It is 9:15am in the Swiss mountain village of Murren, my new home for about 36 hours. For those who don’t have time to read my rant, I will cut to the chase – the Swiss Alps are unbelievably awesome, especially if you enjoy hiking (or presumably skiing, although I can’t comment there).
First, a quick recap. I last left you on my (delayed) train from Paris towards Switzerland. Once I escaped France and crossed the border into Switzerland, the trains were punctual, the people were helpful (if not friendly), and the infrastructure was clean. I stayed in a family run, bed and breakfast type hotel on the main drag in Grindelwald for 3 nights. Sadly no air conditioning although they did provide a fan, and it is a lot cooler in the mountains than it is in Paris, so I have been able to sleep better.
My daily routine in the Alps has consisted of waking up around 7:15, strolling into the complementary breakfast buffet at 7:30 (where you can eat as many golden-yolked hard boiled eggs as you want…so 5/day in my case), and departing the hotel around 8:30 for a punishing 5-8 hour hike. The town of Grindelwald is located in a valley such that getting to the trailheads has actually been the most physically challenging part of each hike – we are talking 2500ft ascents over 1.5 miles…steep. Side note: you can skip as much of the challenging hikes as you want and jump directly to the viewpoints as there is a large gondola/train system in Jungfrau…just depends on how you are feeling.
Which brings us to my initial take on solo backpacking – the clear benefit is that all that matters is how I’M feeling at any given moment (now that was a smooth transition). For the past 3 days in Grindelwald, I felt like pushing myself quite hard physically, and I probably wouldn’t have been able to do those hikes if I were traveling with others (with a couple of exceptions amongst my readers IYKYK). BUT the massive downside of traveling solo is that I experienced literally the best hike of my entire life yesterday, yet was not able to share that experience with someone else. And I think this is ultimately why traveling solo is suboptimal – life experiences are so much more valuable when they are SHARED life experiences.
*Open invitation to meet me in Germany, Copenhagen, Sweden, Norway, or potentially Ireland (open to ideas – think I’m scrapping Iceland for this itinerary).
Now you may be thinking, “Why not just make some friends you LOSER?” Well played. But I had the same thought and am heading to Munich tomorrow (very much looking forward to chilling out on the 7hr train journey), where I will be staying in an ACTUAL HOSTEL with a social, bar area (unlike my accommodations to date, which have all effectively been hotels lacking social elements). So we will see just how much my social acumen has diminished since I was 20 years old (people forget I was social chair and rush chair back in the day)!
This is probably a good place to leave it. I’m climbing down a via ferrata later today (basically you descend 2000 ft down the side of a rock wall via mountain ladders and bridges), so if you don’t hear from me take solace in the fact that my final breakfast consisted of 5, golden yolked eggs, and what more could a man really ask for?
Don’t worry, I will post the pics to IG.
Noah's (Life) Ark 