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Day 5 - November 25, 1998 - Interlaken, Switzerland

Vacation

Today we travelled to the Top of Europe - Jungfraujoch. As I mentioned before, it seemed pretty expensive to get up there, but we found it worth the expense. There were many spectacular views - you can never take enough pictures.

We started at Interlaken Ost (East) at 1860 ft (short walk from our hotel). From there it was a short trip to Lauterbrunnen at 2612 ft. As we started to climb we began to see a little snow on the ground and our track ran along a stream coming off the mountain (blue water).

At Lauterbrunnen we changed trains. The train from here to the top rides on a cogwheel railway. This is a narrow guage track with a notched track on the middle where a cogwheel pulls the cars.

From Lauterbrunnen, the next stop was Kleine Scheidegg at 6762 ft. We had the best views on this leg of the trip. From icy streams beside the track to huge waterfalls coming high off the mountain to snowcapped mountain vistas. We saw Swiss chalets situated all over the place, huskies getting hitched to a dogsled, the Eiger glacier, and Eiger itself (remember the Clint Eastwood movie The Eiger Sanction?). There's another famous mountain peak in this range called Schilthorn where one of the James Bond movies was filmed.

From Kleine Scheidegg, except for a few hundred meters above the station, the rest of the jouney was INSIDE the Eiger and Monch mountains! We stopped a couple of times to look out the observation ports in Eiger. What an experience! The train had a steep climb all the way up. This railway was completed to the top in 1912 and took 16 years to build at a cost of 15 million swiss francs. The system generates its own power and even feeds the braking energy of the downhill trains back into the system. Very well engineered.

When we arrived at Jungfraujoch (total time about 2.5 hours) we first noticed signs telling us to go slowly. It didn't take long to realize this was because of the altitude (11333 ft). We felt dizzy the whole time up there. The Ice Palace was our first visit. The Ice Palace is a series of tunnels and caves in the glacier on top of the mountain. Everything is ice - even the floor. There were several rooms with ice sculptures. About halfway up the wall was a black line in the ice that the brochure said dated to 1947.

After the Ice Palace we went outside to look off both sides of the mountain. Unfortunately it was very cloudy and starting to snow, so the views were not as good as we had hoped. We grabbed something to eat and drink inside at the restaurant. At this point Sharon noticed that my lips were turning purple (a sign of altitude sickness - which I know I have a problem with). We took the next train back down.

It was late afternoon by the time we got back. Although we just rode the train and walked around a little, it took a lot out of us. We took a rest and then did some shopping, ate Chinese take-out, and watched a movie at the hotel.