Schynige Platte

I rectified an oversight this past weekend and need to bring it up now so that no one else makes the same horrible mistake.  Saturday, ten years after moving here, I hiked on Schynige Platte for the first time.   If you haven’t done this yet, do it.  Now.  You can read the rest of this later.   I had thought that the Stoos ridge hike was the best in Switzerland but I was wrong.  Granted, it’s a very good hike.  A great one even, but I have to give the nod to Schynige Platte, if for no other reason than that the hikes there can be tailored to every level of difficulty and length, all without having to backtrack.    You can make a loop as short as an hour or as long as three and if that’s not enough you can just head towards Grindelwald and turn it into an all-day trek.  The surface options are flat gravel, rocky mountain paths or staircases built into the side of a cliff.  Again, up to you to mix and match as you like.  And since it’s a panoramic ridge hike your head will swivel like Linda Blair’s in the Exorcist as you try to take it all in.  Look to the southeast and you’re staring at the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau, so close you want to reach out to touch them.  Shift your gaze westward and the glistening water of the Thunersee stretches out before you.  Continue turning your head to the right and your view passes over Interlaken before resting upon the Brienzersee and its aqua blueness.    And that’s not all.  For your time and sweat, your rewards continue to mount.  Alpine flowers?  Check.  Meadows full of more than you can imagine and if you stroll through the Alpen garden they’re even labelled.   Wildlife?  Check.  Marmots, perhaps an Ibex and, of course, Swiss mountain cows clanging their bells.   Hungry?  Check.  A lovely restaurant with a terrace looking out at the big three and more other +3500 meter “Horns” than you can count.  The only down side is that for tourists (i.e. those without a half fare card) the round trip fare for the cog train up the mountain is a bit pricey but it’s a steal compared to Jungfraujoch and its crush of tourists.   If you are a tourist, you’re there to see the mountains anyway and you’ll get no better mountain to Swiss franc ratio anywhere else.  On the off chance that you have a UBS account, wave that card before October 31^st and all of this will be yours for only CHF 10.  Really incredible.   Like I said.  Go.  Now.

Brunnen

The other day, while biking home after work, I stopped to get a drink of water (fountain pictured below top) and it hit me.  I left fountains off my top 10 list last year.  What an omission!  Understandable only in the context of the overflowing abundance that is Switzerland.  Too many things to like and ten is such a small number.   So, list be damned.  The fountains of Switzerland cry out for recognition and I will respond.  Let’s start with the basics, the water itself.  Simply nothing better.  Cool, fresh and free.  Also, the fountains are everywhere.    Hiking, running or biking, I’ve filled my bottle in every corner of this beautiful country.  I especially like that many incorporate a nice little perpetually refilling bowl for dogs.   Equally entrancing is their varied and charming appearance as well as the Swiss culture they represent.  Far from mere public bubblers, they’re art, crafted from stone, bronze and cast iron, many with gilded figurines.  They’re also a walk through history.  Bern, which calls itself the “City of Fountains”, boasts over 100, including 11 classics from the 16^th century.   Their most notorious may be the Kindlifresserbrunnen  (child eater fountain), starring an ogre with a bag of squirming babies, devouring them as if they’re candy.  Hans Gieng, the 16^th century Fribourg artist responsible for most of these, may have had a good explanation for this one but, alas, it was lost to posterity.  In Basel, Pascal Hess and Martin Stauffiger developed a terrific website for their 2002 Maturarbeit project (http://www.brunnenfuehrer.ch/) which catalogs Basel’s 231 fountains, a tool begging for use in the creation of a treasure hunt.  Standing out among many, Basel’s most famous has to be the ornate Fischmarktbrunnen (pictured below bottom), Switzerland’s oldest, believed to be in operation since 1390.   Not to be outdone, as usual, Zürich offers guides for ten tours covering the 1,224 fountains https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/dib/de/index/wasserversorgung/brunnen.html  scattered throughout the city.  Number 1 on their list is the  Amazonenbrunnen which was the first supplied from spring water and dates back to 1430.   As I reflect on what I learned while conducting this little bit of research, it’s clear, in both villages and cities there’s a great deal of pride and affection felt by the country’s citizens for their fountains.   Well deserved, too, as this network of structures brings together elements of culture, art, history, environment and economics while offering the opportunity to stroll through the centuries in the community of your choice, slaking your thirst when necessary.  And rest assured, while they may be old, they’re subject to typical Swiss quality standards, meeting the same contemporary ISO 9001:2000 certified test requirements as the water flowing from the household tap.    Drink up!