The Beginning
It was long before we went on this trip that we had reserved the 2 days. As usual I wanted this trip to be in the Alps. Initially I had also hinted on a few prospect destinations. As the days came closer however, the rest of the friends made a pact and decided that we go somewhere in the Jura mountain range, more precisely Creux du Van. In a discussion which lasted a week I ended up using all the tricks I had up my sleeve to push towards a destination in Valais. I had used the weather card which showed better forecasts for the Alps (though no one agreed with me), I used the better landscape argument, I suggested that going to Creux du Van didn’t interest me a bit and I tried being stubborn. But all to no avail.
It was long before we went on this trip that we had reserved the 2 days. As usual I wanted this trip to be in the Alps. Initially I had also hinted on a few prospect destinations. As the days came closer however, the rest of the friends made a pact and decided that we go somewhere in the Jura mountain range, more precisely Creux du Van. In a discussion which lasted a week I ended up using all the tricks I had up my sleeve to push towards a destination in Valais. I had used the weather card which showed better forecasts for the Alps (though no one agreed with me), I used the better landscape argument, I suggested that going to Creux du Van didn’t interest me a bit and I tried being stubborn. But all to no avail.
I had two reasons for my opposition of the trip. The first being going hiking in Jura in July seemed like a waste of precious time, a month more suited for hiking in the Alps. There are only a few months suitable for hiking in the Alps whereas some regions of Jura are suitable for hiking all year round. The counter argument I got for this was that a friend was permanently going back to India and wanted to go see Creux du Van before he left. An argument against which nothing much could be done. The other reason I had was a completely selfish one, I had already done a part of the trip proposed for the second day.
At the end I ceded and went along with their proposal thinking that in a trip like this what mattered the most was the time you spent together with your friends and not the actual destination.
The Group
We were a group of 4 for this trip. The members were Thomas. Adhitya, Cindy and yours truly.
I didn’t know Thomas before this trip. He’s one of Cindy’s flat mates. From the time we spent together I couldn’t form much of an opinion of him. He seemed like a cool guy who could get along well with everyone.
Adhitiya’s a tall Indian guy who looks more Pakistani than Indian. Knowing him completely erased whatever little bias I had towards India. He’s a very friendly guy. However, sometimes I wondered if he was being really nice or if he was flattering me. Given that I didn’t see any reason for him to be flattering someone like me I always went for the being very nice option.
Cindy and I were in the same class when we were taking the preparatory classes to get into university. The funny thing is that we never talked to each other much notice each other before we got in a group of 3 to prepare for the entrance exams. The first I had heard of Cindy was through a good friend, Jessica who had once complained during one of our frequent lunches.
“What unnerves me the most are the cheerleading (pom pom in french) girls.” She had declared.
“What?” Another person at the table asked.
There was a reason to be surprised because there were no cheerleading girls in the university.
“You know those three four girls that are always coming late to class even in the afternoon? With huge smiles? They always have loads of makeup on them and some wear heels. I don’t even know what they are doing here. They should be out looking for men.” Jessica put it down pretty bluntly.
She said all this while mimicking the style of fashion victim girls which gave it a humoristic approach. I remember that we had all laughed to that.
What Jessica said had vaguely struck a bell. I knew there was a group of girls which was always coming in after the class had started but I hadn’t paid much attention to their appearances. After that lunch I did. What Jessica said was true to a certain extent. Clearly that group had 2 of the most fashionable girls among all of the preparatory class students. Cindy was also part of that group. She wasn’t fashionable but as they say: You are judged by the friends you hang out with. Personally I’ve always thought that fashion victims were too self centered. Therefore, my initial opinion of Cindy had gone from neutral towards the negative.
It was only later that I got to know her better and she turned out to be the exact opposite of what I had initially thought of her. In fact she’s one of my closest and most respected friends now.
The Hut
It hadn’t taken us long to get to the hut where we were going to stay. I don’t remember it well but it must have taken us 3 hours at the most. Once at the hut we went right in to get rid of all the formalities. This was going to be my first time staying at a hut. Cindy had made the reservations over the phone so she was the one to go to the reception. There they asked her to fill in a form. It was a form which required the nationalities, number of people etc. To avoid all the hassle the receptionist recommended us to fill out the family form. So, we became a Swiss family of one mother and 3 children.
