7/31/07 - Lauterbrunnen

7/31/07- Lauterbrunnen
we finally got to Lauterbrunnen last night in a called-in ghetto Contiki coach that didn't even have seatbelts, despite the EU law we hear so much about. We got in at 10:45pm, and I guess the good thing is that Adrian, who works at the campsite, remembered us and we got hooked up with a caravan that has a fridge and working stovetop, though no running water. Still, we were able to cook some prepackaged pasta that we had wisely bought at a service stop, even though the communal litchen was closed. After that, we just fell into a hastily-made bed.

This morning we got up and left the campsite by 9am and hiked up to Murren, which is a stunning hike with an ascent of over 700 meters! It was amazing how fast we got so high above the little village we had walked in, and what a breathtaking panoramic view of the valley we had from up there.

We had a great lunch at a local cafe in Murren - rosti (a swiss dish much like hash browns) with fried eggs and a sausage and cheese salad. We had planned to walk to Gimmelwald, down to Stechelberg, and back to Lauterbrunnen from there, but my hip was killing me an it had been an extremely steep 4-hour ascent, so we decided to take the cable car down and save the Murren-Gimmelwald-Stechelberg part for another day. On the way down, we shared the cable car with a billion and a half people with superfluous hiking poles, 2 huskies, and 2 large carts full of fragrant wheels of cheese.

On our ascent the only people we saw were 3 mountain bikers and a lone runner (these swiss are crazy!), but along the flat part, there were heaps of families decked out in excessive hiking gear. How... Appropriate?

After getting back we drank swiss 'lager hell' beer and made pasta with our special turbo-charged additions, and then we went to bed, though not before noticing how many more tourists there were in Lauterbrunnen than last time we were here.