This past weekend I broke one of my personal rules of traveling. In general, I aim for a 3:2 ratio of experience time to travel time, meaning I'm willing to spend approximately 4 hours of my day in a train for a 6-hour hike. Sometimes I get closer to a 1:1 ratio, but not very often. Of course, rules are meant to be broken, and this past weekend I blatantly flouted my rules and had a completely lovely time in the process.
I had the chance to join my flatmate Georgie and some of her friends on a hike in the Engadine. I was in the Engadine (St. Mortiz, more specifically) on a retreat with my research group last fall and have really wanted to go back to the area. However, I could just never bring myself to invest all of the train time to going there, so I was actually thankful that someone else could make that choice for me. (Thus, I wasn't really breaking my personal travel rule- someone else was breaking it for me!)
Regardless of who did the travel rule breaking, this entailed getting up at 5.15 am on a Saturday morning. Georgie and I caught 2 trams to the main station and met the rest of the group. Our group ended up being Georgie and I, Georgie's friend Kathi, Kathi's roommate Anja, Kathi's childhood friend Stefanie, and Kathi's friend from Spain, Jaime. We then took 4 trains and ended up in Morteratsch around 10.30 am. You might be tired of me saying this, but, by the way, it was totally gorgeous and sublime. The sky was clear, the sun was shining, and the air was brisk and invigorating (meaning we started our hike with hats and mittens on!). The larches were flaming gold, contrasting beautifully with the true evergreen trees.
One funny thing that happened was that one of Georgie's friends, who is Swiss, had the exact same coat as I! I just bought this coat in the sale rack at REI, and it is an REI-brand coat, so I was quite sure that I'd never run in to anyone in Switzerland who had the same coat. Of course, she had just been in the US in August, shopping at REI, so we both showed up at the Zürich train station in the same lovely turquoise REI jacket.
We went for this hike up to the Bovalhütte, which overlooks the Morteratsch glacier. For the first part of the hike, we wound our way up the valley through an evergreen forest, which smelled heavenly. We got little glimpses of the snow-capped mountains that we were hiking towards.
I had the chance to join my flatmate Georgie and some of her friends on a hike in the Engadine. I was in the Engadine (St. Mortiz, more specifically) on a retreat with my research group last fall and have really wanted to go back to the area. However, I could just never bring myself to invest all of the train time to going there, so I was actually thankful that someone else could make that choice for me. (Thus, I wasn't really breaking my personal travel rule- someone else was breaking it for me!)
Regardless of who did the travel rule breaking, this entailed getting up at 5.15 am on a Saturday morning. Georgie and I caught 2 trams to the main station and met the rest of the group. Our group ended up being Georgie and I, Georgie's friend Kathi, Kathi's roommate Anja, Kathi's childhood friend Stefanie, and Kathi's friend from Spain, Jaime. We then took 4 trains and ended up in Morteratsch around 10.30 am. You might be tired of me saying this, but, by the way, it was totally gorgeous and sublime. The sky was clear, the sun was shining, and the air was brisk and invigorating (meaning we started our hike with hats and mittens on!). The larches were flaming gold, contrasting beautifully with the true evergreen trees.
One funny thing that happened was that one of Georgie's friends, who is Swiss, had the exact same coat as I! I just bought this coat in the sale rack at REI, and it is an REI-brand coat, so I was quite sure that I'd never run in to anyone in Switzerland who had the same coat. Of course, she had just been in the US in August, shopping at REI, so we both showed up at the Zürich train station in the same lovely turquoise REI jacket.
We went for this hike up to the Bovalhütte, which overlooks the Morteratsch glacier. For the first part of the hike, we wound our way up the valley through an evergreen forest, which smelled heavenly. We got little glimpses of the snow-capped mountains that we were hiking towards.
