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Devasish Sarangi
This is about one of the days of my stay in Zurich(Switzerland). Before I start let me
tell you a few things about Switzerland. Its a small(smaller than Kerala) and beautiful
country located centrally in Europe. Has got four official languages, has got the highest
per capita income. Germany,France are it's neighbour. Most people speak Swiss German (in
Geneva they speak French). All the places are well connected by train(has got nearly
9000kms of train line, with maximum length across the country barely 200kms). Currency is
Swiss Franc(almost 30 Indian rupees).
Though I travelled a lot, this saturday remains special. We started in the morning for a
place called JUNGFRAUJOCH(read yungfrauyokh). It's one of the highest peaks of ALPS. We
took a train to BERN(the capital), and then from there to another place called INTERLAKEN.
As the name suggests, it is junction of two lakes. The lakes touch very huge mountains,
the train was going at an altitude near to the peak. So its like taking an aerial view the
entire lake with a deep fog where it touches the mountain. Its much more beautiful than
what you see in YASH CHOPRA's movies(Swiss locations are invariantly there in all his
movies;-)).
From Interlaken we started our real journey. There are two ways to go to Yungfraujoch. I
mean by train!!!! Its like going to Mount Everest by train(Mount Everest is higher than
Yungfraujoch !).So there are special trains for it, called COGWHEEL trains.They can go up
in steep tracks and not rollback incase the engine fails. We started from Interlaken in
these special trains.As the journey continued we saw these huge snow mountains, with tens
of thousands of people skiing along our side. As the train proceeded, we left traces of
them. We were heeding towards our destination slowly but steadily. There is a huge tunnel
on the way almost 7kms long. The train stops twice in between to let you go out and see
huge Glaciers from behind the glass.(That was the first time I saw snow Glaciers! ).
We did a mistake in the journey, as we had no experience we didn't take sunglasses.
It doesn't make enough sense to think that you will require sunglasses in snow. But
believe me, when you go up and up there will be an uncomfortable glare, almost
blindfolding you.
Anyway we finally reached Yungfraujoch. By the way there is a postoffice there, which is
incidentally the highest in the world(I don't think we can operate a postoffice on Mount
Everest). They don't charge you any special prices too!!.
Yungfraujoch is a very important place from scientific angle. For example, the air there
is the purest on earth, its geographical position is suitable to watch starts and galaxies
etc.A lot of reasearch activities continue there throughout the year.
Then we went to see the Ice caves(all ice there) , with beautiful snow carvings of polar
bear, Swans, Eagles etc.Took a lot of snaps there. They put a lot of efforts to maintain
it. Energy is very useful there, energy from every single resource is preserved, like the
light from the bulb, the heat generated from the visitors. They also take the heat from
the Ice caves, and supply the collected energy for other purposes. Each and every moment I
spent there was thrilling and exiciting .
There was a little bit of fun too, like they say you go anwhere in the world, you are sure
to get two things, Alu(potato) and a sardar. Likewise we found couple of Sardars roaming
in the peak of Jungfraujoch. Sardars are very nice people, we immediately got introduced
and had a good time.
Then we started from there.In Interlaken, we came to know that there is a small train(not
the regular ones which are normally two story) which goes up in the mountains and take you
to a place called Luzern(Anil Kapoor and Tabu singing in Biwi No 1). The journey was 4-5
hours, which in normal course would have taken 45mins. I rate that train journey as the
best in my life. The train travelled on top of mountains for most of the time. It was
almost travelling in a plane. Looking below you can see squares of kilometers of greenery,
flat green fields. Switzerland doesn't have any agricultural products. Their govt takes
all the land, ploughs it with a good quality of grass!!!!
So that is it,I know just words are not sufficient to describe it. I am still looking
forward the chance to go there again, and if you happpen to get don't miss it.
P.S. Ofcourse we took a regular train, and travelled for another 1hour from Luzern to
reach Zurich, making the loop complete.
Sarangi works as a software consultant and loves
travelling . |
