Abenteuer Sechs: Im Berg

One of the reasons I elected originally to travel to Bern was the prospect of mountains. Real mountains. If you've ever visited Kirksville Missouri, then you'll know it's flat. Like, really, really flat. Like, week-old Coca-Cola flat. Even Thousand Hills Park is flat. I'm not kidding. Go check for yourself.

Anyway, all my life, I've yearned for mountains. So, last week, I decided to hike up one.

The Gurten is what the Bernese fondly refer to as "our little local mountain". It's about 864 m high and can be easily reached via the number nine tram from the city center (on a side note, pretty much anything can be easily reached if you take a tram from the city center. Public transportation is highly underrated).

My hike up the Gurten started in the most Swiss way I could imagine--with a piece of cheese and a bottle of:

Rivella is a mostly Swiss cola made out of malt. It tastes kind of sour and bitter, a little like Coke mixed with Ginger Ale. Maybe not the best drink for hiking. Anyway--

Soon, me and my trusty traveling companion, Gary, reached the foot of the Gurten. With excitement, we began our climb. 

 After a brief while, the nicely-paved road upon which we had started our journey gave way to a series of increasingly smaller and more poorly marked "Wanderwegs." Auf Deutsch, "Wanderweg" means hiking trail. Auf Schweizerdeutsch, "Wanderweg" means FROZEN DEATH. Where the paths were not coated in three-inch deep mud, they were completely frozen over--the ice worn literally frictionless by goat hooves and crazy Swiss people. More than once, I was forced to get down on my hands and knees and crawl up the path. More than once, I hauled myself upwards by clinging to fallen sticks and protruding roots.  I nearly slipped to my broken-legged doom more than once.
Farther up the hill, I was confronted by a pair of large goats who were watching rather excitedly to see how long it took me to seriously injure myself.

The higher up the mountain I traveled, the deeper the snow on the sides of the path got. When my path finally disappeared, I was left standing in snow that was nearly knee-deep. My CLEARLY LABELLED hiking trail had released me into the middle of someone's cow-pasture.

 As I walked farther, the Alps began  to appear.

 The view of the city beneath me was also pretty cool--but I still had a ways higher to go.

Eventually, I managed to find my way out of the cow pasture (without stepping in anything unpleasant) and back onto a nicely paved trail. This trail led up through a cute little farming village where the people sat out on their front porches to stare judgmentally as you passed, and further on towards the mountain's peak.

As I got higher, the city got smaller:

My view of the Alps improved, too:

Then, after about an hour of walking, my companion and I arrived at the peak. There's a weird little teepee at the top of the mountain, to prove you've gotten as far as you're going to.

The Bundeshaus again. It looks a little different from an areal view.

The top of the mountain is a little park. There's a tram station that will carry you back down--for a price of ten franc. There's also a nice little conference center and a few restaurants. 

 My favorite part, however, was the kiddy sledding park, a little hill that ran from the mountain peak to the tram station. It even had a tiny ski lift!

After a while, my companion and I decided to head back down and get ready for Carnival. This involved a lot more sliding around on Wandwerwegs and trying not to die (though I felt reassured by the fact that the two Swiss women an the trail in front of me were almost dying, too). The views on the way down were almost more amazing than the views on the way up:

  At the very bottom of the mountain I found this hooked on to a tree root:

"Waste" or "Desert." 

Why? I don't know.