Nördlinger Hut

The hut had lots of pictures around the wall of a village called Nördliner in Germany. I thought it was just a bit of a coincidence, but someone sitting at our table explained that many of the Alpine huts had been established by mountaineering clubs in Germany who wanted a base for their own expeditions, and this one was indeed from the village of Nördlinger in Germany. The hut had been built round the turn of the last century, and although it had been renovated in the 80s, it was in need of improvement. Some of the toilets were outside, and the only drinking water was brought up by cable car all the way from the valley bottom. In the evening they put out a whole row of jugs of water for everyone to fill their own bottles from. That meant that we had to brush our teeth using water which was not fit for drinking.
The chef (who was also the hut's manager) was rather distressed to see on my booking that I could not eat garlic, as he puts it in everything, and came to see me to see if it was really true. After some discussion, he did manage to find alternatives. We were so hungry after walking for nine hours that we ate two puddings. Between the courses, the manager also gave a little talk to everyone there, welcoming us and telling us about the place. I guess he must give the same talk every evening, so it is amazing he managed to sound fresh and interested.
A Dutch couple were sitting at the next table. In fact, one of them had been born in Wageningen, and so she noticed that I was wearing a Tour Club Wageningen shirt. She was rather confused by the combination of that with us speaking English to each other. The hut was quite full, with all the tables occupied at the meal. I noticed that it looked like as if I was the oldest person there, which was a bit of a shock.
Between courses, we had a quick game of Scrabble. Of course it was the German version with vowels with umlauts (with many points), so we had to make some adjustments. On previous evenings we had done a couple of Sudoku puzzles together. That was a game on my e-reader. I was too tired to concentrate enough (and Suzanne was better anyway), so we had to swap e-readers.
Later on that evening, there was the most incredible sunset looking out towards the Italian Alps in the distance. The dark thunder clouds that we had seen earlier were still there, and below them the orange light of the setting sun lit up the mountains in silhouette.
We were instructed to be in bed at ten, so we went up at a quarter to. The other six people in our room were already fast asleep with the lights out, and I hadn't unpacked my rucksack. I was in the top bunk, so made an embarrassingly large amount of noise fumbling around and making annoyed sounds to myself.Read more