Looking for Wingers - Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Looking for Wingers - Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Finally an almost cloudless day to travel up to Wengen so we left at 8:30 am and drove to Grindelwald, caught the train to Lauterbrunnen then switched to the cogwheel train for the trip up to Wengen. Wengen is a flat plateau at 4300 ft above sea level that was once the home of the Winger families before some of them moved to America in the early 1700’s . Many are still in the area, in fact we had a waitress several days ago with the surname Wenger.
We found the view up there spectacular as we had remembered. There have been many new chalets, condos and hotels built though since 2002 that in places we hardly recognized the once familiar surroundings. Merle and I walked around to a view point where we had been before and instead of the one bench that was there to rest and take in the view in 2002, there were 12. That was the ratio of changes we noticed around many corners today as we visited. Newer and larger trains are now used to transport people up to Wengen and beyond to Jungfraujoch. Many of the stores in town centre are the same and we enjoyed browsing through the souvenir shops. We stopped at a small café for coffee before walking up behind some of the homes before returning to the train station for the ride back down to Lauterbrunnen then transferring to the Grindelwald train. The name of the Grindelwald bahnhof has been changed to Zweilutschinen but the trains still come and go as we remembered.
We stopped on the way home at the Spiez Bibliotheca (library) to send off a few hurried e-mails before heading “home” for supper.