Into the clouds

Amazing how much my stuff easily expands in a matter of days, but this is the nature of living on the road. This looks like it should be a version of 'Where's Waldo'...how about 'where's Louis (the small Siberian tiger)?'



Gondola to Gimmelwald.



Looking down...

At the top.




















































Our drawings from today, warming up in a cafe in Murren.





We woke up to rain this morning, and mountains that were clear yesterday shrouded in clouds. We decided to head up into the mountains anyway, to a tiny village called Gimmelwald, mostly based on the word of Rick Steves, who said 'Even if I don't get to heaven, at least I will have been to Gimmelwald,' or something like that. Well, I think we pretty much agreed with him. After a train, a bus, and a harrowing gondola ride, we crossed over a towering cliff into another world. Houses built right up to the edge of deathly drop-offs, firewood stacked high, mini waterfalls all around us. Within the first ten minutes we heard something that sounded like thunder, or a freight train barreling down on us, and turned to see a shower of water careening down the side of the mountain wall across the gorge from us, picking up speed as it went. Turns out this was a common occurrence, yet every time it happened anyone who was around to see it would stop and watch; it was captivating.

This little hamlet was a mix of the old world and the new; the structures were built out of the same rich red and golden wood that looked like it had been there for centuries, cobbled together in eclectic jigsaw puzzles. We bought dried sausage and cheese from someone's back door, and despite the sound of the water reverberating off the high mountain walls every ten minutes or so, it was incredibly quiet, and the air felt amazingly clean. Kind of what you would picture if you imagined the place Heidi grew up. At the same time, this little town is surrounded by some of the most visited ski resorts in the Alps, and as we hiked up to the neighboring town above Gimmelwald the few people we saw were decked out in ski gear, most shops catering to their needs.

Though this has obviously changed these towns and these mountains, I loved the details of how this place has adjusted to accommodating winter sports enthusiasts, like holders on the trains and in the train stations for skis and snowboards, ski trails that seamlessly pass through villages, boot driers in the hostel. There is something pleasing about how a place adjusts to its inhabitants, and I guess in this way creates a sense of place. I am not much of a downhill skier, and in some ways I detest how expensive and potentially environmentally destructive ski resorts can be, but I must say I ended the day wishing that I were good enough to trust myself on these steep slopes so that I could pretend that I was living in another time, and skiing was simply the way I got myself around. Because here it has become a way of life, much like biking is a way of life for the Dutch I suppose.

Tomorrow we are off to Venice, hard to believe.