Black Cats

Food for thought: Tonight was the second time this week that a black cat has crossed my path. I get the hint.

Today I visited Zermatt and Gornergrat. Upon my arrival at the Bern Bahnhof, I discovered that my camera batteries were dead again. So I paid a wallet breaking 7.50 CHF to buy 4 double-A batteries. By the end of the day, I had gone through those four batteries (two at a time). That's how many pictures I took - 158 to be exact.

First, I had to take a train to Visp and jump on another train that would take me to Zermatt. I picked a bad day to sightsee because both trains were completely full. Even the ancient one I took to Zermatt. The seats looked like bad carpeting from an old casino that no one ever went to. But the good part was that I could put the windows down.

I took a bunch of pictures on the train ride to Zermatt. At some points on the ride, I didn't even see the ground beneath the track - there wasn't anything below us. Being a person afraid of heights, that scared me for a while. I got over it quickly, obviously.

When I got to Zermatt, I had to jump on another train that would take me up to Gornergrat. The ride up there was about 30 to 45 minutes, because of all the stops on the mountain. Who knew there were little stops on a mountain with hotels? That was about the only thing there.

The ride up felt like a slow ascension on a roller coaster. I believe there was some kind of mechanism that kept the train from going backwards as we were going up - we heard a lot of clicking and squealing of wheels. Everytime the train would come to a turn, I thought we were going to keep going right off the edge but at the last second, it would do a complete 180. I also saw a lot of hikers walking up the mountain - it was fairly flat for most of the walk up but it would have taken a really long time to get to the top since Gornergrat is at 3089 meters (approximately 2 miles). 3089 meters doesn't seem like much when you're talking about it, but when you're looking up even from the middle of the mountain, you just might fall over backwards tilting your head that far back.

When we finally got to the top, it was about 3 degrees Celsius, which is about 37.4 degrees Fahrenheit. I was actually surprised that it wasn't colder. But as I got off the train, some Asian tourists asked me if I was traveling alone. I said yes and they asked the routine questions: how long are you here/where are you staying/when you're leaving/where is home? They were very nice.

I took a lot of pictures right when I got off the train. I was trying to take one of myself and someone asked if I wanted them to take it for me - yes! After many attempted self-portraits with Swiss background, I finally have a picture of me that's farther away than an arm's length.

The view from up there is so beautiful, it's probably one of the prettiest things I've seen since I've been here. My pictures can't even tell you how pretty it was there - they're just a sample of what it's like.

On top of the mountain (or should I call it heaven, because I felt like I could touch the sky), there is a little shopping center, a mini church and a hotel/restaurant. There's even some goats up there. I didn't get a picture of them because I saw them when I was eating and couldn't find them later.

In the shopping center, which is really just a store of all Swiss-made things, I found the coolest Swiss army knife contraption. Forewarning - I'm a bit of a nerd. Victorinox (one of the makers of a Swiss army knife) makes a USB flash drive Swiss army knife! They had some with lasers, pens, scissors, nail files, yada yada, but I just bought the one that had the flash drive in it. Of course this is a very useful thing for me because of school (and I've already filled my others). I'm gonna look so sweet using that in the Mac lab this semester. Plus, I might be able to fake out a mugger - if that happens.

So after I ate lunch and bought my new gadget, I went back down the mountain. I wanted to walk around Zermatt for a while but it's all tourist stores and stuff I've seen before. So I caught the train back to Visp, then Bern. I think the most exciting thing I saw on the way home was an old man wearing bright red PUMA shoes. I secretly wanted to make friends with him because of that.

Tomorrow I will visit Lake Geneva. I haven't decided yet if I am going to catch a cruise from Lausanne or from Geneva, but I believe the all-day cruise leaves from Lausanne. Right now I'm exhausted and I have to catch a very early train, or I would post pictures. Bear with me.

I also learned today that Bern was named when a hunter decided he was going to start a city where he killed his first animal - which was a bear. It's also why Bern has bears on it's shield. Don't quote me on that story, I read it in passing, but I will get the whole story for y'all.


Ciao!
Love,
Jessica