25 Sept The Alps with Funks

Today we trekked in the Swiss Alps.

Did you read that...? US, in the Alps! It has been an absolutely amazing time and we had to keep pinching ourselves to realise the reality! 

Here we are posing in front of the north face of the Eiger, a mountain that has claimed many lives.

Markus and Thomas left by bike at 7am to pick up a vehicle that would fit us all in but being unavailable came home with 2 hatchback cars (99.9% of cars here are hatchbacks). So with the 3 cars in convoy we set off towards Interlaken, and the railway that would take us aloft. Dad and I were quite excited to see the country in which the 3 books by Liftin (The Sword, The Gift, and The Kingdom) were set. He called it the country of Chiveis and Markus told us that is the German word for Switzerland. He speaks much of the twin lakes and we had lovely views of these as we travelled; Lake Thun und Lake Brienz.

We arrived at Wilderswil (584m) where we got the train to Schynige Platte, at 1968m above sea level. We reckon the rack and pinion line must be about 1:2 at times. It was opened in 1893 for steam and electrified in 1914. The track gauge is 800mm and it goes through 4 tunnels and over 8 bridges at a top speed of 12kph. I'm not sure how long the line is but it took us over 1/2 an hour.

Reaching the top, the view of the Eiger at well over 4000m is magnificent.

We saw (and heard) cows with bells on on the way up, and the hills were alive with the sound of music as someone was playing an accordion somewhere. We also saw some Edelweiss which along with many other lovely wild flowers had been planted, but we saw none out on our trek. There are paths all over the area and we did quite a long walk to another high point, probably another 200m up, to Oberberghorn. We had our picnic lunch here and Cordula had excelled yet again with our yummy bun with German sausage and a massive cake which the 13 of us managed to devour without any difficulty.

Some of the Funk families.

It was just below here that we had our lunch and Dad called this the 4 sisters! Jennifer and I sang 'Praise God from whom all blessings flow!' I don't have words for the awesomeness of the mountains.

We walked a steep path with more stunning views.

Back at the station we were't all able to fit on the first train and the U.S. Funks had to wait a long time for the next one then got lost coming home. We were a very tired family but enjoyed delicious soup for dinner with another Cordula-created Black Forest cake. It was a wonderful day.