Jun 18th, 2017

Author: donich_admin

Meiringen and Hasilberg

Well here R and I are in Meiringen, in the Berenese Oberland of Switzerland, with J kindly looking after the cats at home.
Unfortunately, the only direct flight we could get from Scotland to Switzerland was from Edinburgh to Geneva, which meant not only a long drive at our end, but an epic train journey at the Swiss end. Imagine what the chances would be of making a journey by train involving three changes in UK? The chances that one of them would not be late would be infinitesimal, and if you did miss your connection, you would probably be waiting three hours for the next one. That would be, of course presuming that you could get a train to your destination, which if it were a small, out of the way place like Meiringen, would be extremely unlikely. But being in Switzerland, everything went like a swiss watch (sic) and every train left exactly on time.
Meiringen is a very pretty little town; its main claims to fame are as the home of the meringue (invented here), and as where Sherlock Holmes was putatively pushed off a waterfall. We chose it for the brilliant walking in the area – and today we proved we weren’t wrong.
We took three cable cars up to the top of the Hasilberg this morning, and walked all the way back to our apartment (we are staying in a very swanky place we got off AirBnB). This took about five hours, but included lots of stops to admire the scenery and two longer pauses for refreshments. The weather is fantastic – though rather too hot for R, who is flagging a bit, and I think we will need to stick to downhill walks this week.

Starting in a true mountain environment (complete with patches of snow) at 2500m, we walked across meadows bright with flowers, through fields of cows and goats wearing the obligatory bells (one friendly goat had a nibble at my fingers), down through woods and charming villages to the lowest cable car station where we had Peach Melbas on the terrace of the Panaramio Hotel.

And then back down past some waterfalls to Meiringen, pausing twice to talk to friendly cats. Now I’m sitting on the terrace outside our apartment looking at the Grosse Engelhorn and R is sitting inside watching Dr. Who on his iPad. Plus ca change, plus c’est le meme chose.