Smaller text Larger text

Alps

Posted on

Euro Experiences from NW to SE — Part III

Let me stoke your travel dreams for 2009 by sharing some of my favorite European experiences, roughly from northwest to southeast. Maximizing the experience is a dimension of smart budget travel that’s just as important in challenging times as saving money. Imagine these…

High above Interlaken in the Swiss Alps, hike the narrow ridge from Schynige Platte to Faulhorn. As you tightrope along the ridge, lakes seem to stretch all the way to Germany on your left, and the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau cut like broken glass into the sky on your right. Listen for the haunting legato tones of an alphorn just ahead, announcing that the helicopter-stocked mountain hut is open. It’s just around the corner, and the coffee-schnapps is on. That’s enough to make a Lutheran raise his hands and holler hallelujah.

Pump up your adrenalin in the same Swiss Alps on a rented mountain bike. Tiny service roads, paved smooth as a mansion’s driveway, are designed for the little hay wagons of farmers. While these scenic lanes are off-limits to cars, they are wide open for (and a hit with) bikers.

At the bottom of the Lauterbrunnen Valley (just south of Interlaken), drop by the rough and not-very-inviting Pub Horner. It’s the unofficial clubhouse for base jumpers—the hangout for those daredevils who exasperate local farmers by jumping off sheer cliffs, miscalculating with their little parachutes, and smashing messily into the fields below. Have a beer with these guys, begin to understand their passion for an adrenaline rush, and gain some appreciation that life may be short, but it’s not cheap for these amazing thrill-seekers.

Get as high as you can mechanically in Europe, riding the cable car from the French alpine resort of Chamonix to Aiguille du Midi. Up there, at 12,600 feet above sea level, just climbing a few steps gets you winded. The air is thin. Perfect strangers do the halfway to heaven tango, and people are giddy as they marvel at Europe’s tallest peaks around them. You can almost reach out and pet the white head of Mount Blanc just across the way.

Posted on

Cheered on by the Gnomes of Gimmelwald

Every two years my guidebook research brings me to my favorite corner of the Swiss Alps, as I visit my friends who run the little places that accommodate my traveling readers in the tiny village of Gimmelwald.

Walter, who runs Hotel Mittaghorn, is 82 now…slowing down but shuffling on. To most people, he just giggles and muses about this and that incomprehensibly. But it all makes sense to Walter. Tim from Britain looks after Walter and the hotel. Tim’s in a brace after a parasailing accident. Hard landings seem to make him seem shorter each year I visit. We have our annual meeting to lighten Walter’s workload. A new fire regulation cuts his hotel capacity to 15 — a blessing. Later, in the village center, I meet a stream of Walter’s guests…all thrilled to stay at Hotel Mittaghorn.

Down in the town, I drop in on Olle and Maria, the school teachers who share the 120-person village’s single teaching position. They cut me some hard alp cheese as we review their B&B business. Maria says she doesn’t understand why, in 12 years, they’ve never had a black visitor from the US. She promises to give a free room to the first black American family that comes. I wandered how that offer would look in my guidebook. I joked I wanted the offer for all black people for an entire year. (Anyway…if you’re a black American, you’ve got a free room here in paradise!)

I drop in on Esther, the dynamo farm girl who now, with her expanded guesthouse, has the biggest business in the village. She asked if my describing her place as an “upscale mini-hostel” wasn’t a bit off. I agreed.

Esther also rents rustic spots across the street in her barn. She’s received some complaints, and was concerned we were overselling it in the guidebook. She asked, “Shouldn’t we call it a ‘stable?’ And you should tell of the smell and the flies. Americans don’t handle flies well. It smells like a barn — manure. You must tell them directly.” With my new, more frank write-up, I told her, “If anyone complains, it’s their own fault.”

Enlarge photo

My favorite visit in the village is the Mountain Hostel run by Petra. After dark it’s a glowing light of travel happiness in this sleeping village. It was filled with a likable, well-scrubbed gang — kids any parent would be thrilled to see their teenager hanging out with. Everyone seemed to be instant friends. I meet a Jeremy, a 15-year-old with his dad. He was immersed in a raucous world of 18-to-25 year-olds with the world by the tail. This was his first hostel…we celebrated the fact. A college student from San Diego with big hair, “carpe diem” tattooed on his underarm, and a determination to be a great high-school teacher, joined in the conversation. All agreed the world needs more “Dead Poets Society” teachers. The topic turned to whether history as taught in the USA is ethnocentric. A woman who left her five-year-old daughter sleeping in the barn (swatting flies), said, “I’m a history teacher”…and joined in the conversation.

I met with Petra — sitting in the kitchen while she cooked up her famous pizzas. She grew up by the hostel in the next village, and remembered loving the way American couples called each other “honey.” She married local boy Wally, and they did wonders making the Gimmelwald hostel the money-less mountain-lovers’ El Dorado it is today. As a courageous woman with a vision, she ruffled village feathers. Her father-in-law never even visited the work of Wally and Petra for years.

Petra’s only request for the next edition of the guidebook: Shame the guys into splitting lumber for the wood-heated hot tub. I stepped out back to a gleeful gang of happy hikers in a half-barrel-design hot tub. Standing in the tub posing for photos, they looked like a bundle of white asparagus. As I always say, “If heaven isn’t what it’s cracked up to be…send me back to Gimmelwald.”

Enlarge photo

An artist sketched a funny cartoon entitled “The Adoration of Rick Steves” with hostellers using my guidebook like the Bible. And it occurred to me: If any place was a springboard for my career, it was this hostel back in the 1970s.

