line and if you set up camp/bivouac only for one night.

Contact us for GPS tracks of the hike.

A walk through the terraced vineyards of Lavaux on the shores of Lac Leman

Red and blue routes criss-cross the light green wine terraces on the leaflet we get at the Vevey tourist information. “It's very easy to find your way”, the woman from the information desk assures us: “You just follow the blue arrows!” After all we are in well-organized Switzerland and for sure they have implemented a tourist infrastructure at their UNESCO World Heritage sites, we conclude.

The wine growing tradition in the Lavaux goes back to Roman times and up until the 19th century, the vineyards started right behind the Old Town of Vevey. The Confrerie de Vignerons, the Brotherhood of the Winemakers, controlled an area as large as today, but all within 5 km around the town when today the wine terraces are spread over a large area all around the eastern end of Lac Leman, between Lausanne and Martigny. Then mildew and the vine fretter destroyed many of the vines, and the industrialisation let Vevey grow well beyond the old limits of town. The wine growers decided to focus solely on wine, abandoning their little vegetable plots in between. They had a powerful quality control association initiated by the vineyard owners, and the best wine growers would win prizes according to an intricate system of bonus points. To improve harvests, they planted mostly a small number of grape varieties best suited to the conditions – today almost all the wine grown in the area is Chasselas (a white grape known as Fendant in neighbouring Valais), plus some Pinot Noir and only a handful of other varieties. The Lavaux vineyards became a UNESCO world heritage site in 2007 for their rich and long history and culture connected with wine production.

Getting off the train in Cully, a small village huddled around its church on the lake shore, our Swiss vineyard experience starts right away behind the railway tracks, where lines and lines of vines stand on narrow terraces. A dry stone wall usually divides them from the next terrace. And another one, and another one. Vineyards as far as you can see. The hillside is also dotted with more picturesque small villages. And although we don't find any blue arrow, our leaflet indicates Riex as the first picturesque village on our route – it is already visible above us to the right. 800 m further on – and 70 m higher in altitude – we wander the three streets of Riex, where nearly every house seems to belong to a winemaker. Many of them will open their cellars around 5 pm to visitors, to taste their wines and buy them (by the box, in most cases, but of course you can always buy a single bottle).

 

In the village of Epesses

The only blue arrow we can find now points right down back to Cully, but we take the not very frequented road leading straight to Epesses instead, on a similar altitude and only one kilometre from Riex. It's a similar, very cute village of winemakers, and there's also a tiny restaurant with a terrace that offers a good wine-selection by the glass. We consider taking our rest here, but on the other hand, the woman in the tourist information had advised us to go to Chexbres by all means. We postpone the break and hope for pleasant wine-tasting opportunities there. Chexbres, however, turns out to be a rather uninspiring larger village with more modern buildings and lacking cute wine bars in spite of the good location nearly 200 m above the lake, so we move on, back to the lake shore towards Rivaz, yet another cute little Montreux Riviera village surrounded by vineyards. When we meet some other tourists, a Chinese family, the father asks us whether they picked the wrong day of the week: "Everything is closed! Frankly it's a bit disappointing, we had hoped to have a rest somewhere and taste the wine…" As nice as the landscape and the walking was, between ourselves we had just arrived at the same conclusion. But then, we do find an open restaurant with a good selection of local wines in Rivaz.

The next (rainy) day we visited Vevey's local history museum with its panels and films about the main wine-related event in the area: The Fête des Vignerons (Wine Growers' Festival) which only takes place once in a generation (20-25 years) and grew from regular parades (until the 18^th century) into a huge cultural event and show where the best wine growers are crowned. We also find that there is a wine-tasting facility in Rivaz especially developed for tourists – its shop and tasting bar open at 10.30 and stay open until the evening.

Is it worth going?

If you like wine and wine-tasting as well as walking through a lovely landscape, the Lavaux wine terraces will delight you. You can get a quite detailed leaflet indicating the different routes with approximate walking times at the tourist information centres in the area (do not bother looking for the blue arrows, though). On weekends you can also take a train that brings you to the villages. If you are interested in buying from the producers, go after 5 pm, when most of them will be open for tasting and sales. The Vinorama – a facility where you can buy and taste a wide (rather high end) selection of the regional wines also shows a movie about the vineyard culture in Lavaux. Call ahead for times.

