Hike and mighty
Thrills And Hills
PHOTOGRAPHY: MARK NIEDERMANN
“Belgian chocolate?” says Marco Geisser, raising a quizzical eyebrow. “Well, I suppose some people might like it.”
He is the manager of chocolatiers Péclard in Zurich, and here there is only one winner in the European war of high- end cocoa-confectionery.
But Marco is happier talking about the benefits of chocolate itself: “It lowers the blood pressure, for instance. I make sure I eat a little bit every day.”
While Switzerland is rightly famous for its sweet treats, chocolate only made its way here about a hundred years ago, long after Zurich had won a reputation for watch- and jewellery-making.
You can see the legacy of these older crafts in the antique shops that line the small, winding roads of the old city. Generally run by owners who look older and less sturdy than their stock, the shops are down in dark basements, stuffed with dusty brass and dark wood. Cuckoo clocks tumble over fading watercolours and Jewish festival candelabras.
The shops occasionally have notes stuck to the front door: “Sorry. Closed. Watching the football.” It’s an honest approach to business.
Zurich’s crafts can be bold, as well as intricate, however. The Fraumünster church, for example, may have the world’s most striking stained-glass windows. They were created by Marc Chagall, an artist famous for his use of the very boldest colours from a palette of only four or five. Picasso said of him in the 1950s that, “When Matisse dies, Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is.”
Until his death in 1985, Chagall could often be found sitting at the back of the chapel, gazing at his work, and chatting about it to anyone who felt like giving their opinion.
The tones on the windows colour the very air around you, before you step out into the daylight to see the city’s other grand church, dedicated to Zurich’s three saints. Two of them were decapitated on its site, but managed to pick up their heads and go for a bit of a walk afterwards. As Elisabeth Meier, a local tour guide says, “How many cities have saints that carry their heads under their arms?”
Gliding over Grindelwald
“Since man first set foot on this planet he has dreamed of this; and for 20 years, it has been possible,” says Joey Braunwarth. We are sweeping through the glacial gorge beside Grindelwald, suspended from a feather-like canopy (see facing page). This is paragliding at its most spectacular, as streams flow down the granite face and freefall to the river bed below. It is somehow less daunting to be in the free air, away from the mountain, where distance means you feel more that you are floating. We sweep up, almost to the mountain peak, achieving in moments what once took days. The sense of stillness is extraordinary; you can hear the air drifting. The mountains seem to move while you remain stationary, like a car scene in an old movie. “I’ve been flying for 20 years,” explains Joey, originally from Stuttgart. “We take everyone and everything up – the youngest I have had was four, the oldest was 93. I have also had a blind passenger, and every year we take up wheelchair users. They enjoy it the most. The blind just sense it in a different way.” “For me, the draw is the spirit of flying itself,” he says, looking back up to the peak. “It’s mankind’s dream.”
They stumbled in the direction of trendy West Zurich, where today the hip crowd hangs out at the bars until the sun comes up.
Switzerland’s big draw is its landscape. On a train from the capital, the conductor is arguing good-naturedly with two Canadians about their tickets. “No. You can get off here or here,” he says pointing to a map. “But you must have a different ticket for here or here.” In the end, he just shrugs and lets them off. Watching the show is Hsu Tzu-En – ‘Grace’ to her Western friends – from Taiwan. She is taking time off from a job in a lab that involves trying to extend the lives of fruit flies. “I have three days here,” she says. “I was visiting a friend in Germany and I wanted to see the mountains and walk in them, they are so green, so high.”
Asked if she’ll be doing any rock climbing, she gazes at the granite cliff outside the window, her eyes wide in a look not far short of terror. “Maybe next year.”
Jungfrau’s grim monoliths – the Eiger, the Monch, the Junfraujoch – have challenged and intrigued for generations. Grindelwald, one of the best-known mountain villages for walkers and climbers, first became popular in the middle of the 19th century. Travellers came for months at a time, drawn by the traditional wooden architecture, bucolic fields and summertime combination of cool air and warm sun.
