Subject: hiking in Zug
Hi again!
still cleaning out unfinished letters sitting on the computer....
Columbus Day weekend (mid-October) Matt came up from Rome to visit me. It was great to see him, and I had a lot of fun showing him around my "hometown!"
I showed him the stuff that I knew already, which wasn't much, I had only been there a few weeks myself! But we walked around town a bit, along the river and the lake, and even to the Friedhof near the zoo that Hisashi and Matthew and I had walked through the week before.
(It had such beautiful landscaping, I thought Matt would like to see it, especially with all the fall colors starting to appear!)
Then the next day we went hiking with some of my friends from the German class. We took the Zug (train) to Zug (the name of the city) :), then hiked, 18km, I think, through the mountains to Arth Goldau!
By the end of the day I was beyond exhausted, but it was well worth it. The day had an eery beauty to it- it was SO incredibly foggy, that we literally spent the entire day walking through the clouds!
Our path took us between woods and farmers fields- I don't know how many electric fences we crossed, with Chris checking every single one to see if it was live! (strange kid) There were cows in many of the fields, always wearing bells around their necks. I felt bad for them- I think I would get irritated pretty quickly if I had to hear that clanging every time I moved- but it sounded so beautiful to us! The sound carries forever- even when we were far above those fields we could hear the distant clanging, like windchimes, our bovine orchestra! :)
Barbara was our fearless leader. She is such a die-hard hiker, has so much energy, and such an upbeat personality! There were a few times when we thought we had lost our way in the farmers fields- all the Wanderwege in the entire country are marked with these little yellow signs, and when ou walk through open fields rather than on defined paths, sometimes it is hard to tell exactly where you should be going, especially in thick fog!
While the rest of us stopped to try to get our bearings, Barbara charged up the next hill, and yelled back to us that she had found the next sign! So we would continue on, through the landmines of muddy soil and cow droppings (hey, that's what happens when there are so many cows!)
The countryside we were walking through is such a beautiful landscape, and supposedly has fantastic views. We didn't get the views because it was so foggy, but it felt almost like we were on the edge of the world, no surroundings, no horizon, just white. But everything was so lush and green. We got to the top of one hill, high, but rolling. It ws a pasture, and nothing was there except for a solitary tree that we ate lunch under, while listening to the windchime of cowbells in the distance. Every now and then the fog would thin a bit, and we could make out the other hills in the distance. But I think I'll have to come back someday on a clear day, to really see it.
In the late afternoon we made it to the top of Wildspitz, our big accomplishment. I was really ready to collapse by the time we got there, so it felt really good to know we had arrived.
We went into the Gasthaus (the Swiss are notorious for knowing how to enjoy their landscape- there is hardly a mountain in the country that doesn't have a restaurant on top!) to see if they had postcards, which they did, cute/cheesy homemade ones from a scanned image. So we each bought one, and now we can say we know what the view is from there!
From there we headed downwards, on our way to the nearest train station to get home again.
That's something that I really like about hiking in this country- you don't have to plan out your time to return back to your starting point where your car is. You can just keep going, and eventually will run into a train station or postbus stop, just about wherever you are!
But anyway, that was that weekend. It seems kind of dumb to still be telling you about stuff so long ago, but it was such a great experience, I wanted to share it with you! ... a little bit of Switzerland!
Have a nice weekend! Hope it's as nice there as it is here· 25°C (about 80°F), and blue sky- a perfect summer day! :)
Lots of love,
Cory :)
"There is no joy in possession without sharing." -Erasmus of Rotterdam
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