Warmer Weather, Please

Today wasn’t as stressful as I’d feared it would be. Typing is warming my quite frozen fingers up slowly, just so I can freeze them again on the way to the train. It’s not as cold here as I make it sound. Today’s high seems to have been around 40 and the low a little below freezing. But it froze me today. I’m just a warm-climate creature, I guess.
Tiff’s better adapted, she’s been teasing me about it. I wasn’t quite as enthusiastic about being in Kleine Scheidegg as she was, but I don’t throw myself down mountains strapped to thin boards either. It was nice up there, quite cold (around 15-20 degrees Fahrenheit), but pretty. I took tons of pictures, as always. I was just much more fond of the peak while viewing it out the window of the cute little cog-rail train we took up there.
Both of us expected a little more to be in Kleine Scheidegg or Grindelwald. Most everything was either closed or trying to sell us Swiss army knives. We’ve got plenty of those already. And we’re curious about the story behind the naming of Grindelwald, but nobody up there could explain it to us.
So we wandered around for a while, bemoaned the fact that they wanted around $100 each to get to the top of Mt. Jungfrau, and eventually rode back down into town. Once here we hiked out to the only ruin we hadn’t seen yet, Weissenau. Weissenau was a fortification to protect the water and the mountain pass. Emperor Barbarossa built it in the 11th or 12th century. He’s not to be confused with Germany’s hero Barbarossa, who came up with the idea of Grossdeutschland in the 19th century. Anyway, it had a fortified harbor at one time, and looked quite secure. Today the turret’s still there, along with most of the walls, and you can climb up to the top and look out over the lake and harbor. Pretty fun.
Now we’re in the back of Hotel AlpLodge getting our things together for the night train to Paris. Switzerland has been fun, but I’m glad we’re off to slightly warmer climates.