I ran to the train just in time, and headed off to Stoos. To get to the right spot, I first had to take a couple of connecting trains, and then hop on a bus. I think I forgot to mention that in Switzerland, before a trip, you have to stamp your ticket with the current time in a special yellow machine. From now on, I'll call it a validator. If your ticket is for a specific trip, it might be sold directly from the ticket machine with the date on it, and you don't even have to validate a ticket like that. But if it's a more flexible option, valid for a day or a few hours, then it's mandatory. You can find the yellow validator on platforms, in buses, and even on steamboats. The fine for riding without a ticket is 100 francs plus the ticket price, and inspectors hop on transport very, very often. This time I didn't forget to validate it, and to avoid losing the ticket, I tucked it under my phone case.
I made it to Stoos without incident. I popped into the local village shop to grab a coffee and gather my strength, and a culture shock was waiting for me there. The store had an automated checkout, but no cashier, and no staff. Souvenirs, farm food, coffee from a machine — take all you want, ring it up yourself, pay yourself, and take off. I honestly don't remember ever seeing anything like it anywhere before. Except maybe in rural Lithuania and Estonia along the roads, where you can sometimes buy honey or vegetables and drop coins in a box yourself. But here, an entire store is like that!
This made me think quite a bit about how far we still have to go to reach this level of civilization. Sure, there are cameras in the store, but that's no silver bullet — wrap up your face, and what's that camera going to do? They're solely banking on the fact that people who go to the mountains aren't prone to petty theft. Interestingly, I saw something similar in Jordan — they leave crates of Coca-Cola out on the street at night there, and don't sweat that someone might take them.
Next up, a funicular with an incredibly steep angle of ascent was waiting for me. They say it's the steepest in the world. To handle this, the floor changes its tilt angle while in motion. So that you don't end up standing on an angled floor, like we experienced later on when taking the train to the glacier in Lauterbrunnen. A nice perk was that my Tageskarte worked for part of the way up (to the cable car), as was often the case later on too.
The ascent to Stoos
