Fly like a butterfly, sting like a bee!
Anyone who remembers Muhammed Ali knows this saying. One of his many unforgettable Bonmots, which can be used to one's advantage at any time and at the most impossible situations.
I am eternally grateful to him, this loudmouth. He accompanied my youth, he annoyed me, thrilled me, degraded me to a midget. Long may you live, you greatest fighter of all time!
Why I'm reaching out to Ali this morning?
I don't know. Waking up and remembering something that makes the day enjoyable is always a good thing. And on a day that means so much strain, even more so!
Seelisberg City
In fact, I really would like it here. The village has maintained its character. It's not much, but the little is more than you might expect.
The Travel Guide agrees:
Seelisberg is a small holiday resort with a wonderful view of Lake Lucerne. The Rütli also belongs to the municipality. The village can be reached by post bus or by the nostalgic funicular from the shore village of Treib (with a boat station and bathing beach).
But well, the region of Uri beckons, the long trail along the Reuss valley, today the first section to Attinghausen (there was no hotel to be found in the actual stopover Erstfeld).
This stage follows the "Path of Switzerland" down to Seedorf, which starts from the Rütli and leads via Flüelen to Brunnen. On the descent to Bauen you have a view of the entire route and the Rütli. Interesting castles and manor houses along the way.
Length 24 km; rise | descent 300 m | 620m; Hiking time 6 hours
For once, my pitiful extra time versus the plan is likely to remain within bounds today. However, what will be saved today will be added to the already strenuous part tomorrow. Oh God, what a pleasure it is to hike.
The happy legs
Oddly enough, after yesterday's stage I feel refreshed as I haven't in a long time. Even on the first few meters I can feel my legs, which for once are really happy. The reason for this is unclear to me, as in most such cases, but it doesn't matter. The point is that, of all things, before the most strenuous stages, my body seems to be almost at its optimum.
Anyway, just after the start, I enter a summer-scented forest, the road is on the right, and the precipice down to the lake is on the left. Somewhere down there is the Rütli, the so-called heart of Switzerland.
Well, like any other student of a certain age, I was taken to this place on a school excursion. The teacher gave a speech invoking the cohesion and history of our country, while we students were either bored or stepping on each other's toes.
Well, tempi passati. Thank God.
A game of light and shade
Sometimes you have to stop yourself from jumping into the stage.
It's not about speed or achievement, it's purely about enjoyment. The weather today is once again an unreliable companion, clouds pass by again and again, as if they needed to show their importance. In the forest there is none of this, I walk through light and shadow.
Because that's it again. The forest, the lake, the clouds, the smells, the villages on the other shore of Lake Uri. And me, all alone. Just as it has to be.
The occasional sections on tarred roads are tedious, but explainable. The steep precipice makes the hiking trail sometimes impossible. At least I get to enjoy the climbing skills of a couple of goats, climbing the rock face above the road in search of something edible, which is not without danger.
Be careful, dear ones.
Sleeping in straw
You never stop learning.
In the course of my travels and hikes, I ought to have gotten to know every kind of overnight accommodation. I remember all kinds of uncomfortable, ice-cold, smelly accommodations that you only do to yourself when there is nothing else.
The accommodation by the wayside, euphemistically called "sleeping on straw", indeed represents something new. There is a kind of wooden crate (slightly brittle), filled with straw, on it a teddy bear lovingly covered, a bedside table in the form of an ugly box, with a roof (after all), three walls surrounding it, and there you have the hotel.
I'm standing in front of it a bit perplexed, and not until thinking about it for a long time and checking www.stroh-traum.ch do I realize that it's (probably?) a joke or a slightly weird PR action. Something different for a change, that's true ...
Steep downwards
Then the leisurely hike comes to an end, because the path suddenly slopes downward, and thus develops uncomfortably for the hitherto so happy legs. And so I get a lesson in topography and the annoying whims of nature, which once again has nothing better to do than spoil the joy of hiking.
After all, the village on the lake - it is Bauen - features everything noteworthy that a real village has to offer. A church (as mentioned, we are in black Catholic Central Switzerland) with a proud tower, cobbled streets and a village fountain like in the old days.
And of course with a stately harbor with lots of boats. In the meantime, the weather has put on its Sunday suit and seduces whole armies for excursions on the lake.
One thing, however, is a bit annoying: the only restaurant is fully packed with loud guests who are guaranteed not to have walked here. So I have to grudgingly do without the coffee, cast at least a grim look at the guests sitting in the garden restaurant.
Along the lake
It's another one of those stages where you just can't get enough of the beauty of the surroundings. It reminds me of a speech Robert Redford gave at the Climate Change Conference in 2015. I made a note of the most important points. Here they are.
This might be our last chance. Our planet's resources are finite, but on the other hand, human imagination and our ability to solve big problems know no bounds.
There are doubts and warnings in these short sentences, but also confidence and courage. I have always liked Redford, but after this lecture he has raised my admiration to entirely different heights. We need people like this who speak truths without pointing fingers.
With these thoughts I follow the shore, sometimes on narrow paths just along the water, then again through gloomy tunnels where you can hardly see anything, and once even for quite a while through a road tunnel, which is about the last thing you would wish for.
Lake Uri lies still and pretends to be utterly peaceful. Yet it has a reputation for becoming a raging monster during Föhn storms.
I wouldn't have thought the guy was capable of that.
The last kilometers
To the left there is the lake, still peaceful and blue, but its end (or its beginning) is already in sight. I might sit here, marvel at its beauty and tell myself that there is nowhere more beautiful than here. But I always get that feeling. They're beautiful and wistful thoughts at the same time, because you're aware each moment that everything is temporary.
So it's time to chase away those heavy thoughts with a long-deserved coffee (and a well-deserved cream cake) in the restaurant at the lake.
I have reached the upper end of the lake, I am sitting, so to speak, on the delta of the Reuss, pouring into the lake somewhere nearby. Not forever, of course, because after a long trip through Lake Lucerne, it leaves the lake and flows further east, where it makes its last moves somewhere in Aargau joining the Aare and Limmat.
The trail crosses the delta before finally reaching the Reuss, a dead-straight channel leading me towards the day's destination in Attinghausen. My legs are still in good shape, but massively less happy than early in the morning.
Chicken in the basket
The Hotel Krone in Attinghausen offers everything I imagine, but no restaurant. So I let myself be persuaded by the landlady to eat in the Burg, or rather, in the Burghotel or even better in the Pouletburg..
The Burg creates a rather unusual impression, even from a distance. It doesn't look at all like this small sleepy village, rather as if a alien object had been placed in the middle of it.
Well, as long as there is something to eat.
Unaware of these particular culinary offerings, I sit down at a table in the rather oversized dining room and check the menu, which really doesn't have much else to offer besides chicken in a basket.
And so I just eat the same as all the numerous guests who, according to the waitress, come from far away (from all over the world, by Jove!) to enjoy the specialty of the house.
Well, the chicken is okay, the fries as they should be, nothing more. And you have to pay in cash, where the hell have I landed? No credit cards despite guests from all over the world?
Matching song: McGee Brothers - Chicken Spells Chicken
And here the trail continues ... quite exhausting up the Reusstal towards the Gotthard
