Murren and Trümmelbach Falls

Today started out as another lovely day although clouds were coming and going in the morning. Irene and I decided to stick to the plan of visiting Mürren. We took the train to Lauterbrunnen and then a cable car to Grütschlap and then a train to Mürren. The train stops at one end of the village and you walk to the other end to get the cable car either up to Schilthorn or down to Stechelberg. Schilthorn is where one of the James Bond films was made and is famous due to that. The live webcam showed it was mostly covered in cloud so we didn’t go up. Had I been a James Bond fan I probably still would have gone. I met a guy this afternoon who did go up and said even though the view wasn’t great it was still worth it. Irene if you are reading this he also went paragliding at Mürren.
The views from Mürren where amazing. We could see the peaks of the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau.

So we went down and along to the Trümmelbach falls. These are a series of waterfalls inside a mountain. As it turns out I don’t really like being in a confined space where it is dark, slippery, wet and very noisy. 20,000L of water hurtles down every second. So after two falls I left Irene to it and waited outside. I did meet the couple from the Glacier Express inside the falls.

As we waited for the bus back to Lauterbrunnen it started to rain so we timed it well. At Lauterbrunnen I said goodbye to Irene as she was heading back to Zurich.
As I’ve said multiple times I like travelling on my own but it has been nice to have a companion for a few days. Travelling with someone else means I saw things I might have missed if I’d been on my own. I probably wouldn’t have been brave enough to walk out onto the packed snow at Jungfraujoch and I certainly wouldn’t have sat in one of the deckchairs on the snow. It’s also been nice to have someone to talk to at mealtimes. I really felt it tonight when I went down to dinner and found I didn’t have a reserved table. The other two nights my room number (and Irene’s) was sitting on a table. So I was given a table right by the salad bar so it wasn’t the best in the room.

Anyway after arriving in Wengen I went and did my washing. I was lucky that there was an available machine as there is only two washers and dryers in the whole town and when hotels want 8CHF to wash a pair of pants and 3CHF to do undies lots of people use it. Unfortunately the instructions didn’t make a lot of sense to me and I ended up putting my washing in the dryer (with powder). In my defence it did look like a washing machine and the washing machine like a dryer. I got some help and got it sorted out. It took about 2 1/2 hours and the washing still isn’t dry but I had to come back to the hotel.
Three other guys came along after a while so it was nice to have someone to chat to. They had all tried to do washing yesterday but couldn’t get an empty machine.
They were all from the USA and it was good to swap stories of what we’d done and planned to do. We also talked about the differences in the industrial systems in both countries. I continue to astound people with my description of long service leave. One of the guys had been saving his leave to be able to afford nearly three weeks off.
It stopped raining long enough for me to walk back to the hotel.
I’m not sure what I’m doing tomorrow. It will depend a bit on both the weather and what time I get going.Read more