The conditions were a really interesting juxtaposition of the seasons. The colors of the trees were totally fall. The sun was incredibly intense, so eventually we were hiking in short-sleeved shirts, which was like summer. But we had to hike over icy patches and past snow (not to mention that we were wearing hats and mittens at the start of the hike), which seemed more like winter. We passed this really cool place where there was a small waterfall. Ice had formed over the top, but the water was still flowing underneath, and it looked not even real- almost like an LED display. I took a movie with my camera that you can see below.
Once we emerged from the forest and were above the tree line, we had clear views of the mountains and glacier and valley. Georgie gave us a mini-lecture on the interesting geology and the way that the glacier had shaped the valley. I love hiking with someone who knows geology. Or geo-morphology. Or whatever her brand of science is...
We made it up to the Bovalhütte and had a picnic lunch above the hut, overlooking the general splendor. After a leisurely lunch, we enjoyed a coffee and kuchen at the hut, basking in the sun. I normally go on longer hikes and don't have so much time to just enjoy being at the top, and it was really lovely to just enjoy being in a beautiful place with nice people.
We started back down the hill around mid-afternoon, since we still had half a hike, 4 trains and 2 trams between us and home. Somehow Georgie and I managed to get separated from the others before a fork in the trail, and we ended up at the train station in plenty of time to catch our train- but our companions weren't there! They took the wrong fork and had to run down to make the train. Thankfully we all made it and started the journey home.
Some of you might know that I absolutely LOVE fall to the point that I can become fall-intoxicated. I just go a little silly and am super energized. Despite the early morning and the hike, I was really energized on the train ride back. I may or may not have earned multiple disapproving glances from other people on the train for being too animated in my conversation. Although I do think it was also the fact that I was speaking English and not German.
It is a very interesting thing to know enough German to be able to understand it when people are talking about you, but not enough for it to make sense for you to be talking with your friends in German. (Although there was also someone in our group who didn't speak German at all, so it would've been rude to all speak in German, however much I would've loved to practice with the other people that were on the hike.) We sat by two very disapproving elderly ladies who were tsk,tsk-ing over the fact that we were so many English speakers and how it was so stupid that people don't try to learn German when living here, etc., although they thawed a little when they realized that we were traveling with three Swiss people. There was another couple on a different train that commented more than once to each other on how we were speaking English and not German. And what a shame it is that people don't learn German, etc. As someone who is actually attempting to learn German, it makes me a little upset that people assume that I'm not trying. Especially because even if I do try to speak with people in German, quite often they'll switch into English because they don't like speaking in high German!
Although I guess I should be flattered that people know that I live here now. It's probably just that I have a GA (you need a residence permit to have a GA), and they see my GA when the conductor controls us.
Finally, I was fed up with being tsk-ed, so, as we got onto one train, I started speaking in German. Only to have the girl we were sitting in a compartment with ask us, "Where are y'all from?" with a clearly American accent. Heh. Anyways, we met a new ETH masters student in Biomedical Engineering (maybe?) who had just arrived a month ago and who was enjoying traveling around Switzerland on the weekends. It was pretty funny- I don't think I've ever run into another American on a train ride or ended up having a long conversation with them.
We finally made it back into Zürich after 8.5 hours on the train and about 6 hours of hiking, which puts my experience to travel ratio at about 1:1.5. However, we were joking that 2 of the hours on the train actually count as experience hours, because the train had been declared a UNESCO world heritage sight, and we heard countless announcements while on the train detailing "...the spectacular scenery, the 55 bridges, the 20 interesting communities and the 122 fantastic kilometers..." that were featured on this stretch of train tracks. We were even advised at one point that the "...scenery out of the window is about to become very confusing..." because we were winding up through a tunnel and would see the same valley three different times. And, of course, we heard it both going and coming from our hike, so we were a little UNESCO-ed out by the end. And, it didn't seem to us that the scenery was any more spectacular on this section than any other above-ground train ride in Switzerland. However, if you move these two hours from the travel category to the experience side, I did manage closer to a 1.25:1 experience to travel ratio, putting me back in the green.
