Train to the Peak

 

Getting ready 

Train took us from Lucerne to Interlaken in about 2 hours and it costed about $50. While travelling along the sceneric road of Swiss mountains and jade lakes, I was preoccupied in taking pictures along the way and glued to the train window for the photography spots along the road, mostly small houses with brown roofs residing beside the vast blue water, which set in between the high mountain peaks, I just couldn't move my eyes off the road, feeling fulfilled already in an exhilarating glimpse, what a journey to take, I waited almost my whole life to get to the Swiss mountains, for a luxury trip to the most travelled country in the world. I decided not to blink my eyes during the train ride, to grasp the best of the sighting, through the sky, the valleys, and the mountain peaks. Turning my head to S, what is he doing? Is he also liking the beautiful landscape bypassing at the train speed. He looked at me, and signed with a rather grooming look, thinking: "so expensive the Swiss trip, don't you know that I might loose my job?" "hehe", I smiled amusely at him, and took out my phone, swished through all the shots, and reached out for the hair tie, getting ready for a picture day in the Interlaken village, with enthusiastic anticipation to visit this little famous town in the middle of the Alpine peaks. 

Junfraujoch, top of Europe

The hotel we stayed in Interlaken was a wooden Swiss chalet B&B with black roof and white walls from exterior and brown wood paved all the inside.  As soon as we set the luggages in, we headed to the train station at the East end of the village (Interlaken Ost) to purchase our ticket to the Europe's highest peak, Junfraujoch. Switzerland probably has the most efficient and beautiful train ride in the world, the time planned for our connecting train was exactly 5 minutes between the trains, and knowing we were bad at ponctuality especially in foreign place, I asked for a later connection train, which makes our break to last 20 minutes. And it turned out to be the best stay in the high snow plateau in the our Swiss trip. Getting to the top, we witnessed another wonder Swiss has created for the world, the Jungfraujoch, top of Europe. The building sits at the peak of 3300m altitude, surrounded by endless glaciers, steep cliffs and moving trains. The construction of the train tunnel that goes up this height and the architect itself took place under very harsh weather. Looking at it, i just thought, maybe pursuit of impossible is within their spirit, maybe it is the ultimate aim for the perfection. Europeans are known to be passionate, they don’t like the idea of North Americans who like to work and live for money all the time. High quality brand chocolates, watches, clothing a and cars are among the fruit of their pursuit of dream. Still thinking about the movies that were made, and slopes that celebrities had frequented in the country, we headed down the mountain after taking a brief coffee sip at the Klein Sneigeig station, surrounding by solemn snow peaks sitting under the mid-day sun. Red and yellow train, white and greyish wagon, the station is connecting all the traffic from different directions, and both passengers and wagons trains were swifting through the snow mountain valleys twisting and hauling inside the gigantic wonder of the Alps. The BBQ was set up at the station, and we sat at the wooden chair with beer company umbrella shading us from the sunlight, a moment of travelling nomads crossed my mind, it was the scene to capture with us, to be at a different place that we would not usually have in our normal life. I jumped into a opening door, and had S took my picture, holding the train knob, waiting to be transported in to the Swiss fantasy. We barely spoke during the train ride, absorbed into each other's world, S only said:"It's very cool the glaciers at the peak, I would take Nile here too!." Now when I think back, it would been nice to have been our child too, though the efforts we spent to build a comfortable nest for our little one had taken a bit longer than we wished from our wedding day.