Heading to Ticino with Jessi

Hiking near Grindelwald.

This past weekend I went on this hike with my friend Melissa, and we heard yodelers, which was one of the most amazing things that has happened to me on a hike thus far.

We chose this hike because it was where the coolest temperatures in Switzerland were predicted (28 C, only!). It has truly been a ranging inferno here, especially given the lack of A/C, so I was happy not to stay in the city (it was up to 35 C, or 95 F!). The day was sunny and perfect.

Because spring/summer arrived so late, the mountains were still incredibly green, and the wildflowers were in full bloom.

One of my favorite tundra plants that I hadn't seen in the Alps before!

We first hiked up to the Bachalpsee, where we had a picnic and cooled off our feet in the ice-cold lake. We couldn't stay in too long before our feet developed ice cream headaches, but it was certainly refreshing!

From Bachalpsee, the hike went up to a pinnacle, which gave us a great vista over the surrounding mountains. We had to hike through some snow patches (further evidence of the late spring and extreme amount of snow last winter), which was a little slick, but we survived!

I took a video of the panorama from the top:



We then walked along a ridge, with mountains in every view. I felt like my eyes weren't big enough to take everything in!

Look at all that iron!

We finished up at the Post bus stop in Bussalp, and had a nice cold Coke on a deck overlooking the valley. From start to finish, it was pretty much a perfect day in the mountains!

500 and a dream come true!

I realized this week that I was rapidly approaching 500 blog posts! Aside from being shocked that I had found that much to say, I felt some pressure to say something meaningful or extra-special, and I was not sure what on earth that was going to be. But then, one of my dreams came true, which seemed momentous enough for the occasion.

I went on a truly stupendous hike yesterday in the Bernese Alps with my dear friend Melissa (which was actually my first real hike of this season, since the weather was so bad in the spring and then I was gone for almost 6 weeks in the US). It was one of those hikes that was just amazing at every turn, with huge vistas of the mountains around every corner.

Ever since I have started hiking in the Alps, I have wanted to hear yodeling. Sure, I've heard Alphorns on my hikes, as well as much drunken German singing, I've never heard yodeling (except in the transit tram in the Zürich airport). Imagine my delight when we turned the corner to an amazing vista and the hikers behind us broke into yodeling! I tried to capture a video, which is below. I'm still getting used to my camera, so I think I was covering my microphone for the first part of the video, but I think you can still get a taste of what we heard in the video. It was so fantastic!



To be honest, I've always thought that yodeling was a little bizarre. In context, though, it seems to be totally natural and joyous. I don't know how you could look at these glorious mountains and not want to break out into some sort of song...

It's nice here.

Heat, sleep and junk mail.

It is currently freakishly hot here in Zürich. Well, I guess it isn't so hot, but the utter lack of air conditioning means that there is almost zero chance to cool down. When I got in to Zürich yesterday evening, my flat was quite toasty.

Eventually, it became cooler outside, so I opened my (screenless) door and windows as wide as possible, and actually slept with everything just open to the outside. Since I'm on the first floor and have had a cat stalker, this made me a little nervous, but it was too hot for any other option. And, luckily, there just aren't that many bugs in Zürich (and, compared to Alaska, the bugs anywhere else are really nothing anyways), so it works to have everything open even without screens.

Thanks to my jet lag and lack of sleep for the previous 30 hours, I actually slept rather well until about 6 am, when the planes started roaring over my building. My neighborhood, Schwamendingen, seems to get the prime plane-landing time slots of 6 am (for an hour or so) and 11 pm (again, for an hour or so). Actually, one of the selling points of my current flat was that the plane traffic is much quieter here than it was at my old flat. It's amazing what moving 1.2 km can do for you! Although it is definitely quieter, with all of my windows and a door wide open, the plane traffic was enough to wake me up.

Which brings me to the most fantastic piece of junk mail I have ever received, which was waiting for me in my mailbox when I got home.

Ever since I move to Zürich almost 3 years ago, there has been a tussle between Germany and Switzerland as to when and where flights can approach the Zürich airport over German airspace. Recently this dispute ended with Switzerland making quite a few concessions, which means more air traffic over Zürich city. Given how much Swiss people like their quiet, this caused an uproar and is definitely a sensitive topic in my neighborhood, which was one of those that was affected by this change. They must be getting ready to have a vote about something related, because I had this fantastic postcard in the mail:

If you take a closer look, you can see that the directions state that if you see a plane crashing into your house, you should grab your child and your hard hats and hide under a table. Because that would definitely help if a plane crashed into your house? And everyone has hard hats lying around?

Also, apparently plane noise can cause heart attacks (third line down)? And when the airplane noise woke me up and disturbed me this morning, I should've put on some noise-canceling headphones that would be hanging from my ceiling. Guess I'll know for next time!

I don't know exactly what this postcard is for (although I think I'm supposed to vote no for sonething...), but it is totally amazing. I think I'm going to keep it and frame it as a shining example of the random things I have gotten in the mail here.