Registered Charity No 288007

                                                                       Kandersteg U3A Visit 2008

The group all met at Gatwick for the flight to Geneva at the reasonable hour of 9.00am for the flight to Geneva where we met Tony and Maja who had travelled from Kandersteg to meet us there at noon. The train journey along Lake Lucerne gave spectacular views and then, on through the lowlands along the Rhone Valley to Brig with mountain views on either side. As we approached Brig we could see the rail track heading steeply upwards on the other side of the river into the mountains through Goppenstein to Kandersteg. The views despite the mist were spectacular at times. Swiss trains are renowned for their efficiency and comfort and we certainly had no complaints.

We stayed at the same hotel as two years ago, the Hotel Victoria-Ritter, right in the centre of Kandersteg. The proprietors Casi and Mimi Platzer and their team as before made us really welcome with their attention to detail. The hotel is in two parts a newer and an older section with the rooms in the latter more cosy and rustic, often with panelled walls, beamed ceilings and carved or hand-painted wooden furniture. Along the corridors for those who took the trouble to explore there were displays of old furniture, objets d’art and other items of interest. We ate in either a lower cosier bar restaurant or upstairs in the elegant chandeliered main restaurant. The hotel’s great feature is the indoor heated swimming pool measuring 6 by 12 metres where some of us swam morning and evening. Its large windows gave excellent views to the mountains beyond when you see them through the mist. In addition there was a sauna, a reading room containing an excellent range of books for us to explore and amongst other things identify the local flora and fauna. Outside, a pleasant garden well planted with local flowers and herbs for the restaurant was the domain of Mimi Platzer.

White snow-capped peaks, blue lakes, houses of dark-brown wood, red geraniums in window-boxes, lush green meadows covered with wild flowers, great drifts of purple and yellow. The majesty of local scenery has been recognised by Unesco, which has declared the mountains and valleys surrounding the mighty Aletsch Glacier (the area round the Jungfraujoch) a World Heritage Site and the area above Kandersteg, the Oeschinensee valley is under consideration for that privilege.

For us, however, it was not an inspiring start to the week. We had come to see the mountains but mists and rain were doing their best to thwart us.

For our first day’s visit we played safe, staying close to base, and walked the picturesque route from Kandersteg along the river Kander to Blausee, a nature park that we had visited on our previous trip. Set in beautiful surroundings is a deep blue lake with its crystal clear, fish filled water in a 20 hectare nature park. The park has numerous walks through rocks and glades, picnic places and campfire sites, a unique alpine trout breeding farm and various restaurants in which the trout are served fresh from the water. We watched from the shelter of the restaurant while braver or madder souls were rowed across the lake in a glass bottomed boat. As the weather cleared we wandered round the trout farm following the life of the trout from egg to table in the displays and demonstration areas. The uphill route back to Kandersteg was by bus.  It was afterall only the first day!!!!!!  We recovered further by stopping off at Tony and Maja’s flat sampling Swiss cheeses, nibbles and wine before heading back to the hotel for a four course Dinner.

Thursday saw no improvement in the cloud cover but it was dryish so we stayed with the planned visit to the historic towns of Spietz and Thun. A train journey to Spietz, a walk along the lakeside We crossed the lake on one of the passenger boats to Thun and viewed the various castles and stately homes round the lake.At the lakeshore is the lush Schadau Park, home to perfectly tended flowerbeds, stunning views across the water to the mountains, and a lavish nineteenth-century folly planted majestically on the waterside. We stopped for tea and cakes at the impressively restored Schadau Castle, and then visited nearby, an odd cylindrical building housing the ‘Wocher Panorama’, a giant painting, the oldest of its kind in the world, running all the way around the interior wall, which depicts the buildings and daily life of Thun circa 1810. It was painted by an architect ,Marquard Wocher and is approximately 7 metres high and 38 metres in length.

