June 15th: St Beatus Swiss Caves

We woke up at 6:00am which meant that our bike rides and hikes the day before had actually worked to adjust our body clocks, meagre though our sun exposure was. Over the years, cell phone coverage (and smartphone antennas)  have gotten better and better and now if the atmospheric conditions are just right you can stay connected even at Rosenlaui, even if photo and video syncing or calls is not possible. Arturo was keeping us abreast of his flight status, which was landing late but not sufficient to derail his plan to meet us on Sunday. 

After breakfast, we looked outside and it rained hard enough that my original plan to do the Grosse-Scheidegg/Meiringen loop would yield no views and a lot of cold. Off to the St Beatus Swiss Caves we went, taking the bus down to Meiringen to catch the train to Interlaken Ost where I looked for a post office only to realize that it being a Saturday and it being Sunday tomorrow meant that my plan to mail our sleeping bags to ourselves would not be feasible. On the bus from Rosenlaui, a hotel employee got onto the bus with us. We asked her where she was going and she said that she was off duty now and heading home to Bern, where she had another job. We hopped on the bus 21 and for the first time I got the view from the north side of Thun with its multiple tunnels and dramatic views of the castle across the lake made me glad I wasn’t going to ride it. 

Stepping out of the bus and looking up at the caves, Boen said: “Are you kidding me?” Indeed, the view of the waterfall was glorious, multiple streams flowing down, and bridges and stairs criss crossing to grant the tourist multiple perspective of the attraction. The descriptions of the place as like the movie rendition of Rivendell, the valley of the Elves were not exaggerating, though most descriptions of how tough the walk up the stairs to the entrance were hyperbole. 

The inside of the caves were not as good as the outside, but was still quite an experience. The caves had obviously been re-engineered and re-mastered to make it easy for tourists to visit, though I found myself wondering why someone with small kids prone to crying would think it’s a good idea to bring them into a small enclosed space where the crying would echo off the walls and violate the ears of everyone around them.  Fortunately, as with all such attractions, all you have to do is to walk deeper into the caves past the point of normal tourist discomfort and then the caves become comfortable and uncrowded, most tourists not having the stamina to walk past the first few caverns. 

We explored the caves as far as the built up areas went, and then came down to museum, which was very well organized. It gave you a history of the myths surrounding the caves, and then dove into the tools and history of cave exploration, and then the geological theory behind cave formation and the ecology of caves in the area. I enjoyed the exhibit and so did Boen. 

After that, we went for the bus home. Later, Andreas would tell us that we should have taken the boat back instead of the bus. Ironically, we met him only because we’d taken the bus and train back to Meiringen, getting onto the post bus. On the post bus, Boen decided that he didn’t want to visit the Rosenlauischlutz, the pay-for-entry gorge since he’d just been to the caves, so we decided to get off at the Hotel Zwirgi and hike to the hotel. 

Hiking the trail is much easier than cycling the road with a load. The rain had ended, though it was still wet enough that if you were under trees you’d still get raindrops on your head once in a while. Not having done this part of the walk before, I was intrigued to see stone steps, paths through the forest out of sight of the roads, and of course nice views of the glorious waterfalls in places where a loaded cyclist will be in no mood to stop for photos but a hiker would have all the time in the world for. 

In Kalterbrunnen we stopped to pay a visit to Andreas. Despite our protestations that we were not wanting for food, he looked at Boen and offered us ice cream on the house. The hike from Kalterbrunnen to Rosenlaui was familiar from my previous hike with Phil when we visited Rosenlaui glacier the hard way back in 2008. The weather was good enough for us to see the glacier and Boen said he enjoyed the hiking path much more than the road for walking. 

At dinner that night, Boen asked for plans the next day. I told him we could ride down to the Lammi intersection and ride Grimsel/Furka or do the full Grosse Scheidegg loop that we didn’t do today and stop at Hotel Handegg. To my surprise he opted for the full Grosse Scheidegg loop. I text Arturo and told him to meet us at Interlaken Ost instead the morning or he could chase us over Grosse Scheidegg. He was happy with the change in plans as it would make for a much easier start for the tour. The complication was that in Switzerland, the train policy has changed so that IC (intercity) trains now required bike reservations, and the train to Interlaken Ost from Zurich was an IC. I told him that meeting us at 11:00am was fine. Grosse Scheidegg was a hard climb and we weren’t going to be moving fast. 

 

Review: Valuable Humans in Transit

 I bought Valuable Humans in Transit after enjoying Ra, despite my misgivings about the shortness of the book (101 pages).  I should have listened to my misgivings in this case. The book has a bunch of short stories, but each story is focused entirely on expositing an idea or concept. There's no character development, and the stories frequently end with a reveal. There's no plot or resolution, so many stories leave you frequently unsatisfied. Some of the stories are written in twitter format, or in the form of IM, some are written like Wikipedia articles. You get the impression of a writer experimenting with different formats and concepts and ways of telling a story, but at no point do you get the impression that the writer actually matured to the point where he had refined an idea or story to the point of it being actually good.

If you like his ideas, great. But as many writers have said, ideas are a dime a dozen. It's the execution that matters. In this case the execution isn't great.

