Top of Europe

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

We have been seeing signs everywhere about "Top of Europe Jungfraujoch" so today we decided to make it part of our activity.  

We crowded on the train in Lauterbrunnen with Japanese tour group that would take us to Kleinsteg. The train ride took about an hour then we would swap trains at Kliensteg (let the tour group go ahead).

We did some souvenir shopping and lunch browsing while waiting for next train.  

The train up to Jungfraujoch from Kleinsteg was mostly inside the mountain. About every 2000 feet of ascent the train would stop for five minutes at an observation point, we are still inside the mountain for these stops. What Brenda and I concluded was that these were planned stops so the passengers could get aclimated to the elevation change.  

An hour later we reach the top and are immediately shuffled into the greeting area where 1000 japanese tourist awaited our arrival so they could begin their tour. Now that we had our tour group we made our way to the "Snow Fun" area which allowed us to emerge from inside of the mountain into the snow cover top of Jungfraujoch mountain.  

Snow sleding was available, as well as skiing and snowboarding. Given my ability to find injury in any activity I attempt, we decided (actually Brenda decided because she didn't want to carry me down the mountain) that sleding would be the safer activity.  

With our snow activities complete and me still injury free, we continue our Jungfraujoch experience by going back into the mountain and viewing the alpine exhibit and the ice castle. After a quick souvenir stop we board the train that will take us back down to Kleinsteg where there was a hamburger meal waiting for us.