Monday turned out to be just as gorgeous weather wise as Sunday. Therefore I was thrilled that I had arranged with Stefan´s father, Beno, to go hiking.
I jumped on the train towards St. Gallen and enjoyed the view of lake Konstanz as it went by quickly.
Our hiking destination was Flumserberg and on the way there, the train drove through some very beautiful steep valleys and narrow tunnels. Sadly I didn´t catch it with my camera for you to see but luckily all the images are stored in that main hard drive on top of my head.
The train ride became even great because Beno is a living encyclopedia. He told me one interesting story after the other as we passed small villages and open fields.
In Unterterzen we left the train and hopped into the gondola taking us up, up and above.
To a Norwegian this lake and the surrounding mountains immediately made me think of narrow Geirangerfjord. Beno told me the names of the neighbouring mountains and I swear it sounded just like the 7 sisters, another resemblance to my mother land, however Swissgerman is often impossible to understand so to my knowledge the name could have been anything else :)
Another remarkable thing is the lush and green fields. I don´t know what they put in Swiss fertilizer, but Norwegian fields go yellow and brown in winter. Makes the pictures beautiful for sure.
To me it seems like the Swiss people love life in the mountains. They have a really colourful sign systems for different types of paths. There are roads for hiking (normal, mountain and alpine), biking (normal and moutain), rollerblading and, hold on, canoeing and snow booting!!! I´m officially impressed (and perhaps a little stressed too. How can I now defend spending my time sitting in my comfy sofa??)
Oh well, back to our trip.
After hiking for something that I think must have been 1,5 hours, and being accompanied through parts of the trip by a wonderful Berner Sennen dog (another great Swiss "invention" and my favourite breed), we made it to Hotel Seebenalp where we had bratwurst and fries.
The sun was so bright and the snow reflected the light so we both put on sun factor 20. Feels odd for a girl growing up close to the north pole to use sun lotion in February, but it was necessarily!! A pair of sun glasses would have been a good idea too, but the trip was so great it was totally worth all the squinting!
