This morning, we started at half past 5 and drove through parts of Germany and France to Interlaken in Switzerland. Our tour would start in Mürren, where I spent most of the skiing holidays of my childhood. The weather and views in the valley were still pretty nice although cloudy but when we took the two cable cars up to Mürren at 1600m, they dropped us off right in the middle of those clouds.
Sure the view would have been really nice from up there but we could only see white.
For the first 60 minutes, we climbed steep 400 meters until the path turned into a softer upward hilly rocky trail. This first day had been planned to be short and we arrived after only 2 hours at the Rothstock hut at 2060m, which I couldn’t even see at first because everything was still covered in thick fog.
It was only half past two and we had plenty of time to kill until dinner. Being used to the daily routines of the Camino, I didn’t bring any book but it turns out that if you can’t shower or wash clothes or shop food, days are actually really long. If life on the Camino is simple, this is incredibly more simple. Beds are only 60cm wide and one next to each other, no washing machines, no power plugs, no showers, no warm water. (but 7 times more expensive, just to compensate)
We played a couple of rounds of Swiss nature memory and another board game until it was finally half past five and one could justify to sit down at the tables labelled with your name and wait for dinner.
Our company to the right was a nice Swiss mother-daughter couple whereas we had a really annoying American mother-son couple to our left. Plates were distributed, people sat down and a total of three simple dishes were served.
When the sun started to set, the fog actually vanished for a second and we could see our surroundings for the first time. The beautiful Schilthorn on the front side of the hut was lighted from behind and the incredible Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau with their glaciers and snowy capes where shining in a bright red on the back side. We could only hope that the weather would be better tomorrow and we could enjoy some of these incredible views during the hike.
I went to bed at half past nine, surrounded by extremely loud cow bells everywhere.
