Digital Wanderer

I barely had time to visit Switzerland before Hungary happened. Unfortunately, it looks like my stories are going to get less colorful. Not everyone wants to end up in posts and read about themselves. Especially when it comes to emotions and relationships. I'm already constantly self-censoring anyway, but even so, I still get in trouble. As far as I know, readers are usually more interested in stories about thoughts and feelings than dry facts and lists of places. Apparently, the only option is fiction, not documentaries.

Already a year ago, when the other dwarves and I flew to Prague, we were thinking about a new trip. There were convenient and relatively cheap tickets to Budapest. I was a bit slow on the uptake, didn't buy them right away, and so the flight + hotel ended up costing around 280 euros (for three nights). Then I added another 48 for the right to sip tea from my Chinese tea cups. Meaning, I bought a large cabin bag allowance. Because nowadays with low-costers, you can only grab a small backpack for free.

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In Interlaken, I easily met up with my friends, even though the connection was, as usual, only about ten minutes. The guys gave me a spare Tageskarte, and I validated it right away, keeping my previous sad experience in mind.

The thing is, when we were hiking up to the Aletsch Glacier, I started from Fiesch, and in the morning I didn't need the Tageskarte. And when we were leaving after the hike, we were in a hurry, and I forgot to validate it. As a result, at every train stop, I frantically tried to jump out and find a ticket validator, while trying not to get left behind at the station. I ran back and forth, trying to get out of the exact car that was closest to the validator. Fitness champion Anastasia and her friend were riding right next to us, and they laughed their asses off at this. As luck would have it, nothing was working out for me. Either the validator was nowhere to be seen, or it was too far to run, or I was afraid I wouldn't make it in time, and ran back in. It all ended when we arrived in a big city. I jumped out and saw a ticket inspector on the platform, just as she saw me. Fortunately, the train made a pause of a few minutes at this station, and I finally found the validator. I shoved the piece of cardboard into the slot and heard the sharp "bzzzzt" of the dot-matrix printer inside. Victory at last!

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With some difficulty, I googled a route suitable for our purposes. We had to arrive from Sörenberg from the Lucerne side, that is, from the northeast, with a couple of transfers. The cable car cashier consulted with a colleague and the computer for a long time about our Tageskarte, to understand whether we'd get a half-price ticket. It turned out we would, and we paid just 6 francs. The cheapest cable car of my life.

I showed her our trail leading to the Blitzer Rothorn peak. The girl warned us that the rocks were dirty and slippery, and that we needed good shoes. Garik just waved his hand: on his previous trip to Switzerland he hiked all the mountains in his regular sneakers, he's fine. I envy his endurance and agility. Another worker was walking by and smiled: either at Garik's sneakers, or at my colorful little pants. I don't mind. In my condition, the fact that I even got my act together and went on a hike is close to a miracle. And to also manage to buy the proper clothes is a task close to impossible nowadays. It's a good thing at least that over the years I've gotten even better at saying screw it to non-critical things: my approach now is generally MVP in everything. Good boots are important, but shorts can be beach ones, not much depends on them. Of course, it's hard for me and it sucks that for many people getting ready is a hundred times easier, and their health allows them to party all night long and then go to the mountains. On the other hand, I appreciate that I can see such wonders, and generally can go on a hike on my own two feet.

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