All trip long, the famous Swiss meticulousness did not disappoint.
- Most chalets were of the traditional style, with shutters, overhanging roofs, and a prominent gable or two; flower gardens exploded autumn’s pretense with color.
- I could set my watch by the trains, the buses, and the local shops’ opening hours.
- By homes, small cow sheds, and stopping points along major trails, wood was invariably stacked, cross-hatched, covered with corrugated iron, awaiting its chance to warm a hearth.
- Bergweg signposts, white-red-white, stood proudly along mountain trails, ready to remain visible in feet of snow to come.
- As the train from Gstaad descends into Zweisimmen, it makes a hairpin turn in a tunnel. My wife thinks the engineers were drinking one day and challenged each other to pull off the u-ee. If so, such gambling is common: from Gstaad to Montreux we were treated to additional 180’s on buried tracks.
All this impressiveness noted, toward the end of our hike from Lenk to Lauenen, we passed a small old man in a stocking cap fighting to saw a 2×4 by hand. The place was no idyll for the poor, and a century had somehow passed him by.
