Rorschach to Lauterbrunnen - Day 9 - Biel to Alp Grat

Sunday July 6, Biel to Alp Grat

The time had come for more immersion therapy. This saved us about 3,000' descent, which our knees told us was worth the mental discomfort. It didn't occur to me until five days later, atop Kleine Scheidegg, to read up about ski lift fatality statistics, but the comfort of that information wasn't yet available to me as I clutched the handrail going down.    

S, who has zero Höhenangst, is kindly patient yet bemused.

Success for this acrophobe means "hooray, I didn't die!" I guess this means I have been a successful acrophobe for several decades. Yet my knees still feel wobbly and my heart still skips multiple beats even when I just look at photos of people looking down from great heights. It makes NO SENSE, which is why it's a phobia.  

Bürglen, in canton Uri (the sixth canton of our hike), is known as the Ur-Stadt of the Wilhelm Tell legend. Signage suggests that Bürglen's civil engineers have a sense of humor:   

The story takes place in the early 14th-c. and was first mentioned in the 15th-c. White Book of Sarnen (on which Schiller based his 1804 Wilhelm Tell stage play). By the 16th c., writers were already questioning the historicity of the story, and by the 20th c., most historians agreed Tell existed in legend only. 

But everyone needs a good tale of resistance against corrupt government overreach, and Switzerland has embraced Tell as a national hero. Wikipedia says Adolf Hitler was initially a fan of Schiller's retelling, until he realized that Wilhelm Tell is...a tale of resistance against corrupt government overreach.

A formidable figure, indeed

Many of the buildings in canton St. Gallen had a blocky utilitarian look; in Bürglen, it was clear that we were entering the Switzerland of storybooks.

Near the Tell statue, Bürglen has a chapel, the Tellkappelle, built in 1582 on the location where Tell supposedly resided. The interior is decorated with frescoes devoted to the Tell narrative.

We crossed the valley to Attinghausen, where a gondola lift will transport hikers up 3,300' to Brüsti. We skipped the lift and hiked up. Initially one of those straight-shot-up routes, the route followed a stone path bordered by stacked stone walls...

Once straight-shot became too steep, the trail yielded to equally steep switchbacks. To distract myself from the workout, I started counting steps, ending somewhere around 6,500 but the time we reached the pass where we turned off toward Brüsti.

We paused at Brüsti for Fruchtwähe and Apfelschorle.

From there, it was another hour along the ridge to our accommodation for the night, Alp Grat.

In some places, we could see into the valley to the left and the valley to the right at the same time.

Left

Right

Alp Grat is a hut run by a family that keeps cows in the surrounding meadows and makes cheese at another Alp a little lower on the mountain. The accommodation was a Matratzenlager--rooms with multiple mattresses, located above the stable in the hayloft. 

Alp Grat

Carly wasn't sure what to make of the imbibing locals.

We had the entire hut to ourselves that night. Our stay included Halppension--dinner and breakfast. Dinner was Chäsmagronen enhanced with potatoes and onions and made with the most local of all possible cheeses, having been manufactured by our host herself, served with homemade applesauce. We ate next door with our host and her son before heading back to the hut for the night.

Hay in the hayloft

Room with a view

It started raining late afternoon, and continued to rain all night. The forecast for the next day--when we were supposed to reach the highest elevation of our hike, crossing the Surenen pass at 7,520'--was for a heavy downpour, with MeteoSwiss advising people to avoid higher elevations and slippery-when-wet slopes. The forecast for the day after that included snowstorms above 6,500', when we would be at 7,485' near the Jochpass. We started making backup plans involving buses for both days.

Ta da! 7.8 miles, 4,500' ascent, 750' descent.

Familiars of the gods

I needed to run some errands in Munich last week, and took advantage of the train ride in to take a long walk from Marienplatz to Pasing, passing through the grounds of Schloss Nymphenburg en route. I was delighted to pass this statue of Mercury holding a caduceus with a worshipful chicken by his left foot. (I googled "Hippocrates chicken" before figuring out this was Mercury; I should have noticed the wings on his feet.)

Mercury is the herald of the gods, and roosters are the heralds of the morning.

A little further west in the sculpture garden stands a goddess taking a selfie, with a clingy bird-like creature at her feet. Is that what a sculptor comes up with, if they've never seen an eagle in real life? I googled "diana eagle nymphenburg," and eventually landed on Proserpina with the owl Ascalaphus. I guess I'm relieved that the bird is not supposed to be an eagle, but this is a pretty freaky owl. 

Ascalaphus tended the orchards of Hades, and was the tattle-tale who let the gods know Proserpina had eaten some pomegranate seeds during her captivity. In response, Proserpina's justifiably incensed mother Demeter buried him under a rock; after Hercules rescued him, Demeter turned Ascalaphus into an eagle-owl (Eurasia's species of horned owl, genus Bubo along with the American horned owl). 

Perhaps the sculpted owl is supposed to look human-ish, with furrowed brow and lip-like beak? I'm guessing the sphere in the owl's lion-like paw is a pomegranate. Odd bird.

Staufen and ruins

After following signs to the Ruine Zaehringer Burg the other day, I'm much enamored of ruins--and they're all over the place here, in various stages of collapse.

On Saturday, we visited Staufen, a few kilometers south of Freiburg. Staufen is most famous for being the site of Faust's death. That's right, Faust, as in Goethe's Faust. Faust was an alchemist and necromancer of dubious character (surprise!). He was invited to Staufen in 1539 by its indebted lord Anton von Staufen, and died that same year in the Loewen inn under suspicious circumstances. Thanks to the 1587 Historia von D. Johann Fausten, other early sources, and Marlowe's and Goethe's plays, we now know he died after his 24-year pact with the devil Mephistopheles ended, and he's currently suffering eternal damnation in Hell. That's what you get for selling your soul. (Is it just coincidence that Staufen and Fausten are anagrams?)

Staufen is also known for the ruins atop a hill on the north edge of town. Artifacts suggest the Romans had a watch tower on the hill long before Adalbert von Staufen commenced the current fortress around 1100. The Staufen lineage ended with Georg von Staufen in 1602, and the fortress was abandoned in 1607. In 1632, the Swedes came through and knocked it down.

Our topo-map showed there were additional ruins in them thar hills to the east, so we hiked in looking for them. Forest roads gave way to rugged trails that skirted around the top of the ridge. We finally resorted to bushwhacking our way through a Stinging Nettle Path of Glory (as Elias calls the painful overgrown trails), to the top of the Etzenbacher Hoehe, and came to the remains of the fortress: lots and lots of rocks distributed over a third of a kilometer or so. There was also a highway marker dated 1613, so perhaps the Swedes knocked this fortress down too while they were at it.

The Swedes weren't the only folks demolishing things. Freiburg's Schlossberg ("fortress mountain") rises behind the Altstadt, but there's no longer a Schloss on top. In 1366, fed up with their local lords, the Freiburgers themselves attacked the 12th-century fortress on the Schlossberg. Thanks to all the silver ore inside nearby Schauinsland, Freiburg was able to purchase its independence in 1368, and the city submitted itself to the protection of the Austrian Habsburgs. In 1668, the Habsburg Kaiser Leopold I rebuilt and strengthened the Schlossberg fortifications to protect against threats from Louis the 14th, but the French captured Freiburg in 1677. During various wars and occupations over the next 68 years, possession of Freiburg bounced back and forth between the Austrians and the French. In 1745, the French finally gave up hope of holding onto Freiburg and did a thorough job of knocking down the Schloss before leaving town.