Practical information

Access to the Lavaux vineyard terraces is easy from the railway (S1) that goes along the shore of Lac Leman. From there you can walk up into the vineyard regions. There are also buses and in some cases cable cars that connect the higher lying villages.

The next Fête des Vignerons will take place on 26 July to 11 August 2019: www.fetedesvignerons.ch. We will try to come back for that.

Fasnacht – a unique carnival tradition in Basel

It is 4 am - the streets in the centre of Basel's Old Town are lined with people waiting for the "Morgestreich"  that marks the official beginning of the carnival in Basel. With the chime of the cathedral clock, all lights, street lanterns as well as the lights in private houses and shops, go out. At the same time small and big lanterns go on and some groups of masked people start to play pipes and drums. The active participants are dressed in full costume including sculpted masks and smaller lanterns mounted on top of their head, larger ones with intricate painted images are fastened onto carriages. With these lanterns as the only source of light and the strange, mediaeval music, the slow procession of dressed up people through the streets is eerie. The carnival clubs (which are called cliques in the Basel carnival jargon) don't follow a fixed route, but roam the streets in small bands.

Everyone who is not a participating member of the Basel carnival cliques is not supposed to wear any costume or disguise – a condition we rather appreciate. We watch from the roadside and later walk up and down the streets between harlequin pipers and Grim Reapers, trying to get warmer, after all it is February and 4 am! Not even two hours later, before sunrise, we give up and go home to sleep.

Later that day the carnival cliques have rearranged to conduct a more orderly carnival procession. They have decorated floats relating to the group's or this year's motto, and all group members are wearing identical costumes and masks. Apart from the harlequin types, ogres, zombies and pirates with impressive skull masks are wide-spread costumes, but most popular is a figure with an enormous nose and a mop of hair – often hurling vegetables from the floats.

This mask is called a "Waggis", we learn in Basel's ethnology museum, and depicts migrant workers and farmers from neighbouring Alsace who used to come to the rich Swiss city to sell their produce. We also learn that the Basel carnival as we see it today is actually a product of the 19^th and 20^th century. Although its roots with disguises and some sort of hilarious parades apparently date back to mediaeval times, the rules and procedures, the permitted types of masks, the organisational structure of clubs and cliques, the events and their timings – all things that appear so mediaeval and time-honoured - were only set up relatively recently. And yet the Basel Fasnacht remains archaic in its unstructured roaming – in spite of all the rules, there is almost no choreography in the parades and events, and basically everything in the three days following the Morgestreich is a repetition of that night. Even the official programme lists Wednesday's events as a repetition of Monday.

We do visit the parades, the exhibition of floats, we see the children's parade and the Guggemusik brass band performances. We try Fasnachtswähe (a dry yeast pastry with caraway), Zwiebelwähe (onion pie), Käsewähe (cheese pie) and Fasnachtskiechli (a pan-fried sugary pastry). But on Wednesday, we take a break from Fasnacht and go hiking.

On Thursday, when we walk the streets at 5 am to get to our early-morning flight back to Berlin, we pass a tired woman carrying a huge "Waggis" mask, then a group of cyclists with over-emphasized shoulders in their colourful costumes and backgammon-patterned drums strapped to their backs. Finally, bus No 36 to Kleinhüningen is full of happy but exhausted Kleinhüningers in harlequin costumes.

 

Basler Fasnacht starts on 4 am Monday morning after Ash Wednesday and ends on the following Thursday at 4 am. These are the "three best days of the year" – Basel residents who disagree leave town during Fasnacht. 