Even if we did spend longer in trains than outside, it was totally worth it. The company was lovely and the hike was truly dazzling. I love hiking in the fall!
We made it up to the Bovalhütte and had a picnic lunch above the hut, overlooking the general splendor. After a leisurely lunch, we enjoyed a coffee and kuchen at the hut, basking in the sun. I normally go on longer hikes and don't have so much time to just enjoy being at the top, and it was really lovely to just enjoy being in a beautiful place with nice people.
We started back down the hill around mid-afternoon, since we still had half a hike, 4 trains and 2 trams between us and home. Somehow Georgie and I managed to get separated from the others before a fork in the trail, and we ended up at the train station in plenty of time to catch our train- but our companions weren't there! They took the wrong fork and had to run down to make the train. Thankfully we all made it and started the journey home.
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| Dear mom and dad. Here is a picture of me. |
Some of you might know that I absolutely LOVE fall to the point that I can become fall-intoxicated. I just go a little silly and am super energized. Despite the early morning and the hike, I was really energized on the train ride back. I may or may not have earned multiple disapproving glances from other people on the train for being too animated in my conversation. Although I do think it was also the fact that I was speaking English and not German.
It is a very interesting thing to know enough German to be able to understand it when people are talking about you, but not enough for it to make sense for you to be talking with your friends in German. (Although there was also someone in our group who didn't speak German at all, so it would've been rude to all speak in German, however much I would've loved to practice with the other people that were on the hike.) We sat by two very disapproving elderly ladies who were tsk,tsk-ing over the fact that we were so many English speakers and how it was so stupid that people don't try to learn German when living here, etc., although they thawed a little when they realized that we were traveling with three Swiss people. There was another couple on a different train that commented more than once to each other on how we were speaking English and not German. And what a shame it is that people don't learn German, etc. As someone who is actually attempting to learn German, it makes me a little upset that people assume that I'm not trying. Especially because even if I do try to speak with people in German, quite often they'll switch into English because they don't like speaking in high German!
Although I guess I should be flattered that people know that I live here now. It's probably just that I have a GA (you need a residence permit to have a GA), and they see my GA when the conductor controls us.
Finally, I was fed up with being tsk-ed, so, as we got onto one train, I started speaking in German. Only to have the girl we were sitting in a compartment with ask us, "Where are y'all from?" with a clearly American accent. Heh. Anyways, we met a new ETH masters student in Biomedical Engineering (maybe?) who had just arrived a month ago and who was enjoying traveling around Switzerland on the weekends. It was pretty funny- I don't think I've ever run into another American on a train ride or ended up having a long conversation with them.
We finally made it back into Zürich after 8.5 hours on the train and about 6 hours of hiking, which puts my experience to travel ratio at about 1:1.5. However, we were joking that 2 of the hours on the train actually count as experience hours, because the train had been declared a UNESCO world heritage sight, and we heard countless announcements while on the train detailing "...the spectacular scenery, the 55 bridges, the 20 interesting communities and the 122 fantastic kilometers..." that were featured on this stretch of train tracks. We were even advised at one point that the "...scenery out of the window is about to become very confusing..." because we were winding up through a tunnel and would see the same valley three different times. And, of course, we heard it both going and coming from our hike, so we were a little UNESCO-ed out by the end. And, it didn't seem to us that the scenery was any more spectacular on this section than any other above-ground train ride in Switzerland. However, if you move these two hours from the travel category to the experience side, I did manage closer to a 1.25:1 experience to travel ratio, putting me back in the green.
Even if we did spend longer in trains than outside, it was totally worth it. The company was lovely and the hike was truly dazzling. I love hiking in the fall!
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| Me, Georgie, Anja, Stefanie, Kathi and Jaime. |
**Photo credit: Bovalhütte owner on Georgie's camera.
