Swiss Untour, 1984
by Richard Hartman, Fullerton, CA
A stroke has reduced my travel world to the local supermarket, bank and Doctor's office, so I now do my traveling via memories and have tried to commit them to writing as per the following:
EIGHTEEN YEARS
Eighteen years plus a few weeks have rolled by since the day when my wife and I stepped off PanAm flight 90 at Zurich airport to meet Ron Fahnestock and Marilee Taussig as our first face-to-face encounter with Idyll personnel. There have many since. Most probably, that irrepressible Norwegian transplant, Berit Greuutert, was also there. They herded the bunch of jet-lagged eager American Untourists to the train which would take us to Lucerne where we would get our first lesson in interpreting the yellow posted train schedules and find Track 14 (or was it 15?) where the narrow-gauge cog-wheel train would take us south through Idyll villages to Meiringen.We had heard about Idyll's Untour program from a Jerry Hulse travel travel piece in the Los Angeles Times, and had seen a bit of Switzerland (St. Gallen, Zurich, Lucerne. Grindelwald and the Jungfrau) a few years previous. The idea of living Switzerland instead of merely seeing it was intriguing. As an ex-Boy Scout I believed in being prepared, so I got in touch with an ex-Untourist for some inside skinny. She recommended choosing one the Idyll villages directly on the rail line, and on the basis of that advice we opted against the Haslital in favor of Meiringen.
There we were met by Frau Trachsel who had hired a truck to tote our luggage (but not two weary Untourists) up the hill. Frau Trachsel's Apartment was a delight. It stood at the foot of the cablecar lift running up the hill to Reuti at the head of the Haslital. From the living room there was a fine view across the Aare valley to the Reichenbach Falls immortalized by Conan Doyle. The bedroom looked out on a little waterfall which went dry whenever they shunted the stream through a tiny hydroelectric station. A bizarre note was furnished by the showerstall located in the kitchen! Not a bad idea--you could start breakfast and keep an eye in it during the morning shower.
There are many memories: Albert Greuter's virtuoso performance on the "Box" at the farewell party in Sachseln. The cheese-cutting event at Magisalp. The Wanderweg walk from Reuti down to Hohfluh where we had lunch the hotel. The rotisserie broiled chicken from the butcher shop and the cheeses from the dairy store down the street at the foot of the hill. The yellow directional signs giving the distance and walking time to the next village or wherever. The distance numbers were no doubt correct, but for a retiree who had spent most of his career at a desk the time figures were off by a factor of 2. Doubling them brought them close to reality. Our disappoiuntment at finding the Magisalp/Planplatten lift closed because of 30 cms of snow at the top. The visit to the cheesemaker's hut with three fat pigs napping in their sty after a lunch of the whey which is a by-product of cheesemaking. The alpenmacroni dish loaded with crisp onion rings. Losing the keys to the apartment in Grindelwald only to recover them at the police station behind the "coop" (pronounced like the thing you keep chckens in, but Swiss-speak for the co-operative market) Someone had found them and turned them in to the police station. The morning chatter of the children beneath our bedroom window ; every day they came down from Reuti to attend school in Meiringen. The hike up the Aareschlucht. The little train trip to Innertkirchen and the return on a bus crammed with school kids, two of whom insisted on giving up their seats so we old folk could sit down All these and many more.
An Untour is like a potato chip---once you've had one you can't stop having more. So over the ensuing years there have four more Swiss Untours (Sachseln, Hunibach (2) and Frutigen); four in France (Fontaine de Vaucluse, Pernes les Fontaines (2) and Isles-sur-la-Sorgue);and one in each of Austria (Werfen), Italy .(Buonoconvento); and Spain (Fuenti Trojar).
Thank you Idyll...Thank you again.