Schönjoch Tour: Sunday July 27, 2008

Last night was difficult. The music continued playing unto 10:30pm at full volume and and until 11:00pm at a lower volume. I just could not get to sleep. The more I worried about not sleeping, knowing how many hours I had been awake, the more I started to worry until I felt panicky. I even started worrying about getting back to the airport at the end of the week. I hated to do it, but I woke Graham up and within minutes he had calmed me down and I was able to get to sleep at last. Not for long though because at 6am, the church bells around the corner began pealing. At first I wasn't bothered, after all what is a measely 6 gongs, right? Wrong. These bells rang 75 times. I counted! I never really got back to a deep sleep before the alarm went off at 7am.

We needed to get up at 7, because we wanted to do our first free guided hike and it was scheduled to start in the next village, Fiss, at 9:30. Breakfast is served at 8am. It was a 2 minute drive to Fiss, but we had to find the tourist information office and then we had to find somewhere to park. We managed to do both and be just in time for the tour. Our guide, Christian, spoke some English, but I was able to understand nearly all of his descriptions and translate the condensed version for Graham.

The description of this tour said the ascent would be 180m and it would last 2 to 2.5 hours. We rode the cablecar up to 2440m (Schönjochbahn) and walked from there. Outstanding views in every direction and only the very beginning and very end were steep, but not enough to bother me.

Next, Christian took us back down to the middle station of the mountain on the cablecar and from there we walked downhill across an mountain meadow to Möseralm (Alm means meadow). Möseralm is where the rides are located that we plan to ride later this week. It is also where all the children play areas are, including pony rides, a snow area, a sand playground and more. At this point most of the rest of our group left us, but Christian still wanted to keep on leading us. He suggested a third trail that looked difficult to my tired feet. I decided to wait on a bench at Möseralm while Graham, Christian and one other man did this last 1 hour trail.

I enjoyed people watching on Möseralm and ate my packed lunch. We are allowed to pack a picnic lunch each day from the breakfast buffet. They provide the bags, fruit and chocolate to take along with the meat, bread and cheese from the buffet.

When Graham returned, Christian told us how to get back to Serfaus on foot via the Panorama Genußweg. We filed this information for use on another day since we had the car with us.

Back in Serfaus we sat on our flower-bedecked balcony, admiring the blue skies and mountains while writing postcards before going down for our afternoon cake and coffee. Then we walked to the end of our village to ride the Sunliner cablecar just to check it out. All the cable cars shut down at 5pm and it was 4pm, so at the top we sat on a bench admiring the view for just a short while. Graham sent a text to his sisters from his cell phone - again just because he could and we wanted to share how wonderful Serfaus is. We rode back down and decided to try out the 4 station, one track subway that runs through the town. In Winter cars are banished to the town car park at the entrance and everyone has to walk or take the subway. We rode two stops to "our" stop - Kirche, the church that likes to wake people up at 6am.

Graham is now taking a short nap waiting for dinner and I am writing this log. This morning at breakfast, the menu for tonight was on the table. It always has two choices for the entree and we have to select which we want at breakfast. This morning we told them we are skipping the appetizer (it was veal again) but my entree will be "Tornaden of pork" and potatoes. Graham will have a vegetable strudel and potatoes.

I have just noticed clouds coming in. They are very low. The church steeple is above the clouds. I hope if it rains, it is just overnight.