Hot Chocolate on the Swiss Alps

During a hot summer day in Switzerland, I lived like a king, if only kings took public transportation.  The cog railway climbed to the top of Europe at Jungfrau Mountain for a pretty penny.  For the price of my ascent and accompanying descent, I could’ve bought a one-way ticket across the United States flying with a cheap, unreliable airline that charges for an in-flight bottle of water and tries to dilute the seriousness of turbulence with corny humor.       

 

Switzerland hasn’t been this hot in over a century.  Some places reported a temperature of 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit).  But I was wearing three undershirts, two jackets, a beanie, and two pairs of socks.  While I waited for the cog train, I sweated through a few layers.  Never before had I ached for the cold that awaited me in the mountains.

As the train chugged up the steep slopes of the Swiss Alps, a gentle breeze blew through the open windows.  Several of my Australian companions were excited to see snow for the first time.  Hozza expressed concern when he noted the thickness of my insulation.  He felt he had underdressed.  Feeling a little self-conscious and over-prepared, I peeled off two of my jackets and rolled up my sleeves. 

We entered a tunnel and when we emerged on the other side we were pelted with a frigid wind.  I shivered at the abrupt transition on the top of the mountain as the temperature plummeted to five degrees Celsius (41 degrees Fahrenheit).  As I stepped off the train, I felt as though I were intruding upon the Fortress of Solitude, but instead found myself in a lobby that sold Swiss watches and hot chocolate in Styrofoam cups.  Bridget, Ash, and I walked through the door that led us through chilly tunnels to the Ice Palace.

The floor, ceiling, and walls were frozen.  The ice wasn’t particularly slippery, but that didn’t prevent me from trying to skate in my running shoes.  Along the corridor were ice sculptures of bears, eagles, and Sherlock Holmes smoking his pipe.

I noticed a horde of Asians congregating near a hole in the ice, so I followed them.  I hooked myself onto the end of a queue, but I didn’t know what everyone was waiting to see.  Ahead of me, I could only see a narrow tunnel of ice. 

“What are we waiting for?” Bridget asking. 

“I don’t know,” I said.  “But anything worth waiting for is usually worth seeing.”

There was nothing to see except Japanese tourists taking pictures of themselves inside a hole in the ice.  While standing in the tunnel, I continued to search for a reason to inhabit this space.  In the process of my investigation, I inadvertently entered the frame, and a Japanese woman holding an expensive camera shooed me as if I were stray dog.  The tunnel led nowhere, and I still couldn’t justify the expensive railway ticket.

Before heading outside in the snow, we ate lunch at the cafeteria.  Since the prices were ridiculous on top of the mountain, we munched on the snacks we carried with us.  I had francs to get rid of, so instead of throwing them into the alpine winds I indulged myself with an expensive cup of Swiss hot chocolate.  For the price I paid for some cocoa powder and hot milk, I could have bought two boxes of Swiss Miss at Walmart, but extreme elevation seemed a more fitting location to sip on this steaming brew. 

Within the central compound, a network of tunnels connected the train station to the cafeteria to the ice palace and beyond.  Having finished our unorthodox lunch composed of granola bars, apples, and crackers, we made our way to the slopes but instead found ourselves in a dark room surrounded by screens that lit up with panoramic views of the Swiss Alps.  Energetic helicopter shots were accompanied with intense, but uplifting music.  The filmmakers made the mountains seem so thrilling, and those very mountains lay just beyond a nearby door.  Yet these adventurous sneak-previews made me yearn for my uneventful house.

“Watch this makes me want to watch a movie on my couch in Pittsburgh,” I said.

Bridget pushed me forward and said, “Come on.  Let’s go see the real thing.”

The snow crunched under my feet, and the sun’s harsh light reflected off the blanket of whiteness.  Even though I was wearing sunglasses, I squinted in discomfort to block out the burning light.  Aside from being in an airplane, I had never been so close to the rays of the sun.  My body had no idea how to react to this environment. 

I was having trouble inhaling the thin air at an altitude of 3,000 meters.  I was boiling inside my multiple layers, so I shed off my jackets until I was down to a long-sleeve shirt with the sleeves rolled up.  For the first time in my life, I rubbed sunscreen over my face and then marched through the deep snow that was somehow not melting.  

The peaks dusted with white reminded me of vanilla ice cream embedded with chocolate chunks.  I felt light-headed and dehydrated in this frozen desert.  A few gulps of water did the trick, and I hiked up the hill. 

Since Bridget was recovering from a nasty cough, she didn’t want to invite this illness back, so she stayed behind.  Ash and I stomped through the loose snow and revealed our separate lives at home.  As we discussed slaughtering sheep and a liberal arts education, a couple to our left slowly propelled themselves up the incline with their skis and walking poles.  

My footing was less than secure, so I stepped into the tracks of those who traveled before me like a lazy polar bear conserving energy.

At the top of the hill, there was a wooden ski lodge.  To reach the cabin, we zigzagged up an icy path.  I clung onto a waist-high rope and remembered to have three limbs planted before stepping forward.  Reaching the top was rewarding.  We stared out at the vast emptiness of white interrupted by dark triangular protrusions of ancient rock.  Beside a Swiss flag whipping in the wind, we posed for a photo to prove to folks back home that this climb wasn’t a hoax. 

The descent was tricky.  As Ash described her home in New Zealand, I slipped and fell on my butt in mid-response.  Ash asked me if I were okay, and I said that I was, and we carried on with our conversation about an honest day’s work on a farm.  We made our way back the base and found Hozza with frozen feet but no shirt.  He was warming his toes under the sun as Lauren ate handfuls of snow beside him.  Dan was nearby, sculpting a snowman jerking himself off.  Inevitably, this is what happens when you introduce Aussies to the snow. 

Surrounded by miles and miles of ice, where the occasional butterfly flutters, I was astounded by the contrast of my current surroundings and the campground where I woke up in the morning.  I passed a waterfall on my way to the train station, but up in the Alps the water took on a new form. 

Some of my friends had never felt the snow before.  What once was a desire is now a memory as they can now recall the frost on their feet and I can remember the sun that reddened the flesh around my shielded eyes.  The land had made its mark on our bodies, but we did little to disturb those eternal formations.  The mountain had no market value; it knew nothing of economics.  We paid a handsome sum to cover the fuel and profit for the cog train.  In exchange, we had stories we could reminisce about for years to come.  It would be a shame to reach the end of this life and have nothing to say.  That thought alone is worth the price of admission.