When I first came in 1976, goats lived downstairs. Bent old Lena (who sounded like a goat when she talked) would hobble over once a day and collect two francs. Today it may cost 25 francs to sleep here — but Gimmelwald hostel provides the same magic. I told Petra she should have a photo of Lena on the wall. She pointed to the space above the bar…and there she was.

Lena’s gone. There’s not only a shower…but a hot tub. And a generation after me, the essential magic of slumming it in the Alps is unchanged. Walking home through the darkness, I could almost hear the gnomes of Gimmelwald cheering me on. My work brings me great joy.

Posted on

Bewitched by Europe

Nearly each day in my travels, I meet a charming local guide. It’s like cheating socially — I’m the only student for three hours with someone who loves their town, loves people, and loves to teach. And they are paid to answer my questions.

These local friends have a passion for speaking English and are so generous with their information, I like to gift them with little insights into the fun of our language. Checking out a great little hotel, I explained “this one’s a slam-dunk.” Working out the directions from the bus stop, I had to explain “dogleg left.” My guides lap it up.

Europe grows up with American culture, but occasionally things shift in transit. If I hum the “I Dream of Jeannie” theme, they know the program… as “My Beloved Witch.” They’ll enjoy a lifetime of movies by a great American star — artfully dubbed by the best voices in Italy. Then, when they finally hear a TV interview with George Clooney or Elizabeth Taylor actually talking, they are hugely disappointed by the weak voices.

In Bolzano, my guide, Nancy, met me under a statue. The day’s first factoid: This statue is made of Lasa marble — the same marble the USA chose after WWII for 80,000 crosses and stars of David destined for places like Normandy. She said it was hard, white, and weather-resistant. (I almost responded, “Like me.”) Nancy was young, sprightly — seemed like a ski bum who guided in the summer — and wore a costume-jeweled American flag on her lapel (the kind my grandmother wore). I told her, “I’ve never met an Italian wearing an American flag in Italy, and I’ve never met a Nancy in Italy.” She said, “Maybe I’m eunuch in Italy. My grand grand father moved to New York. I want to live there some day.” Letting “grand grand father” go, I explained to her the difference between eunuch and unique.

As I walked with Nancy through Bolzano, she lamented we had only “a pair of hours.” We passed Romina, the receptionist from my hotel. Romina is the kind of person who giddily spends an entire lifetime working for a family-run business with no hope for any advancement — as family members hold the few good spots — but is still thrilled to be there. (I see this a lot in Europe.) Romina was a human shield, standing firmly on an available parking spot wonderfully close to the hotel, waiting for travelers to show up. She said, “A family is coming who has your book. So here I am. This is a true piece of life.”

All over Italy I’ve been using two easy statements: “Complimenti,” meaning “my compliments to you,” and “Buon lavoro,” meaning “best wishes in your work.” Here in Südtirol, where 68 percent of the Italians speak German first, I asked my guide for the equivalent of “buon lavoro” in German. She said, “Gute Arbeit.” That just didn’t sound right. I shouted to Romina, “Buon lavoro!”

 

Posted on

Kraut in Italy’s Alps

I’m in Kastelruth, in the Italian Tirol. My chalet–sturdy as a bomb shelter, yet warm and woody–comes with a generous fluffy down comforter and serious German plumbing: Ka-chunk…ahhhh.

High in the Dolomites, tourism is huge. But April is the limbo time between the skiers and the hikers. The lifts are still. Most hotels are closed. It’s a lousy time to be researching. I survey the town from my two-chair balcony. There are no tourists…just busy-as-a-beaver locals getting things ready for the coming rush. A man in blue overalls swings a pickax. Children run free in the guest house lounges and gardens — learning to rollerblade, playing rollicking games of foosball.

As I sat down to lunch today with four representatives from the tourist board, they asked me, “Do Americans know this region as Südtirol or the Dolomites?” I answered, “the Dolomites,” and complimented their town as the only one that didn’t feel like a ski resort in the summer. We were presented with plates of shaved cabbage sprinkled with bits of bacon. Ignoring the meat, Günter, the man across the table, said, sadly, “Kraut.”

I’ve been on the road nearly a month. I’ve had just two hours of rain. I’ve enjoyed meeting countless Americans. All seemed to be having a great time (except a woman who shut the car door on her coat and needed a cleaner, a man whose wife was forcing him to tour the Siena Pinacoteca, and a kid from Michigan State who just couldn’t accept the fact that “pepperoni” was green peppers and not spicy sausage).

And during this month I’ve had absolutely no news. When at home, I consume news as entertainment — probably an hour a day. And for 30 days now I have not seen a TV or newspaper. I read a brilliant rant from Lee Iacocca (Lee Iacocca Excerpt). And I heard about the massacre at Virginia Tech…but only because so many Europeans wonder why we let anyone — even nutcases — own a gun, yet do things like legally requiring bikers to wear helmets. My news-fast will continue. It feels somehow healthy.

Enjoying this little eddy in the whirlpool of Italy, I’m savoring a quiet evening in my room. Freshly showered and in bare feet, I “cook” dinner: my tiny post-9/11-sized Swiss Army knife, a champagne flute from my minibar, and a paper bag ripped open as my tableware. The menu tonight: rough, bakery-fresh German bread, salami, carrots, a tub of yogurt, and Apfelsaft (apple juice). Everything’s in two languages here: I believe there’s a dot of yogurt on the bridge of my nose — it’s both frutti di bosco and Waldfruchte… that’s “berries of the forest.” The fact that my feast cost less than €5 makes it taste even better.

I dig out my iPod. Music takes me home — dancing with memories of family, friends, things non-European. Then, I turn off the iPod and return to Europe. With a happy soundtrack of German-speaking Italian children playing just out of sight, I watch a slow show as darkness settles on the Dolomites. Slowly those rugged limestone peaks and gaily painted chalets become two-tone, then gone.