So today is going to be full of cable cars and trains… because that’s why we are here! Mr K is keen to go to the top of Jungfrau via the cog railway even if the weather is still promising to be utter shite, because it’s the highest railway line in Europe. It has a 9km long line that passes through a tunnel dug into the mountain of Jungfrau that connects Klein Scheidegg to Jungraujoch, which is the top most accessible point in all of Europe.
The view front he breakfast room was leading us into a false sense of security – the snow had disappeared overnight and it was looking positively balmy out.
First we had to go find the park and ride at Grindelwald… I was amazed at the enormous facility they have here. A four story parking building with thousands of car parks, a shopping centre, and ticketing outlets to buy all the cable car and train and cog railways tickets, to get around the area. To take a train from Interlaken to the top of Jungfrau takes about 2 hours in total. To get to Jungfraufrom Grindelwald is about 20 mins on a cable car to Eigergletcher, and then another 20 mins on the cog railway. The network is extensive…
We were taking the 360° panoramic cable car up to Eiger where we change to the railway. Each cable car carriage seats about 24 people and I imagine in busy periods, they’d be packing every seat. We travelled up with about 12 people and back with about 8… so there was heaps of space for swivelling around and taking photos.
The views were surreal… the snow made everything look black and white, even though I haven’t dumped any colour info from any of these photos.
The Eigergletscher station where we transferred to the cog railway.
Travelators, cable cars with plush leather seats, smooth concrete walls, modern trains with video monitors and a voice over in multiple languages, and no noisy ker-chunk, ker-chunk, as you went up the mountain??? This doesn’t match with anything I remember from 30 years ago!
Once we got into the tunnel, things started to look familiar… but man did this train move fast!
Got a better view of it once we arrived at the top and got off for a walk around. Jungfraujoch is at 3,464m above sea level and is the saddle between two major mountains – Jungfrau itself, and Mönch (both at close to 4,000m). This facility is the highest accessible point in Europe, so they call themselves ‘Top of Europe’.
I’m a little concerned at this point with the blue lights and the chain curtains (trying to look like moving aurora) that the experience up here has been ‘Disneyfied’. >.> We shall see!
And the weather outside is absolutely frightful! Snow piled up beside every door and temps of -14°C but with winds of 40kmph, it says it feels like -35°C with the windchill…. and I’m so not stupid enough to go outside in that!
No, nope, no fucking way!
Food options were surprising limited – oddly a canteen that was selling shit tonnes of cup o’ noodles to Chinese tourists, a serve yourself Indian curry cafe and a ‘Swiss cafe’ that turned out to have all the deep fried food in the land. Lunch choice made entirely based on where had the most seats and the quietest children! lol.
So I remember this place as having an ‘ice palace’ with some tunnels of ice, and carvings of eagles and bears and a few other things, and various exits to the mountain so you could go tobogganing or dog sledding (neither of which activity was available today – understandably!). But now it’s all full of neon lights and smooth graded paths.
And then there’s this… which I am unsure what it is supposed to be? Glowing yellow edelweiss and timber deer, and…
… a weird arse snow globe the size of a fridge! Yeah, all the stuff in it moved and the lights changed and I have no idea why it is here as such a huge feature in the Discovery tunnels.
There was a little bit of history, mostly about early explorers and the hardships of building the first tunnels.
This is Mr K’s, ‘confused tourist’, face.
Then the Ice Palace section with the Ice carvings … I quite liked this one.
Penguins in Europe make no sense!
Someone on the design team has a sense of humour:
He actually went outside… however briefly! I, did not. Mountain weather report included below so I can pull this up as evidence next time I am questioning either, 1) his sanity, or 2) his intelligence!
(PS: he never reads anything I write here anyway.)
The Saddest Ice Bar at the Top Of the World with No Barman. :’(
They have convenient provided this wall sized backdrop that you could stand in front of for an excellent selfie if the weather was as dreadful as it is today.
Eventually, it was time to head back to Grindelwald… at one point a train conductor came along and punched our tickets – I wasn’t expecting that given we had to scan ourselves in and out through turnstiles on the way up and down. Unlike any other train conductor I’ve ever seen – he was giving passengers chocolates after the exchange!
The views on the way down were just as beautiful…
Grindelwald…
Thus ended our train adventure to Jungfrau.
In the end I was kinda glad we couldn’t go out cavorting in the cold… when packing for this trip, I was super distracted, visitors in the house and things were a bit hectic. I pulled out my hiking boots (twice) and swapped them (twice) for these little Blundstone farm boots; rationalising that they are good for walking around town in wet weather when full-on hiking boots aren’t needed.
I haven’t worn them since GNW last year and hadn’t noticed at all that the rubber soles had completely deteriorated! Fair enough too- I bought them at Yass in 2005, they were a boy’s size 3 and cost me barely $70, but have done great duty… but today they just gave up the ghost and I must have been dropping bits of sole rubber everywhere I went! Nearly every trip, I take old sneakers with me and say I’m going to throw them out and I rarely do – they always come back home again, and some have even gone on multiple long trips with the intent to throw them away. But these ones were so totally trashed, there is no way I was wearing them another day, let alone taking them home. So into the bin they went!
I need new shoo-hew-hew-hew-oos!
Luckily we are heading to Paris next week, and I understand this might be a nice place to go shoe shopping! 😀
