Leukerbad

To celebrate the first day of our shiny new GAs, Reto and I got up at the crack of dawn and went on a giganto train trip across the country and around a bit. I had been meaning to go to an outdoor thermal pool back in December, while it was wintery but before we left for the sunny shores of Australia. Somehow we never got around to it, so today (with all the snow that has been falling lately) seemed like an ideal day.

Generic snow pic at 7.30am (aka "crack of dawn")

We got up, as I said, at the crack of dawn. We stood in the snow and waited for the bus. The bus arrived but for some reason drove very very slowly, so we got to the train station late so we missed our train, so then we missed the next train as well and had to wait in Zurich until the next decent connection which wasn't for an hour. This was actually not so bad as it gave us time to have a nice coffee and complain a bit before we got down to the really arduous "sitting on a train" stuff.

Then we sat on a train for hours and hours. We went from Zurich to Bern to Thun to Spiez to Visp, then we got off that train, and on to another one that took us to Leuk, and then we sat around in the freezing and waited for the bus that would take us up the big big hill to Leukerbad. The roads up to Leukerbad were some winding and treacherous roads, reminiscent in my opinion of those horrible winding roads that take you up to the ski resorts in the Queenstown area of New Zealand. Admittedly I have only been there (the ski resorts of the Queenstown area of NZ) once and it was about 10 years ago, so if the roads there are less winding, less unpaved (although that might just be a figment of my imagination), wider, and have more guard rails to stop you from plunging to your inevitable death off the side of the road and the mountain every time you turn a corner or come across another vehicle going in the opposite direction, I apologise unreservedly to whatever authority is in charge of roads to the ski resorts in the Queenstown area of NZ. But assuming nothing has changed, you NZers would feel right at home on the roads to Leukerbad (although at least these ones are coated in bitumen, as roads really should be). It was all blind corners and overhanging rock faces with enormous icicles dripping off them (and looking like they wanted to fall and stab you through the heart) and slumping snow (threatening to turn into an avalanche and sweep you to your death if nothing else has already) and life flashing before your eyes at every turn. Or something like that.

Anyway, we got to Leukerbad and we had lunch (nothing better than swimming on a full stomach. Although frankly I think that whole "no swimming for an hour/two hours after lunch, kiddies" thing is a load of hogwash) and we went to one of the various thermal pools there and it was super.

Leukerbad with imposing mountains

Interestingly enough, the pool itself was kinda dull. I've been to a few thermal pools in Switzerland, and most of the ones I have been to have had at least some pretence of a therapeutic thing going on, with jets of water that are supposed to soothe your sore bits or hideous fountains of undrinkably sulphurous water that is supposed to be the elixir of youth or whatever. This place that we went to had about 4 different pools, only one of which was outdoors, no novelty jets of water (well, not many and none that could be classified as therapeutic) and offered nothing disgusting to drink. There was also another pool area upstairs, the "roman-irish bath" which was vastly more expensive than the rest and seemed to involve lots of nudity and some sort of mysterious massage.

We spent most of our time in the only outdoor pool, floating around, admiring the ridiculously impressive view (mountains galore) and wishing we had brought our sunglasses (what with all the water and all the snow it was very glary). The entertainment that was kindly and accidentally laid on by the establishment involved not only the mountains, but also this really interesting and large flock of birds (jackdaws, Reto says, but now that I have looked at Wikipedia I see that he is wrong, because our birds had white or possibly yellow beaks. Reto has now updated his answer to include some grumbling about not being able to translate the names of birds into english, he's not an ornithologist, and that they were alpendohles.) which spent ages floating and swooping around above us. Then came the planes, which Reto (who spent the day being very knowledgeable. I have more faith in him on the topic of planes than I do on birds, though, because apparently this is all Top Secret Stuff He Learnt In The Army (or something)) told me at length was all about the Swiss army playing practice plane games (since, let's face it, they are never really likely to play real plane games). There were 3 planes (FA-18 Hornets, for the nerds out there, or the people who want to suggest that Reto doesn't know what he's talking about. Unless I just don't remember properly, of course, because let's face it, I don't care) and they were zipping very noisily about in the sky above us, chasing each other and twirling about all over the place and occasionally shooting mysterious flare things in the general direction of each other. Very entertaining.

Entertainment Number 4 came in the form of a former Miss Switzerland (or here if you are after a less wordy overview) turning up to be involved in the filming of an ad or something. Ever more people turned up and sat in the outdoor pool and waited and waited and watched and watched (while very little happened) and didn't leave in spite of their skin turning all wrinkly and their retinas being burned irreparably from all the glare. Eventually, after much faffing by the crew, (former) Miss Switzerland turned up skulked about in a bathrobe for a while, then spent ages standing in the freezing air in a bikini and eventually was allowed to get in the pool while the rest of us stood around trying not to look like we were gawking. Which of course we were. It was actually extremely uninteresting.

And then we came home again, another 4 hours or so in the train (and the bus and the other train and the other train and the other bus).

A non-treacherous icicle. We didn't get any pics of the good ones.

It was a super day. I would thoroughly recommend a mountainous outdoor thermal pool experience to anyone, even better if you can get assorted birds and some fighter pilots along too.

Money not spent: (train ticket cost assuming I had a halfy card, which until yesterday I did: 101.80 CHF)