Voyage to Schwarzsee

4th January 2005.....

6:30 AM

Beep, beep, beep.

It was my alarm clock trying to get my attention.

“Why do these things have to be so cruel and wake you just when you don't want to be awakened?” I asked myself.

I turned the alarm off and went back to sleep only to wake up with a start ten minutes later.

“I've got to get ready and catch the 7:40 regional train.” was the thought which sent my sleep back to slumber land.

My next thought was:

“Oh man, why does Achraf have to go this early?”

It was sad indeed, getting out of bed at such a time in the middle of Christmas-New Year holidays. If it was a school day I would have had no problem waking up even at six but this, this wasn't right. Slowly I got up and gathered that which I decided to wear and moved towards the bathroom.

Half an hour later I was freshened up and ready for the day. The plan of the day was to go to a certain place named Schwarzsee. That unfortunately meant that I was going to be in the German side of Switzerland. The part which as far as beauty is concerned is lovely but where I'm never at ease. First of all even with my two years of the German language I can't understand a word of Swiss German. Second it's a place which is not as welcoming towards foreigners as is the French side of Switzerland. With my skin color it can be seen from far that I'm not a local and well some people go as far as to associate it with a potential terrorist. So from time to time I get those weird looks which are watching you for the slightest unnatural behavior. Wonder how it would be like if one day I'd go with a grown beard and a traditional Pakistani dress.

Literally translated Schwarzsee gives black lake. Two days earlier Achraf had come over for a few hours to decide today’s destination along with the other minor details. Being January, the middle of winter there weren't many choices for people like us who don't know how to ski. After a little looking around the closest and the most interesting thing we came up with was the black lake. Being at 1050 meters above sea we figured by this time it would be frozen and there seemed to be a path we could take to contour the lake.

Back in my room I took a quick glance at the clock and realized I had half an hour left to take my breakfast. That was more than I needed to eat. I unhooked my mobile phone and the camera from there adapters and moved towards the kitchen. Once I entered the kitchen I did have a problem looking for a suitable breakfast.

“No waffles in the cupboard. Don't feel like eating cereal. What else is left? Hmm... What’s that in the pot on the stove?” To my surprise it was a dish called gajar ka halwa. Better breakfast than expected.

7:30 AM

I left my house 10 minutes before the trains scheduled arrival at the station. Normally when going to school I leave 5 minutes before but then I usually end up running to catch it. It's not that I've ever missed the train but I didn't feel like running today.

7:41 AM

The train arrived one minute late. Being in Switzerland people started complaining. Yup, that's Switzerland everything has to be perfect. When the train stopped it seemed already pretty much filled. That's when it became evident that even though those studying in the canton of Vaud were still on vacations their counterparts in Geneva were already going back to school. That meant that I would have to stand up until we reached Geneva. That's exactly what happened. Not a good start.

7:56 AM

The train reached the station and just about everyone including me got off. As he had said he would Achraf was waiting for me at the station. Achraf my classmate is about as tall as me and comes from Morocco. We greeted each other and walked to the platform from where we were to take the train to Fribourg. The train came on time and we left the station at 8:10. The ride was to take one hour and a half. Meanwhile we discussed on various topics. School is one thing which always comes up among us people going to EPFL. It's taken such an amount of time that we can't avoid coming to that subject. Another thing which came up was that we should have brought playing cards with us. From time to time there was also a good view of Lake Geneva and the surrounding mountains. One thing was certain the amount of snow on the ground had increased on the way. From non-existent in Geneva to snow covered villages in the canton of Fribourg. Before we knew it we were at our destination. Here we were supposed to look for a bus station and take a bus from there half an hour later. The bus station was just behind us but we went out, looked for a tourism office and were sent back to the same spot. That used up the half an hour extra we had pretty well.

10:00 AM

We left the station in the bus headed to the black lake. The journey as I had checked on the Internet was to take 50 minutes. The ride was rather slow and the stops even though not so frequent were draggingly long. A lot of students got on from different stops with snowboards in there hands. That gave us the idea that like us they were on vacations as well. Soon we realized that my friend and I came closer to all the senior citizens than our counterparts of this region. We were the only youngsters who didn't come armed with snowboards. We reached the place in time but as we had expected it to be the last stop which it wasn't we missed the stop. However, having demanded very quickly the bus driver dropped us off making a special stop 100 meters away. We gave him a big thank you and had a better look of the place.

