Plans don’t always go as expected. That is an obvious statement, perhaps, but one that takes getting used to in practice. A couple weekends ago I went to
The next day, we took a train to Grindelwald, a town that is surrounded by mountains. We purchased our tickets for the gondola and were soon flying above the snow covered hills. The soaring mountain peaks were enough to steal our breath away. I have lived nearly my whole life on the plains of
There was a vast difference between the professional skiers that quickly raced down the slopes and my group as we stood gawking at the mountains trying to figure out where to go. After renting sleds we casually looked for people who appeared to know what they were doing. It took a while, but eventually we found some people that passed as experienced. The slopes for sledding, however, turned out to all be closed. We knew people who had come to the same slopes the day before and went sledding. Only a day later it was the exact opposite. It was unbelievable. Frustrated, we returned our sleds for a reimbursement and then soaked in the beauty of the landscape.
What does one do in the Swiss Alps when sledding is no longer an option? Of course, build a snowman. We went to a place that was out of the way and near the edge of the mountaintop and began our snowmen. Our project soon evolved into creating our families out of snow, dressing up the snowmen, and photographing our adventure. We decided that there are many people who can say they went sledding, snowboarding, or skiing in the Swiss Alps but there probably aren’t many who built snowmen there.
Since we had planned on sledding down we only had a one-way ticket up the mountain. Going to the information/help desk I sweetly asked in German if the man spoke English. For the first time, a person answered “No.” I was briefly perplexed as I thought about how I would tell him our problem without just purchasing a full-price ticket down. I passed my one-way ticket through to him. He looked at it and seemed to begin to grasp what we meant. My friend had a sheet on the sledding and so I showed it to him. Through a mixture of gestures, pictures, and, now that I think about it, perfectly useless English, he understood what our problem was. I was hoping we could get a reduced price ticket down. “It’s OK,” he said. I asked him how much it would cost. “No, it’s OK.” He motioned to the turnstile and we understood that he was letting us go down for free. Our faces must have been priceless as we enthusiastically exclaimed, “Thank you! Thank you! Danke!” The sweet ride down the mountain nearly smoothed over our disappointment. The fact that we had figured everything out despite the language barrier made the triumph that much better.
That night we took a bus to the other hostel we were staying at in Iseltwald. Upon arriving we found a note next to our key (perhaps not the best security system but very homelike) that said the manager had moved us from the dorm room to two-person and four-person private rooms with balconies that overlooked the lake. Quite pleased, we settled in and made friends with the other people in the hostel. A large group of the girls were actually studying abroad with a university from
The next morning, we were exclaiming over the beauty of the lake. After Mass we took a walk around the lake. The water was so clear and reflected the mountains surrounding the lake. Everything around us was postcard worthy and we were continually exclaiming over the beauty. As we surveyed everything I couldn’t help but wonder how anyone could be an atheist in such a place. The locals probably don’t spend hours looking at the scenery like we do, though. It made me think of how blind we can become to our own surroundings. At home I am surrounded by beauty that I don’t even acknowledge simply because I always see it. Every place is a place of beauty, perhaps not always like the beauty of the Swiss Alps, if we only have the eyes to see it.
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