Friday, still dull and cloudy!!!!....Not put off by the possible football mania that we could possibly experience we decided to visit Bern. It may be the Swiss capital, but this medieval city had a distinctly small-town feel and was compact and easy to see on foot. The city’s great features are its grand squares and wonderful arcaded streets although these were a little obscured by hundreds of blue football flags. The Zytgloggeturm clock tower, with its painted figures and famous chimes which start pealing at four minutes to the hour, was another unmissable sight.

We visited the ‘Einstein House, a flat on the second floor of Kramgasse No. 49 which was rented by Albert Einstein from 1903 to 1905. It has been restored in the style of that period to reflect Einstein's stay in Bern. In 1905, while living there, Albert Einstein developed the Special Theory of Relativity. His work on the General Theory also began in Bern. The old spiral staircase to the second floor has been left in its original state, and the living conditions of Einstein and his wife Mileva with their son Hans Albert are shown, with furniture from that time as well as pictures and texts and an audio visual display.

Saturday, with the weather still cloudy, we took the chairlift from Kandersteg into the mountains above the village, where a path led high above the north shore of Lake Oeschinensee. The tops of the surrounding mountains are usually cloaked in snow all year round, and are reflected in the water. As you travelled upwards on the chair-lift, at times, the mist somewhat eerily enveloped you. On our last visit several members tried out the 750-metre-long summer toboggan run at the top station of the chairlift but this year it was a little too damp and misty. We walked to the restaurant overlooking the greenish blue Lake Oeschinensee at 1578 metres. There were a few fishermen rowing on the still lake, surrounded by dramatic cliffs on all sides. Mounts Blüemlisalphorn, Oeschinenhorn, and Fründenhorn rise majestically, crested with glittering ice fields. Hiking trails dotted with picnic areas criss-cross the area. As we wandered up the trail to the lake we stopped to admire the numerous carvings in the tree stumps as well as the numerous alpine flowers. Masses of Gentians and Dryas were covering the lower slopes near the ski station. We descended through green pastures, and returned to the village along the tracks and ski runs.

Because of the weather we had put off our ultimate destination for the trip, the Jungfraujoch and Kleine Scheidegg until the Sunday.. The Jungfraujoch (el. 3471 m.) is a col or saddle between the Mönch and the Jungfrau in the Bernese Alps and is often referred to as ‘the roof of Europe’ . Strictly, the Jungfraujoch is the lowest point on the mountain ridge between Mönch and Jungfrau. It is just above this location that the mountain station of Jungfraubahn is located, which at an elevation of 3,454 metres is the highest railway station in Europe. Not far to the east of the Joch rises a peak called the Sphinx, which tops out at an elevation of 3,571 metres. It begins from the Jungfraujoch on the Valais side and at the Great Aletsch Glacier. There is an elevator to the summit of the Sphinx, where a small viewing platform and a scientific observatory are located.

We made an early start at 8.00am to take the train via Wengen to Kleine Sccheidegg which at 3500 metres was the ultimate destination for those who did not wish to risk the more strenuous conditions at the higher altitude. The train journey was a remarkable and picturesque route. We travelled from Interlaken via Lauterbrunnen firstly to Kleine Scheidegg and on the return jouney back via Grindelwald to Interlaken. This unique round-trip by modern cogwheel railway took us first to Kleine Scheidegg, altitude 2061 metres, at the foot of the notorious Eiger North Wall.  Kleine Scheidegg, the pass between the Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald Valleys, lies directly beneath the towering trio of the Eiger, Mönch & Jungfrau. We spent about an hour acclimatising at Kleine Scheidegg walking over the meadows and seeing the national flower of Soldanella in quantity for the first time. From here the Jungfrau Railway climbed for the first two kilometres through open terrain past banks of wild flowers to the station at Eigergletscher (Eiger Glacier), well known for its mountain restaurant and polar dog kennels.