10:55 AM

For one thing it was white all around. The not so obvious part was finding the lake. Once again we were looking too far. It was dead in front of us. Not so amazingly it wasn't black but it was white. It was the not so circular patch of snow which touched the chair-lift station on the left and the right end was hidden behind trees further down. That was a surprise. Not only was the lake frozen but it had about an inch of snow on it. As planned we started walking on the track near the frozen lake. It was my friend’s first trip to such a place and it was the first time he had seen a frozen lake. I had already seen one once but it was covered with a sheet of ice and not ice and snow so it was easier to tell. On the way I was looking for one of those yellow sign posts which you tend to find on hiking paths all over Switzerland. We did reach one of those after a couple of minutes and found out that we were on the lake tour trail. That part we already knew. About 15 minutes and three signposts later we reached a place with a lot more signposts. Now this was more helpful. The more signposts the better I always say. From there we took a detour and started towards a small waterfall in the region.

“Let's go.” said Achraf.

“All right. Let's.” I replied.

The moment we started to advance a dog started barking like a wolf.

“Then again let's go back.” I came out quickly.

“Yeah, the sign did say 15 minutes. That's far. Let's go back.” Achraf took the same stance as me.

Then we looked at each other and cried:

“Hell no!”

As we marched on the slippery track with less snow and more ice the dog kept on warning us. Finally the dog came into our vision. I had half expected a 20kg bulldog running towards us. Achraf had expected a tall lean mean German shepherd. On the contrary it was a measly little dog who just wanted to look bad. One thing is sure, the dog failed miserably to look bad, however it did sound like a wolf. He must have been working all last year on his bark. Now he just needed to lift more weights and grow half a meter. He was standing on the porch of what I presumed was his masters house. We kept on advancing and finally seeing we weren't backing off he did what I thought the Wizard of Oz did when he was found a humbug. He dog lost his voice.

“The moment we have our back towards him, he's gonna come runnin and bite us”, Achraf told me what he had in his mind all of a sudden.

That sounded scary.

“What if the dog had also practiced the sneaking up from back and biting his prey move?” I thought.

This idea sent a little shiver down my spine.

“Nah, its Switzerland. The dogs are well trained or they don't get there license.” I finally spoke.

“You know you won't even hear him coming.” I added later.

“What? It's not a tiger that would come silently and Grrrrr Swoosh would bring you down before you know what happened.” Achraf replied.

“No. That would be a leopard or a panther. Tigers are heavy and clumsier. And it would be more likely a Caaash instead of a Grrrr.........”

And so continued our debate on the sounds made and attacks inflicted by tigers. The topic changed slightly when Achraf told me a small account in his life.

“Once, in Morocco I was talking to my friend and this cat came running and bumped into my friend’s leg.”

“That's informative.” I thought.

He continued.

“The cat then looked up and had an expression on its face saying: Huh? What are you doing in my way? Then it ran away. My friend had a blue mark on his leg after that”

“I didn't know you could read the expressions on a cats face. You know that's amazing.” I made my conclusion of his story.

“You know what I meant.” he replied.

Fifteen Minutes later after joking around, we reached the waterfall or what was left of it. Apparently the waterfall had met the same fate as the black lake. Besides being white it was also frozen. Unlike the lake, the waterfall still had signs of water trickling. The ice formed great big pillars of ice varying in all shapes and sizes. It did leave a frozen trace of the normal course of the waterfall.

Achraf was quite happy to witness such a site. He expressed it by saying wow and damn. Earlier on he was arguing with me that it was impossible for falling water to be frozen in the air like that. He didn't want to believe me when I told him that ice formed a shell above the water and the water kept on flowing underneath if not above the ice. That's what I had figured out happened in observing half frozen waterfalls with chunks of ice sheets above it falling.

After taking a few photos and then a few risks to take better close up photos which didn't come out well even after all that work, we took another path followed it for a while then seeing no end point we went back towards the black lake. Once again on our way back the dog was barking at people coming from the other side. Once again he had no luck. Poor dog must have been quite a disappointing day. No one took his warnings seriously. When we passed by him again he didn't even growl or yelp.