Thomas couldn’t resist and he asked Cindy:
“Mother, can we have some beer please?”
Right after this we went to claim our beds. For those who don’t know how it works in a hut, huts usually have a few big rooms with loads of beds usually side by side. There are no designated places it’s like a low budget airline flight. First one in gets to choose first.
This hut was quite particular. There was only one huge room with an enormous quantity of double deck beds. The limit of that room if I’m not mistaken was around 117 people. Above the entrance to this room, up a ladder and below the tilted ceiling was another small place which also contained beds. The beds were actually mattresses lifted about an inch above the floor probably by laid out wooden planks. This place looked like a chicken den. There was only enough space to stand straight in the middle of the den which served as a small pathway. On both sides of this pathway were lined mattresses so small that two of them together made one mattress big enough for a single bed, three if you have an American one. Above it all was a slanting roof. The mattresses were glued together so that if you had an urge to stretch your arms you would be violating your neighbor’s space well before you could even have stretched out your elbows. If you were to lie down on one with your head towards the pathway you could only raise your foot by one fourth of a meter before hitting the ceiling. The pathway was itself so narrow that two individuals couldn’t cross each other without walking on a bed. Hence, the name chicken den. We choose to claim the chicken den as it would allow us a little private space and hoped that no one else would venture here.
Luckily we had come here on a weekday so there wouldn’t be a lot of people and I was thanking god for that. Personally I would have felt extremely uncomfortable if I were to have perfect strangers sleeping so close to me. I have my reasons to worry. There are a lot of ‘what if’ scenarios here to take into account besides the usual snoring or smelling problems. For example, what if one of your neighbors spread out his arm while sleeping and ended up hitting you with the elbow while slapping your other neighbor and you got into a fight with the second neighbor because he thinks you were the one who slapped him? There’s no light so who can tell? Or worse what if there was an obese guy sleeping next to you taking up your whole bed as well another persons and forcing you to share your other neighbor’s bed? And what if he turned while sleeping crushing and or suffocating you to death? There are a lot more other scary what ifs to consider here.
The Dinner
Once the claims were made, by throwing our stuff on the mattresses we set off to see Creux du Van. It was 15 minutes from the hut. Creux du Van is a geological wonder. It’s a half circle cliff. It’s what Niagra Falls would look like if there was no water. I guess one of the reasons why I was never really intent on seeing this place was because of what I just wrote. I have seen Niagra Falls and this place really did seem like Niagra Falls without all the splendor of tons of water falling down. What I didn’t know was that from Creux du Van you had a nice view of the Jura Mountains as well as a lake which we had decided over a discussion was Lake Biel. It was here that I had for the first time decided to try my hands on stitched panorama photos. After this trip I ended up getting addicted to stitching photos.
After about an hour’s hiking we returned to the hut. Once there we had some refreshments and saw that the restaurant served fondue. Cindy had seemed tempted by it and then the big question came: Should we order fondue for dinner or eat what we had brought for dinner?
As usual at that period of life I would try to avoid all possible expenditures. The reason for my reluctance in spending was directly linked to my budget. It was only a few months ago that my bank account had showed an all time downturn of -300 francs. For the first time in my life and hopefully the last I was in debt. The funny thing is that at that time there were speculations of the possibility of UBS going bankrupt and people losing their money. If that had happened I probably would have been one of the few who would have gained instead of lost money. It was also at that time that I miraculously got hold of a small part time job in the school library. I say miraculously because when I had 300 francs left in my account the university fees came in by mail followed by the AVS bill. AVS in Switzerland is your retirement fund and all non working students have to pay about 400 francs per year because they haven’t worked. It’s completely ridiculous asking a student who couldn’t work to pay up because of the fact that he didn’t work. So with those 2 new headaches getting hold of a job which I had applied for a year earlier and had forgotten completely about was miraculous by all standards of the word.