These are elements that have not changed, but improvements have been made, not least to the paths. Back then, visitors walked for hours to stay overnight at a Bäregg mountain hut on the east of the Grindelwald valley, overlooking a glacier-filled gorge.
Today, there is a cable car, so the hike only takes 90 minutes of puffing your way past mountain sheep and rolling meadows. Then the hut hoves into view, standing guard over the gorge. It is the third incarnation of the Bäregg in 150 years. The owners of the first version woke up one day 20 years ago to discover that overnight the cliff edge had moved ten metres closer to them. After a second landslide left one corner of the hut peeking over the precipice, the owners headed for higher land.
Sitting on the new hut’s terrace, drinking a foaming beer and watching as minor avalanches slip down the mountainside opposite, is Andreas Kummer, a local. He is recovering after a long run through the mountain passes in training for the Jungfrau Marathon, which takes place each September. It is a gruelling race – 25 kilometres on the street, then 18 kilometres in the mountains.
“It’s pain, right to the end,” he says, taking another sip of beer and rubbing his calves. “But it’s pain and pleasure mixed – you want to reach something. When you are close to the finish line, with everybody clapping, and you have the mountains beside you, it is very beautiful. That is when you find your last energy, energy you did not know you had.”
This hut has been catering for exhausted visitors for 150 years with local dishes such as rösti – fried potato smothered in cheese and topped with a fried egg. Andreas and his fellow guests eat heartily as the sun sets behind the mountain, the shadows grow longer and the laughter rises to echo across the gorge.
“In loving memory of Alice Charlotte, wife of Captain W. Arbuthnot, XIV Hussars, killed by lightning on the Schilthorn Alp, 21 June 1865, Aged 23.”
The foreign names on memorial stones in Mürren are testimony to the length of time visitors have been attracted to this region.
Before leaving the unpresumptuous little town, most visitors spot a few of the ‘MiniUSEUMS’ – little chalets with tiny exhibits in the window. One shows ghosts of old buildings, some standing, some long-gone, all traced in yellowing hues of an old photographic process. Looking in are Vicky Nicholas and Ed Thompson from England, who have been hiking for six days and staying in huts.
“It was beautiful,” says Ed. “From green hills right through to arid landscapes and scenes that looked like they were Mediterranean. The flowers, the wildlife, have been fantastic. We saw ibex today – they just looked up at us, looked at each other, and went back to eating.”
The Trummelbach waterfalls were once encased in solid mountain, but were opened up to the public more than a century ago. If the ibex are the gentle face of the Jungfrau, the Trummelbach falls show what force, what energy lies behind it.
By the crack in the rock that allows entry to the falls, Fred Jafner sits in his cosy ticket booth, plump cushions on his chairs, a kettle whistling behind him.
“Each time I look at them I am impressed by what nature can do,” he says, as endless streams of water thunder to the ground.
He takes a second to compose the words. “For millions of years, nature has shaped the rocks. Man could not do it any better. It’s a show of the art of nature.”
Switzerland fact file
GETTING THERE
KLM operates several daily flights to Zurich Airport from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. Trains to Grindelwald take two hours (see www.sbb.ch).
WHERE TO STAY
In Zurich, the four-star Hotel Opera is close to the theatre, and a seven-minute tram journey from the old town. (+41 44 258 99 99/operahotel. ch). Grindelwald’s Bäregg mountain hut offers simple accommodation in the summer, with excellent views (+41 33 853 43 14/baeregg. com). In Grindelwald, the Schweizerhof offers luxury and a spa (+41 33 854 58 58/ www.hotel-schweizerhof.com).
GOING OUT
For a night out in Zurich, head to the City Beach. If it’s cloudy, then the Schiffbau complex, in a converted shipbuilding factory in West Zurich, will still be hot.
CHOCOLATES
See if Marco Geisser’s chocolates are better than Belgium’s (+41 44 251 51 50/ www.peclard-zurich.ch).
PARAGLIDING
To see the valley the easy way, get in touch with Joey Braunwarth, who gives tandem paragliding flights from CHF170 (around €125) for 20 minutes (+41 33 853 47 88/ www.paragliding-jungfrau.ch).