12:30 PM

We came back on to the lake tour trail. From here we continued our lake contour. By now the sun was at a better angle for the rays to hit the lake and some of the nearby mountains, making everything more pleasant. After another hour of walking and having taken a few photos en route we had reached the ski station. People wearing colorful clothes could be seen sliding down the mountain in various ways. Meanwhile, quiet a few individuals had started to walk on the lake. Not only that, but the Para gliders were also using the lake as a landing field. The lake had life under and above it now. Slightly tired and hungry we sat down on a dry rock to eat what we had prepared for lunch. Achraf took out an apple and two oranges. I brought out a bag of chips. It turned out to be more of a snack than a lunch. Most people would say that bringing such things on such a tour isn't cunning at all. But that's not all we brought. Besides that in our survival kit we both had four energy bars. I also had a bottle of water where Achraf had a bottle of Schweppes and orange juice.

2:00 PM

Having eaten and rested a while we decided to take our turn at walking on the lake. We followed more or less the same straight path laid out by those that had preceded us.

That's when Achraf asked me the question which I'm sure had been disturbing him since the day we planned the trip.

“Why do they call it the black lake?”

How was a guy like me who had found out about its existence two days ago to answer that question?

“Have you seen how it looks in summer?” he added.

“Yeah, I've seen that.” I replied.

“Is it black? Did you come here in summer?” he continued bombarding me with questions.

“No and no.” I said calmly.

“Oh, you saw a picture then?”

“Ahan, the one on the brochure we picked up at tourism office.” I said almost mockingly.

“Oh yeah. But why do u think it's called the black lake?”

Having no satisfactory answer and being asked again I told him:

“Maybe if you swim to the bottom of it, having less light there it would look black. Or maybe the person who named it first discovered it in the middle of the night and was too tired to consider that lakes don't look the same at different hours..... And when he woke up next morning it was too late too change names.”

Achraf certainly didn't look convinced. I thought I had found excellent reasons for the lake to have such a name.

“You know, you could have just said you didn't know.” Achraf reproached.

“Yeah.... do you want a picture taken here?” was my simple reply.

“How many more pictures can you take?” he asked.

“Don't know. Don't care. It's a digital camera man. We'll just delete a few photos or change sticks if it's full. Normally at five mega pixels it takes around fifty to sixty photos.”

That was the advantage of these digital cameras. You could keep on pressing and clicking till you were tired. No need to worry about paying to get your photos developed or to consider changing roles like with the older classic ones.

After having taken a few pictures we went back towards land and continued towards the bus stop we had missed earlier on. We had seen the two main attractions of the region, the lake and the small waterfall. The only thing left on the agenda was the ice palace. The only reason I wanted to go there was because it had a cool name. In German it gave Eispalast. So far we hadn't found one signpost pointing towards that direction. Having reached the bus stop we had decided to take the next bus back. That was when looking at the signposts there we say:

Eispalast 45 min

“How about it Achraf, wanna go?”

“45 minutes to go and 45 to return that makes one and a half hours. No I'm too tired, maybe some other time.”

I was somewhat disappointed but that's the way it was. Thirty minutes later a red and white bus finally came.

3:05 PM

We got on the bus. The journey back had started.

3:54 PM

We were back at the train station. We threw a quick look at the departure times of the trains. The one going to Geneva was at 3:55.

“What time is it?” asked Achraf.

I took out my mobile to have a look.

“It's 3:55. RUN!”

“Do you even know which platform it is on?” Achraf seemed to lack trust in me.

“TWO.”

We ran up the stairs to the platform. Surely the train was there, but for how long? I ran to the closest door and pushed the button hoping the train doors hadn't been locked yet. Swoosh the train doors opened.

“Yes! We made it and saved ourselves an hour of waiting.” I cried in triumph.

We climbed up to the 2nd floor and walked through at least 3 first class wagons and a restaurant wagon before we reached the 2nd class.

“Okay, let's sum up the expenditures of this trip.” I said once seated.

“What expenditures?” Achraf looked at me dumbfound.

“Zero francs for the train ride because we have the Swiss pass. Zero francs for the bus ride because the Swiss pass covers all public transport networks. We didn't eat at a restaurant nor did we take the chair-lift up. So that sums up to be zero francs. You can't beat this.” I said with a smile.

Achraf gave a laugh and took the camera to review the pictures taken.

5:15 PM

We were in Geneva. I agreed to pass the photos to my friend tonight on the condition that he installs the program Hello. I wanted to test Hello out and the few people that I had asked before didn't seem keen on installing it. Finally we both bid farewells and parted in our separate directions.





Disclaimer: Most of the events are real and took place on my voyages with the Swiss General pass. Some accounts and personalities have been modified and dialog's added to make the tales more interesting. Besides, I had to translate :-)

Copyright © 2005 Kazim Rehman