Getting back to the question of the day in the hut, the price of fondue was 25 francs. Since it didn’t mention per person I thought it was 25 for 2 persons and Adhitya thought it was 25 for all 4. Cindy made it clear to us that we were being downright ridiculous in making such assumptions and it was 25 per person. She was right about that. But I personally think it’s the price that was downright ridiculous and not us. If 4 people share a fondue with nothing else included, not even water and it cost them a 100 francs for me that’s like having dinner in a mid-luxurious restaurant located at the lake side. The hut we were in as I mentioned earlier was like a low budget airplane flight. In the men’s room there was 1 toilet for everyone, 3 showers side by side without any enclosures between them, a pig stein about 5 meters away from all the sanitation installments and there was only cold freezing water coming out of all the faucets and showers. Need I remind that the number of places in the hut was 117 people? This place was anything but luxurious so why would I want to pay 25 francs for a fondue here? Even the usual argument for mountain huts about being impossible to reach and being supplied by helicopters fell apart because there was a tarred road right behind the hut. So I didn’t pay the 25 francs. And because of my refusal to participate everyone backed down as well even though I’m sure some of us would have liked to have fondue.
By the time we made the decision to eat what we had brought with us it had already become dark and it was cold outside. The question now was where we were going to eat. Since no one dared to ask the hut keepers if we could bring in our food to eat in their restaurant we went back to the sleeping chamber. When we got there we discovered that the sleeping chamber wasn’t equipped with any lighting equipment whatsoever. Not even a moon roof. It’s true that Cindy had told us that the hut keepers had advised on bringing flashlights but I was hoping those were to be used for night trips to the bathroom.
The first item on the agenda was to find some light. We all scrambled up the ladder to our chicken den and Thomas and Cindy brought out their flashlights. With the help of 2 flashlights we found our food and well ate in the flashlight lit den. It was a first timer for me and had I not prepared the food myself I might have refused to eat it with the pretext of not seeing what I was eating.
The Breakfast
The next day we all woke up an hour later than we had planned. I don’t remember well but I think we had planned on waking up at 7 with the possibility of waking up at 5 (if we could see the sun rising) but we ended up waking up at around 8. My back was a little sore in the morning because I had slept horizontally over 6 beds and the mattresses had made a wave like floor under me.
When we had reserved our places in the hut we had opted for the breakfast included option for which we had to pay 15 francs extra per person. We had been told it was 10 francs over the phone but when we reached the hut we were told it was 15. Since we had no other place to eat breakfast we went for it.
The breakfast we were given turned out to be the most disappointing breakfast I have ever had. It was way below the standards for the French speaking Switzerland. To begin with there were no croissants or pain au chocolat, traditional breakfast items found in all cafés, bakeries and hotels. Instead we were given dried pieces of bread which seemed like leftovers from yesterday, something unheard of in this part of Switzerland as far as I’m concerned. To complement the dry bread we were given cheese, butter and some jelly all in a limited quantity so that we had to ask twice for more. The bread was too tough for breakfast bread and the cheese given along seemed more suited for lunch. Bottom line, we only ate a little bit, just enough to calm down our hunger. Honestly, you can get better breakfast than this for 5 francs in the city.
On Huts
I guess the breakfast and dinner is from where most of the money is made in the mountain huts. There’s also the sale of other items such as water and candy bars in some huts which are sold at extortionate prices. I’ve heard of water being sold at the rate of 10 francs for a bottle of 1.5 liter.
Though they might sound ridiculous most of the times these prices can be justified. For example the price of a nights stay in a hut is very reasonable. They charge usually around 30 to 40 francs per night. Most huts have very difficult access and their supplies either come in through helicopter drops or through a cable car. Therefore, the high prices for the food which has to be fetched can be justified.
For the hut where we stayed none of the above limitations apply as it’s linked to a road. I’ve only had to stay in one other mountain hut besides the one in this trip. The other one was a real mountain hut and compared to this one was luxurious. Roomy beds with only 8 double beds per room, every room and hall had light bulbs installed and the toilets were spic and span. This all might seem pretty standard or even cheap but after the chicken den hut experience it’s all luxury :-).
The chicken den hut like all others was an experience to have had. If it did any good, it thought me to appreciate the basic things we take for granted. I think I should try camping in a rainy and windy weather once to appreciate the chicken den’s luxury.
Epilogue
The rest of the trip went on without any unexpected surprises or events. Needless to say we enjoyed ourselves as expected and an account of that would be as boring as any ordinary account of my everyday life.