See also:

Chienbäse in Liestal near Basel – a fire devillish experience

Carnival in Cologne

Chienbäse in Liestal near Basel – a fire devillish experience

„Is this the right place to watch the famous carnival fire procession?“ Crowds of people expectantly lining the dark street, but we are not so sure of the proceedings and whether the actual fire event will be everywhere in town or along a fixed route. „The best spot is the old wooden city gate“ someone had advised. But where is the city gate? And is it worth pushing forward through the crowd? The locals nod and shove, but curiously nobody wants to get into the front row. We have been warned, too, and taken to wear old jackets and hats in case we get hit by sparks of the fires to come.
Finally, a group of people wearing demonic face masks come along the street: They have smaller lanterns mounted on their heads, and larger ones on carts or carried around on sedans. The lanterns are painted with caricatures and slogans in a local Swiss dialect that we have difficulties to decipher and understand and in any case we don’t get the local politics implications. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see the procession of dimly lit masks and costumes, many of them quite scary figures with wild hair and huge noses or skeletal grins.
And then again nothing happens for a while. Maybe we are in the wrong spot after all? More people push from behind and then we see the flickering of fire somewhere up the street, at first only reflecting in the shop windows across a street curve. People come walking down the street carrying amazingly huge torches over their shoulders. Some are wearing fire brigade helmets, others have fashioned fire-proof headgear and cloaks from old pots and sieves, from metal sheets and tin foil. The torches look like giant birch brooms. They are made from strong pine wood and are said to weigh up to 100 kg. Sometimes when the flames die down a whole group of torch bearers start to run down the street for a stretch in order to rekindle their torches, and the sparks do dance and fly up very high. We are lucky to stand in the right direction away from the wind and see people on the opposite side of the street taking cover from the sparks and coughing from the smoke that develops when smoldering pieces of wood fall down and continue to burn on the street.

Every now and then a huge cart piled with burning wood is rolled down the street and like almost everyone else we are torn between the urge to rush forward for photos (for once, the street is lit up brightly) and the heat pushing us back into the dense crowd behind us.

The Chienbäse fire festival dates back to the older tradition of lighting fires on the surrounding mountains on the first Sunday after Ash wednesday. The present day procession reportedly goes back to a pastry chef who returned to his hometown after several years abroad, and felt like celebrating. Since pastry chefs used to fire their ovens with pine wood it was a likely choice for the torches as well.

We loved our excursion to Liestal – it was dark and light, archaic, but not too long and a reasonable mix of too cold and too hot.

Half-way to Italy, half-way to France

The Stockalper Palace in Brig

„To Milano“ is written on the yellow road sign, and a cardboard announcement at the fence of a chicken farm promises „Polli freschi” – fresh poultry. A stooped woman carrying a watering can shuffles along the narrow cobbled alley towards her tiny garden. Geographically we are still in Switzerland, but houses built of coarse stone blocs, crooked lanes and Italian names on the gravestones behind the church give Simplon Dorf the feel of Bella Italia. From the Swiss town of Brig we have just hiked over the Simplon Pass to the southern side of the Alps. Although this trading route has been used since Roman times, it was not until the 17th century that Kaspar Jodok Stockalper, a merchant from Brig, developed it and started a prospering trade in salt and silk over the Alps. Stockalper also launched a postal service by horse and shortened the delivery time of a letter from Geneve to Milano to only 8 days in summer, or 10 in winter. Originally from an already wealthy family, Stockalper became indecently rich over the years. To show off this affluence he built a sumptuous palace with an arcaded courtyard and three square towers topped by gilded onion domes in his home town Brig. His family became influential in regional politics for generations. Not everybody liked Stockalper’s grandeur, however, and his pious motto (which he had written on the wall of his dining room) did not help: „Sospes lucra carpat.“ The meaning of this anagram of Casparus Stockalper is “God’s favourite should skim the profits.”

After two weeks in the German speaking Upper Valais (Oberwallis) we headed for the French speaking Lower Valais (Unterwallis) to visit a friend we had met in Uzbekistan last September. Nicole lives in Les Collons, a small village in the Val d’Hérence. “It is not a proper village” she explains, “Just a resort village: It doesn’t have a church.” And indeed, although Les Collons has three streets lined with chalets (named after their altitude Les Collons 1800, Les Collons 1850, and Les Collons 1900), it is strangely deserted in summer. “Only 50 people live here permanently,” Nicole tells us. From her balcony we have a breathtaking vista over the Bernese Alps to the left and to the snow-capped Matterhorn to the right. On the opposite site of the valley we see several “real villages” with church towers glued to the steep slope of the mountains.

