Two

GREEN SHUTTERS AND A FUNICULAR RIDE I love green shutters. Here, in Switzerland green is the go to colour. Everything on the ground is green, the sky is an azure blue and every now and then there is a joyous puff of cloud, also little patches of snow, gleaming. Everything here is more colourful, sharper, like God was at his most peaceful while creating Switzerland. Then he thought too much of a good summer and so gave them snow, which also, if you are prepared enough, is beauteous. God loves  Switzerland. No doubt. Let me make one thing clear. We are tourists and we are visiting Switzerland, but with Matina and Bruno who have a soul and who want us to have an experience, different from the zillions of tourists who come here. Matina has taken the trouble to plan and is excited to give us surprises. Far from the madding crowds is where we drove down to Gelmerbahn, before going to their log cabin at Grengiols. Glemerbahn, apart from having green water because of it's mineral content, from lakes at different levels, produces hydroelectric power. And it has the steepest train ride in the whole of Europe. It is not a train in the real sense. It is the Gelmer, the fearless funicular, which was built to transport heavy equipment for the dam in 1926. From 2001 it carries tourists and climbs to 1860 mts above sea level. It has about 25 seats and you are prepped like for a roller coaster ride, but this is slow, even as you absorb the view and get a bird's eye look at the gorgeous world below. Sometimes this is at such a height that it is at 46 degrees (?). We hiked a little and had a picnic here. And Matina had baked a savoury roll. Along with the apple juice we had made the previous day, we had this tart. Instead of leaving the tart just so, she sliced them and then twisted them and then baked the tart. Apparently, in local parlance it is called a party flower. It was delish. And the best picnic. They have decent toilets, little metal can with lots of toilet paper and a little spade with sawdust. You pee and put a spadeful of sawdust on it. Brilliant, neat and absolutely fuss-free. And with all the trek and water around, everyone uses it. It is clean and stink free. We can make these in mana Hyderabad, where all the previously built toilets are now defunct and people have sold what is sellable. But only beautiful thoughts here. We will be going down now by this little wondorous machine, which will bring us from this huge height down to earth by sheer genius and mechanical engineering. And there was a Welcome board in various languages including 'swaagat in Hindi. India has winch systems at temples, which work fabulously, in spite of the insane crowds. Maybe not so high and they are also covered and normally four seaters. The fact that there is less crowd is also very helpful.  No pushing around. In fact Matina was surprised that there were so many visitors (please count in low hundreds, at 24 seats per ride and 52 rides (up and down) per day). After the sawdust experience, I wanted to use a proper toilet and so we went to the Hotel Grimsel Hospiz, next to a still being  constructed dam. Huge cranes and granite mountains, with little melting rivulets darkening the shiny, steely face of the daunting mountains. Bruno, Akhila and I drove down in another vehicle and not the Hippy Volkswagen we will be driving down to Italy in. Matina, Ravi and Murali took the walking route to the log cabin, where we will be spending two nights.