DOWN THE VALLEY

Our Zermatt friends John and Barbara delight in taking foreign visitors to visit the  local sights. And it's usually a surprise. So one day, we were whisked down the mountain highway from the parking garage at the bottom of town (local residents can bring cars into town, but only as far as the garage).

Getting out of Zermatt is an adventure: in most places the road is just a single lane, with broad spots in the road where one car -- usually the downhill-bound -- must pull over and allow the other to pass. Once you reach Täsch, where all Zermatt-bound motorists must park their cars and continue by train, the highway expands to a normal two-way road.  As you continue down the valley, you enjoy all scenic vistas at every turn, with a mix of ancient haybarns and modern chalets, and even some centuries-old stone barns that have been converted to living quarters.

Finally, near Visp, you can see terraced vineyards climb the steep hillsides, as some of Europe's highest-altitude grapes ripen in the August sun for use in the famous "Heida-Wein" of the Valais canton.

We turn west from Visp and soon begin a long climb, up a series of switchback roads with majestic vistas across the valley. We pass through a number of picturesque villages with colorful names -- Eischoll, Unterbach, Burchen -- then the road becomes a simple track through the woods, finally breaking out into open air just above the treeline at the top of the hill.  And there is our destination -- the quaint MoosAlp restaurant above the village of Tőrbel.

The outdoor seating was not being used -- umbrellas were furled, as the cool breeze had driven everyone indoors.

After a memorable lunch of raclette (melted over an outdoor fire) and a melt-in-your-mouth dessert of cream-laced millefeuille pastry called cremeschnitte, we stepped outdoors to "walk it off."

Every moutain in the valley has its own ski area, it seems.  From one of the steep MoosAlp meadow runs, we could see the ski trails across the valley at Graechen, near the village of St. Niklaus. As you can see, you can't get a bad view in the Swiss Alps.

Turning back, we had another vista down the road we would traverse to return to the valley, which looked even more exciting through the car windshield.

As in all the high Alps, the road switches occasionally from two lanes to one, depending on the amount of terra firma available for paving. At some hairpin turns, there are curved mirrors to help you see "around the corner" -- so you won't be surpised by oncoming traffic, especially the hourly Post bus!

Once safely down to Stalden, John couldn't resist a swing up to Saas Fee, to show us the glacier that overhangs the town even in summer.

Like Zermatt, Saas Fee is an "auto-free" town, so visitors must park in an immense lot outside the village and take an electric taxi or hoof it into town. We learned the high glacier at the upper right of the bowl is, literally, the backside of one of the moutains we can see in Zermatt.

After an hour-long ride back up the highly engineered highway, with miles-long tunnels to protect the road from avalanches of snow or rock, we were happy to be, once more, safely out of the car in Zermatt. In the Alps, even a simple road trip is an adventure.

MOUNTAIN AIR

The most challenging part of this Zermatt trip has been to capture the "open air" without a panorama lens. The spaces are so vast that they require special equipment to photograph them. When you're here in the winter, you appreciate the views -- but with skis, you can cover a lot of real estate in a hurry. The net result is you don't realize how BIG it all is. In summer, thousands of steps don't bring you closer to your destination, and even walking downhill challenges your thighs.

Take, for example, our trip up the Gornergratbahn on August 9. We chose a modest walk -- down from the Riffleberg station to town. That's about half the distance of a typical ski run down this slope. But it takes hours, not minutes.

Coming around the corner from the train, I was able to see two levels below: in the middle distance, some 1200 feet below, was the mountain restaurant at Rifflealp, where we planned to stop for lunch. Some 2000 feet below that, through a steep woods, was the "village" of Zermatt. (Beyond the village, one can see far down the valley, to the towns we passed on our train trip up from the Rhone Valley.)

As we walked down endless switchback trails, we saw few others. With the high cost of the Swiss Franc relative to the Euro, Zermatt was not crowded this August.

Nor is it all downhill. In order to avoid the steepest descents, the trails stretch over huge horizontal distances as well.  Coming around the side of the mountain, we emerged into a vast open terrain, and the descending Gornergrat train looked like a toy model crossing a prairie.

As we picked our way over rocks and streams, we finally reached the lower end of the bowl, and the train passing by on the horizon again looked large enough to hold human passengers.

After a sumptuous lunch (chicken-and-avocado salad for one, spinach-mushroom-prosciutto salad for the other, with fendant and a final glass of prosecco for dessert) we started down the forest path to town.

In a remote cul-de-sac, we passed a simple house powered by its own water mill. Later, the route was so steep, we were able to stand next to an ancient barn and photograph its mossy roof with a (cloud-wrapped) Matterhorn behind it.

Back in Zermatt, we were able to catch the last rays of sunshine from the hotel balcony, with the Matterhorn still showing its characteristic plume.

THERE’S STILL AN AMERICA

Our Zermatt idyll was interrupted with an urgent email from our credit card’s fraud unit. “Call 800-555-5555 immediately!” Turns out someone had posted a $1.69 transaction in NYC the day before, and they were asking us to verify. Well, it was fraudulent, and the fraud investigator, “Marie Christine”, informed us in an efficient, clipped Indian accent  that a new credit card would be issued and delivered overnight.  When it arrived, we had to call the U.S. to activate it.