The trip the continued through the Eiger tunnel to the stations at Eigerwand and Eismeer, with a five minute halt at each. We enjoyed spectacular sightseeing through large observation windows hewn from the solid rock. The route to the ‘Top of Europe’ covers 12 kilometres (5.8 miles). It runs through open terrain for only the first two kilometres from the Kleine Scheidegg to the Eigergletscher (Eiger Glacier) station. From then on it climbs through a tunnel hewn out of the Alpine rock. From the Eigerwand (North Wall) Station at 2,865 metres (9,400ft), passengers can look down to the Grindelwald Valley, the Kleine Scheidegg and beyond Interlaken to Lake Thun. From the Eismeer (Sea of Ice) station at 3,160 metres (10,368ft), the landscape is one of eternal ice and rock.   We arrived at the Jungfraujoch station, Europes highest altitude railway station, an underground labyrinth hewn from the solid rock and topped by an observation area in the heart of a glorious world of glaciers and peaks. The sun was actually shining and superb views extended as far as the summits of the Vosges Mountains in France and the Black Forest in Germany. The Great Aletsch Glacier, at 22 km the longest ice-stream in the Alps, begins on the Jungfraujoch-Top of Europe.

There were numerous other attractions for the visitor, an ice palace, the sphinx observation terrace, a snowy plateau for walks in the eternal snow and intriguingly an Indian restaurant with smells of curry spreading throughout the area. Outside on the plateau there was a ski & snowboard park, husky-drawn sledge rides, and snow disc rides.   20 metres under the surface of the plateau we walked through a revolving door to find that the hewn rock changed to glistening glacier. Before us opened long cavern-like passages widened into rooms and halls. The corners and grottoes have been filled with ice sculptures. Around 50 years ago, two mountain guides from Grindelwald and Wengen began to carve an immense hall over 1000 square metres in area from the glacier ice by hand, using ice picks and saws in dark and freezing conditions. The arches, tunnels and vaulted hall ceiling must be continually re-carved and corrected, to prevent the Ice Palace from flowing down to the valley with the Jungfrau Glacier. Every year, an ice artist from Interlaken creates new figures including eagles, penguins and polar bears.

For the final full day we had been recommended to take a trip to the Gasterntal Nature Reserve.  Renowned as the classic glacial valley in the Bernese Oberland, Gasterntal is a beautiful, secluded valley, now a nature reserve. We took a minibus to the entrance of the spectacular Kander Gorge and then drove up the track where the valley opened up slightly. This was a narrow valley with barren slopes on either side, and the silence was astonishing. We went so far with the minibus and then, on foot, followed the path that wound steeply uphill more or less parallel to the River Kander to the blue ice of the Kanderfirn Glacier, the source of the river.

On the last visit we had drooled over a couple of Ladies Slipper Orchids. This time there were so many that they were almost weeds in massive clusters under the trees. A German lady we met there said that if we happened to come back in a couple of weeks time we would see similar displays of the Turks Cap Lily....another year perhaps.

We walked down the valley to the entrance to the gorge. The dark clouds had been getting more menacing as we sat in a cafe on the way down relaxing over cream cakes, strudel and drinks. We rested too long. The rain tipped down and at the bottom of the gorge it was a very sodden group that caught the service bus back to Kandersteg. A few intrepid souls walked the last couple of kilometres back .....and arrived even wetter.

After our last evening meal we retired to the lounge for a tongue-in-cheek presentation by David England on two equally profound theories to Einstein’s relativity, namely Dickerson’s Dilemma or Maja’s Maze. ∆t x nRG = ∞T.  With the aid of flow charts we were drawn through the intricacies of the principles.

In preparation for the Jungfraujoch trip, Tony had earlier in the week given us a lecture on mountain sickness at a cellular and molecular level relating it all to the second law of thermodynamics.

Tuesday, our final day was spent shopping, relaxing or squeezing in that last local walk.

A last minute hitch meant that someone’s luggage was not collected from her room. Tony went off to try and sort it out and in the meantime, after a phone call, it arrived. Once on the train we realised that Tony was not with us, which was a shame as he and Maja had planned to spend the day in Brig, and instead, she returned on the next train to Kandersteg.

Our holiday was over but they still had the delights of a drive home through the Black Forest. Thanks again from the group to Tony and Maja for all the hard work and detail that they put into the organisation.

Graham Martin 2008

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