June 14th: Zurich to Meiringen to Hotel Rosenlaui

 During the trip planning phase of the tour, I’d written to Hotel Rosenlaui to see if they had room, and when they replied in the affirmative for June 14th->June 16th, we’d bought plane tickets to match their availability. Getting up at 4:30am was no problem since Boen and I were both jet-lagged. The airport Hilton had made us park our tandem outside all night, but since it didn’t rain, all it took for us to exit was to eat our supermarket breakfast, checkout, unlock the bike and then ride 6 miles to the Zurich main train station it not being worth the effort/risk of taking the train with the tandem from the airport. I knew from experience that the train from Zurich to Luzern would leave from a surface track, obviating any need to negotiate lifts, escalators, or other obstacles to a happy train transfer. 

Arriving in Luzern, the transfer to the panoramic train to Meiringen was similarly easy, since it was early enough there were no conflicts for the bike car. On the train, we could see rain drops splash occcasionally on the panaromic roof and windows, but not in sufficient quantities to derail our plan to ride. 

Off boarding the train, we loaded up the panniers and immediately started out of town towards the highway onto the Grimsel/Sustens passes. There were light sprinkles on our faces and at the Lammi bus station (not renamed despite the permanent closure of my favorite sausage restaurant in Switzerland) we stopped to take off our helmets and replace those with cycling caps for the stiff climb ahead. Despite the light sprinkle, we did not need rain gear as even the effort of reaching the Rosenlaui intersection had warmed us up. Later on, Kristine would tell us that we should have given our panniers to the post bus for delivery to the Hotel and then ridden up the road with no load!

 

The climb starts out with a stiff 12-13% grade and then flattens out a bit at the Hotel Zwirgi, after which it manages to be a little gentler until the entry into Rosenlaui valley where the road suddenly flattens out and widens as you get a view of the Rosenlaui Glacier and the surrounding mountins which that day was obscured by rain clouds. 

We rolled into the hotel around 10:00am, just before they closed the breakfast buffet, and the staff hurriedly rushed us into the cafeteria for freshly brewed hot coffee, hot chocolate and invited us to partake of whatever was left of the buffet breakfast. We dug in, of course, the light supermarket breakfast long having vanished into the atmosphere with our efforts. 

As we ate, I spotted Andreas Kerhli, the former proprietor of the hotel, and rushed out to chat with him. He told me that the hotel was now managed by his son Jacob, and he had bought the Kalterbrunnen restaurant, the last landmark before entering Rosenlaui valley on the Grosse Scheidegg road. He told me he would still see me around as he does still help out at Rosenlaui, ahd Kalterbrunnen was only open on the weekends and holidays. 

With food in our bellies, the weather no longer looked so foreboding. Our rooms weren’t going to be ready anyway, so we left our panniers in the lobby after parking the tandem (after waxing the chain) in the special Rosenlaui bicycle storage cellar and collecting the bus pass from Jacob. We packed my Sea-to-Summit backpack with rain gear and a water bottle and proceeded to take the bus from Rosenlaui to Grosse Scheidegg. The bus driver advised that the hike to First might be closed because of the late snow, but that the next stop down, Schreckfeld was still open. The weather looked reasonable so I persuaded Boen to give it a try despite the cold. 

Hiking along the ridge, the weather started getting clearer and clearer, and we were granted occasional views of the peaks – the Eiger, the Monch, and the Jungfrau occasionally being visible as clouds came and went. Around us all was green and obviously wet, and Boen enjoyed being able to make snowballs and throw them at me. 

Arriving at Schreckfeld, I talked Boen into hiking down to Bort for the views rather than taking the cable car all the way. We saw lines of 70 minutes or more for the mountain gravity tricycle and at least 30 minutes for the First Flyer, a zip-line type attraction that required that the rider be more than 45kg, so it wasn’t an option for Bone anyway. The hike down to Bort was attractive but marred with encounters with people who can’t manage even a 3-wheeled vehicle down a mountain fire road. The place was full of Asian tourists, the kind of people who’ve been trained by theme parks to think that waiting 90 minutes or more for a 15 minute experience was more than acceptable and a good use of vacation time. A hiker or cyclist, by contrast has no waiting time once he gets off the train, bus, or cable car, and in a place like the Berner Oberland, the views start immediately and never end until you get to your destination.

 

Arriving at Bort, we took the cable car down to Grindelwald, where we bought ice cream. Sun came out and we enjoyed the warmth as we made our way from the cable car station to the bus station, where we hopped onto the bus to Hotel Rosenlaui. Boen didn't get to see much of the bus ride as he immediately fell asleep right away. He awoke as the bus pulled into Schwarzalp, where we would have to change to the bus to Rosenlaui.

At Rosenlaui, our room was ready and we moved in, showered, did laundry, stretched, and took a short walk before dinner. The hotel now has a policy against phones, tablets, and cameras in the public areas of the hotel, a policy I agree with, but means that the delicious food and amazing presentations can only be described in writing, a feat that my skills are not up to par with. 

I took another melatonin pill before turning in.