On receiving the card, we called the number provided and reached an agent at a U.S. office of the company.  After a tough Internet-satellite call (whose turn is it to talk now?) verifying the facts in the case, the card was successfully activated. In closing, the agent asked pleasantly, “By the way, where are you calling from in Europe?” On learning it was Switzerland – Zermatt Switzerland – her very American reply was, “WAH-HOO!”

Let’s look beyond the financial meltdowns and figure out how America can work together to capitalize on that WAH-HOO attitude!

CLIMBING TO EDELWEISS

From the balcony of our room there's a clear view of the Edelweiss Hotel and Restaurant, a small beige chalet perched some 1100 feet up the side of the hill, hanging above the cow barns that sit on a ledge over town.  It's a hiker's hill, with no lifts to help you make the grade.

The climb starts easily enough, in a verdant hillside across the railroad tracks. The hill has gentle slopes where the parasailors land and discharge their riders. The paths are surrounded by countless wildflowers. 

 But it gets steeper. After a slow climb out of the meadow, it enters the trees, then crosses the dramatic Triftbach (Trift brook), whose waterfalls cascade down from the Trift valley. 

After the bridge, the climb begins in earnest. Clinging to the side of the hillside along the brook, the trail enters a larch forest and switches back and forth, over and over, for an hour or so. The good news is that you're always in the shade, and there are plenty of rocks if want/need to perch beside the brook and enjoy the sights and sounds. Since it's a straight rise from town, you can hear the church bells every quarter hour (when you aren't near the roaring brook). If it's a holiday you could hear echos of an alpenhorn concert carried on the wind. Finally you look up to see colorful umbrellas directly overhead, and you climb the last, steep steps back into the sunshine.  

True to its name, there ARE edelweiss up here -- not on the trail, but in a large container just off the porch of the building. 

 

And over at the porch railing, you are rewarded by looking directly down into the town you left below.

FINDELN: HILLSIDES AND HORIZONS

Findeln is tucked into a tiny valley between two major mountains with a scenic view of the Matterhorn. Traditionally, it was home to a group of brigands and smugglers who made their livelihood moving goods to and from Italy over high mountain passes. That's all past now, but the town still thrives, winter and summer, as a cluster of gourmet restaurants and mountain paths with charming views.

It's fun to look at individual houses and barns perched precariously on the hillside, with great round stones underneath to prevent vermin from climbing into the stored hay...

...or to look up at the whole village thrusting out from the hillside, with retaining walls to create a level space for a family play yard or outdoor dining (who would want to eat elsewhere)?

However you look at it, the hills are steep and flower-filled.

And in the woods, we even found one late-blooming Alpenrose (which is not a rose at all, but in fact a native rhododendron).

BLATTEN: THE RICOLA GARDEN

The Zermatt farming village of Blatten is home to one of the six Ricola herb  gardens in Switzerland. (The others are in Nenzlingen, on Trogberg mountain, at Klewen Alp, in Kandersteg, or Pontresina). The garden has been carved from a beautiful hilltop meadow overlooking the Swiss farmland, among the traditional hay barns, with views the plants cannot help but love.

When you enter the garden, you find herb patch that provides labeled specimens. From bottom right, you can see a small patch of plantain, purple mallow, yellow lady's mantle filling in the middle ground, with tall and pale-pink marshmallow, and the lacy white heads of burnet at the rear.  We were especially amused to learn that plantain -- a "weed" that thrives on our property -- is a widely useful against cough and sore throat!

The village of Blatten is just a half-hour hike up the valley to the south of Zermatt.  From the lush herb garden, you can enjoy the smell of new-mown hay in the July sunshine and watch entire families work with a combination of mechanized mowers and hand rakes to hurry the hay into the beautiful, traditional wooden barns.

To ensure that the herbs flourish, Ricola selects cultivation areas that are far from industrial sites or the road networks to avoid contact with pollutants. In addition to the show gardens, over 100 self-managed organic farms under contract to Ricola within Switzerland grow more than 1250 metric tonnes (each 2200 US pounds) of the 16 basic medicinal herbs used by the company:

 

Horehound (Marrubium vulgare)	Plaintain (Platago lanceolata)	Marshmallow (Althaea officinalis)	Thyme (Thymus vulgaris)
Burnet (Pimpinella saxifrage)	Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)	Elder (Sambucus nigra)	Orange mint (Mentha citrata)
Cowslip (Primula vera)	Mallow (Malva sylvestris)	Peppermint (Mentha piperita)	Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis)
Speedwell (Veronica officinalis)	Lady’s mantle (Alchemilla vulgaris)	Sage (Salvia officinalis)	Hyssop (Hyssopus officinalis)

The display gardens contain labeled plantings of each herb -- although the different herbs thrive in different seasons, and herbs such as cowslip are past their prime in this summer season.  After studying each herb, you are invited to wander among a group of numbered beds and to identify the herb in each.  (It's OK to check back with the labeled specimens nearby; Ricola is interested in reviving the ancient skill of identifying herbal plants.)