“Pop! Pop!” Through the thin tent tarp we hear the soft noise of corks being pulled out of wine bottles. French (and French-speaking) campers meet all our expectations: Sitting in their flower print camping chairs they have lengthy four-course dinners accompanied by numerous glasses of the local wine. Of course they brought porcelaine dishes and proper wine glasses. After all, wine has been grown in Valais for centuries. Poor farmers from these rugged valleys used to go abroad as mercenaries (the famous Swiss Guards in the Vatican are from Valais), and many brought home different kinds of grapevines to try on their local soil. Some of the vineyards are 1,000 metres above sea level, making them the highest ones in Europe. We especially liked the white flowery Fendant. Mostly, however, we stuck to the tasty Swiss tap water – we will soon enough be in regions again where potable water is rare. More Alps for now, but after the summer we will be off to Central America.

 

Rice Balls and Raclette below the Matterhorn

Coming up the mountain, we suddenly see about sixty Japanese sitting on the lawn in front of the Riffelberg Mountain Hut. Most of them wear thin cotton gloves and hats with big screens against the strong sun. Some have clipped their sunhats to the collar of their chequered shirts, in case a sudden strong breeze comes up. From their open knapsacks they take out Onigiri, rice balls wrapped in seaweed, that smell oh so Japanese.
In the course of their “Swiss Alps in Seven Days” tour, every Japanese tour group visits Zermatt. They are shuttled up to the Gornergrat ridge in the historic cable car to get a good look at the famous Matterhorn and the other 28 snow-capped 4000m peaks in the area. From the ridge, the groups walk down a couple of cable car stations over the green meadows, admiring the Alpine flora. In front of the Riffelberg Hut, they then have their pre-packed Japanese-style lunch while they marvel at the characteristic, slightly bent peak of the Matterhorn. As on most days, a frothy white cloud adorns the eastern side of the peak like a fancy plume. The Matterhorn certainly looks unclimbable, and until 1865, nearly everybody thought it was.
Six times had the British mountaineer Edward Whymper failed to climb the Matterhorn from the Italian side when his attempt from Zermatt met with success on 14 July 1865, just ahead of an Italian party. On the descent, however, one member of his group slipped, carrying away three more climbers into death. Only the breaking of the rope saved Whymper and two guides from the same fate. Although a formal investigation as to whether the rope had actually broken or had been cut freed Whymper of any charges, this terrible incident haunted him his remaining life. Today the broken rope from the first ascent can be admired in the Matterhorn Museum of Zermatt. Since 1865, many climbers successfully reached the peak - among them the 23 year-old Theodor Roosevelt in 1881.
Numerous others died during their attempts. Their graves can be visited on the mountaineers’ graveyard behind the small village church. Tombstones with sculpted ice axes, or even with real ones attached to them are common. We even see a grave with a crucified Christ adorned as a climber, axe and rope hanging from his dead body.
The village of Zermatt is very much geared towards tourists. The main road is lined with souvenir shops and sports shops, selling everything Swiss, from chocolate to watches and pen-knives. Among the day trippers and tour groups mingle serious mountaineers with ropes slung around their shoulders, ice axes and crampons fixed to their backpacks.
No cars are allowed into the village. Yet there is a constant reverse gear background noise, created by legions of small electric vans buzzing through the streets. Even the local police whizzes around in a dark blue plastic box.
On our hikes around Zermatt we keep meeting Japanese. “Konnichiwa,” we smile at every one of them, eager to practice our Japanese. “Konnichiwa…” Most don’t even notice. “Eh, ‘Konnichiwa’?” Some do. “Nihongo daijōbu? You speak Japanese?” One middle-aged woman takes the opportunity to ask how far it is to walk to Zermatt. Is the path very steep? And we have walked up all the way? Excitedly, she keeps grabbing our elbows while talking. It is her second visit to Switzerland, but the first time in Zermatt. Tomorrow they will visit the Jungfraujoch and stay there at the hotel, at an altitude of over 3000 m. In the evening, walking back to the campground, we see the Japanese staff of the restaurant “Fuji of Zermatt” in traditional garb, having a quick cigarette in the backyard. But from the other side wafts the cheesy smell of Raclette.