Conquering the world

Looking at this photo now it's hard to believe only a few weeks ago we were at the top of Jungfrau - the 'Top of Europe' - with the extended family.




Sometimes life feels like there are only a few seconds to breathe before the next event takes over your brain. This is just part of life when you have to - for example - take a certain DD to the Kinderspital (children's hospital) on the other side of town, or - for example - run around like a headless chicken when you at the last minute learn that you have to organise guacamole for the school concert (!), and so-on.

But back to breathing (something I personally like to do), it so happens that there is a third less oxygen at the Top of Europe, which made for some spacy stair-climbing. But we had a perfect day for it - the view was unimpeded by cloud, and of course spectacular.



From Grindelwald (with a massive score on the Swiss-o-meter) we chugged slowly up on the mostly-tunnel Jungfraujoch railway, built at the end of the 19th Century. (Apparently they accidentally exploded 30 tonnes of dynamite when they were building it, and you could hear the explosion all the way to Germany. I personally wouldn't want to have been that guy who set it off...)




The trains were packed to the rafters - and it wasn't even peak season - and, having read the guide books, I wasn't surprised to see that a good proportion of tourists were groups from India, having come (one presumes) to see the new favourite Bollywood film location. If that's hard to believe, I'll just mention that there was a Bollywood film crew shooting on location while we were there, complete with stars adjusting fake beards and brightly-sari'd women scurrying between locations. The restaurants at the top also served Indian-style foods although, having experienced the pickle-filled falafel in Zürich, one wonders what Dear Swiss surprises were in the curry.


We wandered up to the ice-palace, where it looked like every single tourist was scooting around on the ice-floor viewing ice sculptures - and their breath: it was minus 10 degrees outside with what I would guess was a massive wind-chill factor on top of that.

As I said, hard to believe now, as we roll into summer, and are running to catch up with the next round of events.

Maybe that's why I love photographs. When I'm in a wheelchair you'll be able to find me poring over photos and wondering if we were really there. Sounding reflective? Definitely. I saw an exhibition of photographs by filmmaker/artist Chris Marker at the Museum für Gestaltung yesterday, and was blown away by the volume of work. OK, he must be about 90 any minute now, so perhaps it's no surprise that he's had time to cover the ground that he did, but you have to hand it to people who - to coin a phrase - just do it.

In the exhibition, Staring Back, Marker quotes Valery Larbaud who laments not being able to contact some of the subjects of his old photographs.

For, I don't know why, it seems to me that with them I could conquer a world.

Looking now at photos of her family at the Top of Europe, the Hausfrau can fully understand that sentiment.


PS. I'm not sure we'll ever discover who, but I am proud to report that some valiant Aussie had clearly conqured the local recycling depot/dump - and planted a flag - at Rümikon, near Zürich airport. Olé!