Lauterbrunnen--Our Favorite Place

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On Sunday, July 22, we finally arrived in Lauterbrunnen. We were here two years ago researching Kathy’s family tree, since she had a great, great grandfather who was a mountain guide and lived in this town. Maybe it’s the family connection but it has become our favorite place in Europe. The town is very small—just one main street which is about three blocks long but the scenery is spectacular, whether you are up looking down or down looking up. There are trails that lead everywhere in this valley and they always seem to provide great views. Dominating the entire town are the three great Alpine peaks: the Eiger, the Monch, and the Jungfrau. Our hosts this year are Craig and Corrine Rochin, the owners of the Staubbach Hotel, which sits almost beneath a 900 foot waterfall and from which the hotel derives its name. He is an American and she is Swiss. They bought this 100 year old hotel several years ago and gave it a facelift while keeping the quaint look of the early 20^th Century. This is the second time we have stayed here and have found the staff to be about as friendly and helpful as we could ever want them to be. We parked our car when we arrived and never needed it again while we were here. The entire valley and nearby villages are connected by cable cars, chair lifts, funiculars, cog railways, and electric trains. We came here to hike and promised Eric that we had saved the best place for our last stop. He soon agreed with us.

First Day in Lauterbrunnen--We started out Monday morning with a full breakfast of fresh bread, cheese, jelly (several varieties), yogurt, cold cereal, juice, coffee and tea. Kathy and I almost never eat bread in the states but over here we can’t get enough of it! The weather was just what Kathy had promised us. She said she had prayed long and hard about the weather and was certain the Lord would provide a spectacular day for our hike. Guess what? She was right on (as she usually is when she talks to the Lord). We started the day’s journey by taking the newly built cable car about 1300 feet up the mountain where we began our three mile hike across the ridge that overlooks the Lauterbrunnen Valley to a town called Murren. It sits on a shelf high above the valley but still below the peaks. We remembered a little café that was perched on the very edge of the cliff overlooking the valley. We found it and stopped for lunch. This place is so high the crows fly up to your table looking for handouts (it’s too high for the pigeons!).

After lunch we hiked down to the next little town by the name of Gimmelwald. This tiny village sits about as close as you can get to the three peaks mentioned earlier. What is so neat about this place is that it isn’t a tourist haven. This is where the mountain Swiss live and eke out an existence by raising sheep, goats, cows, and manufacturing the product for which the Swiss are famous: cheese. Big wheels of it. They have their rough little cheese huts (used for curing) all over this village. This place lies at the end of the trail. What connects them to the outside world is the cable car that takes them down into the Lauterbrunnen Valley. We took the car down, down, down and arrived at the little outpost of Stechelberg. From here it’s another three mile hike back to Lauterbrunnen and our hotel. It was a great day in every way and Kathy was a happy camper! The interesting thing is that after the day’s hikes were over and we were ready to go to dinner the weather turned ugly and it began to rain. And it rained all night. We know that people have been praying for us, and even about the weather, because over and over whenever we had rain it always seemed to come after the day’s activities were completed.

Second day in Lauterbrunnen—Today we decided to do the same thing as yesterday but doing it on the opposite side of the valley. However, the weather changed very quickly and low clouds blew in obscuring the high peaks we intended to ascend. But we went up to Wengen which sits on the “shelf” above Lauterbrunnen and had some great hikes in spite of the drizzle which came and went all day long. Earlier in the day we were telling a couple of our hotel staff about Kathy’s family history and one of them said that when we go up to Wengen we should stop at a shop called “Foto Fritz.” The reason? Fritz’s last name is Lauener (Kathy’s ancestral name on her great grandfather’s side). We did find the shop, but found out that the Lauener name is so common in the valley that about 40% are Laueners and most are not even related to one another. Not only is the owner a Lauener but several of his staff are Laueners and none of them are related. One young man who worked there spoke excellent English (he was German) and provided all kinds of interesting information while we waited to have our pictures processed. He told us that Lauterbrunnen meant “many falls” (in fact, the Lauterbrunnen Valley has 72 of them!) and that the Lauener name meant “many” (all this in old German). He also informed us that the name Nageli (another family name on her great grandmother’s side) meant “nail.” They were all carpenters.

Another thing we enjoyed while hiking were the many paragliders who jump off the high cliffs and sail gracefully across the valley. That is THE sport around here during the summer (skiing is the BIG sport in winter!). Eric thought this was really a cool thing to do in this place. We agreed. We had to leave something for Eric to do the next time he comes back here.