Legal Disclaimer (or something like that. If nothing it makes the post look more professional): Some accounts might have been slightly modified and due to translations (which not everyone might agree with) some dialog's might be questionable.
Copyright © 2008 Kazim Rehman
This hut was quite particular. There was only one huge room with an enormous quantity of double deck beds. The limit of that room if I’m not mistaken was around 117 people. Above the entrance to this room, up a ladder and below the tilted ceiling was another small place which also contained beds. The beds were actually mattresses lifted about an inch above the floor probably by laid out wooden planks. This place looked like a chicken den. There was only enough space to stand straight in the middle of the den which served as a small pathway. On both sides of this pathway were lined mattresses so small that two of them together made one mattress big enough for a single bed, three if you have an American one. Above it all was a slanting roof. The mattresses were glued together so that if you had an urge to stretch your arms you would be violating your neighbor’s space well before you could even have stretched out your elbows. If you were to lie down on one with your head towards the pathway you could only raise your foot by one fourth of a meter before hitting the ceiling. The pathway was itself so narrow that two individuals couldn’t cross each other without walking on a bed. Hence, the name chicken den. We choose to claim the chicken den as it would allow us a little private space and hoped that no one else would venture here.
Luckily we had come here on a weekday so there wouldn’t be a lot of people and I was thanking god for that. Personally I would have felt extremely uncomfortable if I were to have perfect strangers sleeping so close to me. I have my reasons to worry. There are a lot of ‘what if’ scenarios here to take into account besides the usual snoring or smelling problems. For example, what if one of your neighbors spread out his arm while sleeping and ended up hitting you with the elbow while slapping your other neighbor and you got into a fight with the second neighbor because he thinks you were the one who slapped him? There’s no light so who can tell? Or worse what if there was an obese guy sleeping next to you taking up your whole bed as well another persons and forcing you to share your other neighbor’s bed? And what if he turned while sleeping crushing and or suffocating you to death? There are a lot more other scary what ifs to consider here.
The Dinner
Once the claims were made, by throwing our stuff on the mattresses we set off to see Creux du Van. It was 15 minutes from the hut. Creux du Van is a geological wonder. It’s a half circle cliff. It’s what Niagra Falls would look like if there was no water. I guess one of the reasons why I was never really intent on seeing this place was because of what I just wrote. I have seen Niagra Falls and this place really did seem like Niagra Falls without all the splendor of tons of water falling down. What I didn’t know was that from Creux du Van you had a nice view of the Jura Mountains as well as a lake which we had decided over a discussion was Lake Biel. It was here that I had for the first time decided to try my hands on stitched panorama photos. After this trip I ended up getting addicted to stitching photos.
After about an hour’s hiking we returned to the hut. Once there we had some refreshments and saw that the restaurant served fondue. Cindy had seemed tempted by it and then the big question came: Should we order fondue for dinner or eat what we had brought for dinner?
As usual at that period of life I would try to avoid all possible expenditures. The reason for my reluctance in spending was directly linked to my budget. It was only a few months ago that my bank account had showed an all time downturn of -300 francs. For the first time in my life and hopefully the last I was in debt. The funny thing is that at that time there were speculations of the possibility of UBS going bankrupt and people losing their money. If that had happened I probably would have been one of the few who would have gained instead of lost money. It was also at that time that I miraculously got hold of a small part time job in the school library. I say miraculously because when I had 300 francs left in my account the university fees came in by mail followed by the AVS bill. AVS in Switzerland is your retirement fund and all non working students have to pay about 400 francs per year because they haven’t worked. It’s completely ridiculous asking a student who couldn’t work to pay up because of the fact that he didn’t work. So with those 2 new headaches getting hold of a job which I had applied for a year earlier and had forgotten completely about was miraculous by all standards of the word.
