Trip to Jungfrau mountain: "The Top of Europe"!

In case you don’t know, Jungfrau is one of the highest mountains in the Alps and it has the highest train station in all of Europe -- it is at 11,000 feet!  (That's why they call it “The Top of Europe”). 

The morning we went to Jungfrau, we had to wake up very early. We got on our train with 30 seconds to spare. (Literally! The guy we got our tickits from said we had 30 seconds to make the train!) The train ride was about 20 minutes long before we had to switch trains at a station. As we kept going up the views became bigger and more spectacular, until the amazing-ness stopped at no trees, grass, or any sort of life.  Here are some views from the train as we started to go up:

We were surrounded by snow, more snow, and tons of mountains completely covered in snow! In the middle of June! It was crazy!  Here's me on the train, bundled up, and the view along the way:

When we entered Jungfraujoch (“joch” means train station), we decided to go first to the “Alpine Delight,” which was basically these really weird sculptures about the Alps (sort of).  From there we went into the “Ice Palace” – that was amazing!  You actually go inside a glacier.  Imagine being in a room completely made out of ice, not a single scrap of wood, bricks, metal or anything like that.  There were sculptures made out of ice, like penguins and bears and wolves, made out of ice, and the floors, walls, and ceilings, were also made of ice.  We were basically inside an ice cube, with mazes and sculptures.  Also, something funny: in one of the walls you could see Scrat, from the Ice Age movies, stuck in the ice with his acorn! 

After we slipped and slided our way through the Ice Palace, we went out on the snow on the “Plateau,” where you could look around the view of snow-covered mountains and play in the snow a little bit.  You had to make sure you didn’t fall off the edge – that could be awful!  The sun was shining, but it was pretty cold and we were all decked out in winter jackets, hats, and mittens.  In June. 

This is the view from the top -- of a giant glacier:

Then we went to the Sphinx -- the observatory station at the very top of Jungfraujoch.  This is what it looks like (from a postcard):

From up there, you could see mountains in almost every direction.  It’s almost every because on one side you could see little towns down below in the valley – you couldn’t even really tell which was Grindelwald.

After a good Indian lunch in the station, we went on to my favorite part of the day – “Snow Fun”!  This was completely out in the snow, on a hill underneath the mountains, with lots of activities: “tubing” (where you ride down a fast track in a tire thingy), “sledging” (sledding down a steep hill), skiing, snowboarding, and so on. 

First we did something called a “Fox Flyer,” which was a huge zip-line over the Alps.  You climb up a huge ladder on the cliff, a guy puts you in a harness, and then pushes you off the cliff and you zip through open snowy air until you cross over the “snow fun” area and then crash into the snow on the other end.  You didn’t stop slowly at all – you just crash and burn.  It was so much fun!  All four of us did it and we all loved it.  Here are videos of us actually zipping on the zip line!

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Here I am with Dylan just after the zip cord:

Then Dad and I did a lot of tubing.  Luckily none of us got stuck in spots where you could get crashed into by people behind you.  It went pretty fast down a tobogganish (is that a word?) track.  Sometimes you could even catch air!  Then we tried sledding for a long time too.  It was a really quick, steep downhill path and it was really fun.  I got crashed into by one guy who was out of control and barely got missed by another. 

 

Another view of the mountains:

After that awesome day, we left Jungfrau and took the long train down the mountain back to Grindelwald.  It was an amazing, adventure-filled day!