Once we had our Rosti and took some pictures, we got ready to begin our descent. Now, this is where there was blatant false advertizing. Realistically speaking, when one thinks of downhill, the importance is always on the word down. Alas, that was not the case for us. We walked downhill for maybe 15 minutes, before beginning to walk up again. I kept asking JL if we were supposed to go down, why we kept going up. After the 20th time I asked him that, he turned around and said, "Uhh, I don't know how to tell you this, but I'm not an expert on the topological aspects of mother Earth." So I never really did find an answer to my question. What I did find, instead, were amazing landscapes like this:
And this:
JL cleverly distracted me by making me walk through acres and acres of these green pastures like this:
and like this:
So before I knew it, we were on our way UP, yes, UP, another mountain! This one is called St. Meinrad" and the route that we undertook was a part of some holy pilgrimage that someone took a long time ago. I bet the pilgrimage was to find a way OUT of the freaking mountain. This new mountain was news to me. This lack of mention of another mountain is akin to Goldman Sachs not mentioning that their subprime mortgages were deliberately picked to have bad loans. It was grounds for a massive lawsuit. I secretly texted my lawyer about our chances of winning unspecified amount in damages, while enjoying the scenic views of the Alps:
After what seemed like an eternity, we found a sign that asked us to walk down the hill to get to the Train Station. Which made no sense to me because we followed a sign asking us to go UP the hill to get to the Train Station. At this point, we had been hiking for roughly 5 hours, so hysteria had started to set in. Anyway, we made our way down the hill. Have a look at this picture, because this was the last decent picture we took, before we left civilization, possibly forever:
Why am I posing that way, I cannot say. Some things are better left unexplained.
Immediately after we reached down the hill, we were greeted by the forest. Not just some dense trees that we could walk around. No, this was a real forest. As in home to the animals. And other…things that I don't even want to think about. But it was at a lower elevation than from where we began. Which was good. I like lower. But there was a teeny tiny problem…we were lost. There was no sign telling us where to do to get to the train station. But we could hear the train and the road. All we had to do was walk downhill through the forest. But there was no trail. My friend JL, who is an experienced hiker, wasn't so sure about walking downhill literally through a forest.
JL gently suggested that we go back UP the hill that we just walked down and try to find the actual path that would lead us to the train station. But one of my principle philosophies of life is to never look back. So the prospect of not only looking back but also having to WALK back was just too traumatic. Also, by this time, I had been hiking for 344578 hours, had drank all my water, had started hallucinating about chocolate, and hadn't had any coffee. I was ready to grow wings and fly if I had to, in order to get down. I was ready to tackle a bear with my bare hands, and dropkick a tiger and a cheetah while doing so. Fortunately, none of that was necessary, as I soon found out that there are hardly any dangerous animals living in the wild. So slowly but surely, we made our way down. On the way, we found an actual trail that would eventually lead us out of the wilderness and into civilization.
We made it to the train station and took the train back to Zurich. Unfortunately, my adventure didn't end there. All the trams were messed up, and the announcements were naturally in German, so I had no idea where I was. But by now I was too tired to care. I was happy just riding the tram back and forth and taking a nap in it. Fortunately, good sense prevailed and I got off and took the right connection that would bring me back to my apartment. Once I was back, I called my lawyer up. We are looking into what sort of charges we can bring up against JL. I recommend that he look into suing the books and the maps that led us astray.
Altogether, we hiked up about 1100 meters, and walked across to the other mountain for about 15km. I realize these are just numbers to you, but to me, they are a lot more. They symbolize the triumph of the human spirit in face of lies, deceit, missing road signs, and misplaced definitions of "easy". We shall overcome!
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