Getting back to the question of the day in the hut, the price of fondue was 25 francs. Since it didn’t mention per person I thought it was 25 for 2 persons and Adhitya thought it was 25 for all 4. Cindy made it clear to us that we were being downright ridiculous in making such assumptions and it was 25 per person. She was right about that. But I personally think it’s the price that was downright ridiculous and not us. If 4 people share a fondue with nothing else included, not even water and it cost them a 100 francs for me that’s like having dinner in a mid-luxurious restaurant located at the lake side. The hut we were in as I mentioned earlier was like a low budget airplane flight. In the men’s room there was 1 toilet for everyone, 3 showers side by side without any enclosures between them, a pig stein about 5 meters away from all the sanitation installments and there was only cold freezing water coming out of all the faucets and showers. Need I remind that the number of places in the hut was 117 people? This place was anything but luxurious so why would I want to pay 25 francs for a fondue here? Even the usual argument for mountain huts about being impossible to reach and being supplied by helicopters fell apart because there was a tarred road right behind the hut. So I didn’t pay the 25 francs. And because of my refusal to participate everyone backed down as well even though I’m sure some of us would have liked to have fondue.
By the time we made the decision to eat what we had brought with us it had already become dark and it was cold outside. The question now was where we were going to eat. Since no one dared to ask the hut keepers if we could bring in our food to eat in their restaurant we went back to the sleeping chamber. When we got there we discovered that the sleeping chamber wasn’t equipped with any lighting equipment whatsoever. Not even a moon roof. It’s true that Cindy had told us that the hut keepers had advised on bringing flashlights but I was hoping those were to be used for night trips to the bathroom.
The first item on the agenda was to find some light. We all scrambled up the ladder to our chicken den and Thomas and Cindy brought out their flashlights. With the help of 2 flashlights we found our food and well ate in the flashlight lit den. It was a first timer for me and had I not prepared the food myself I might have refused to eat it with the pretext of not seeing what I was eating.
The Breakfast
The next day we all woke up an hour later than we had planned. I don’t remember well but I think we had planned on waking up at 7 with the possibility of waking up at 5 (if we could see the sun rising) but we ended up waking up at around 8. My back was a little sore in the morning because I had slept horizontally over 6 beds and the mattresses had made a wave like floor under me.
When we had reserved our places in the hut we had opted for the breakfast included option for which we had to pay 15 francs extra per person. We had been told it was 10 francs over the phone but when we reached the hut we were told it was 15. Since we had no other place to eat breakfast we went for it.
The breakfast we were given turned out to be the most disappointing breakfast I have ever had. It was way below the standards for the French speaking Switzerland. To begin with there were no croissants or pain au chocolat, traditional breakfast items found in all cafés, bakeries and hotels. Instead we were given dried pieces of bread which seemed like leftovers from yesterday, something unheard of in this part of Switzerland as far as I’m concerned. To complement the dry bread we were given cheese, butter and some jelly all in a limited quantity so that we had to ask twice for more. The bread was too tough for breakfast bread and the cheese given along seemed more suited for lunch. Bottom line, we only ate a little bit, just enough to calm down our hunger. Honestly, you can get better breakfast than this for 5 francs in the city.
On Huts
I guess the breakfast and dinner is from where most of the money is made in the mountain huts. There’s also the sale of other items such as water and candy bars in some huts which are sold at extortionate prices. I’ve heard of water being sold at the rate of 10 francs for a bottle of 1.5 liter.
Though they might sound ridiculous most of the times these prices can be justified. For example the price of a nights stay in a hut is very reasonable. They charge usually around 30 to 40 francs per night. Most huts have very difficult access and their supplies either come in through helicopter drops or through a cable car. Therefore, the high prices for the food which has to be fetched can be justified.
For the hut where we stayed none of the above limitations apply as it’s linked to a road. I’ve only had to stay in one other mountain hut besides the one in this trip. The other one was a real mountain hut and compared to this one was luxurious. Roomy beds with only 8 double beds per room, every room and hall had light bulbs installed and the toilets were spic and span. This all might seem pretty standard or even cheap but after the chicken den hut experience it’s all luxury :-).
The chicken den hut like all others was an experience to have had. If it did any good, it thought me to appreciate the basic things we take for granted. I think I should try camping in a rainy and windy weather once to appreciate the chicken den’s luxury.
Epilogue
The rest of the trip went on without any unexpected surprises or events. Needless to say we enjoyed ourselves as expected and an account of that would be as boring as any ordinary account of my everyday life.
Legal Disclaimer (or something like that. If nothing it makes the post look more professional): Some accounts might have been slightly modified and due to translations (which not everyone might agree with) some dialog's might be questionable.
Copyright © 2008 Kazim Rehman
