The Descent

Have you ever seen such a rail?

Probably not, unless you've been to where it is. This is what took us 11, 782 feet the ice capped mountains.

Going through the rocky tunnel won't give you any view so almost everyone in our caboose was asleep. My husband and I stayed up playing with one of our cams. It has a strap on it and he held the strap on its end making the camera pressed against the glass window. Every time the train hits a steep descent it would hang diagonally depending on how steep the descent. It kept doing that and a kid across our seats was watching us smiling every time it did that cause my husband would kid me; "ghost ~~".

Once again we had to switch and we decided to get off and take the last of the last trains because the station was almost empty. We went around looking at old trains. I was also searching for some ladies room but it seems that I had to hold it in till the last station.

I wonder whether the last train we took actually had a water closet cause when we finally boarded, there was no sight of it in our caboose. I wonder whether cause it won't be good for those rails and we went through rock tunnels where rain won't be pouring in so the chance of pee stink is quite high. Oh well, we do prefer mountain breeze don't we? Looking for the WC, I also noticed that we were very few in our caboose.

At first it was very quiet which was rather odd cause it was ultra noisy on the way up. Finally, the gushing started when a group of three Ams who apparently had too much of their bought chocs went giggling and gushing on almost every view point.

At that time, my husband and I discovered that we could actually stick our gadgets out the slight opening on the window so I took advantage of taking shots of the train. 'course, this is what I could only get.

The rest of the passengers joined us and sooner, our whole caboose was filled with laughter because almost everyone who has cams with them went on the left and right side of the train trying to capture the magnificent views through the glass windows. It started when all of us went out of balance when the train took a curve. Everyone couldn't help but to lol.

'course, I did that too but I also took pics of some things we passed by that gave me an impression of what's life like in the Alps thinking I may not get to see them on our next destination.

Here's a few.

So I guess, this is how some of them up here, dry their clothes in summer.

Look closer and tell me what else do you see? I didn't expect to see these here so I had to take pics of them for mementos. I have to admit I had a different impression of what The Alps would look like and so many times, I've been proven wrong.

There were many things that we didn't notice on the way up that we only got to see going back down like this river and the train stations that we mistook for hotel and resto stop over which is also true for a few. I guess it was because our train was fuller then.

It was almost dusk when we got back to the last station. I was hoping that the water closet was still open and so are most of the ladies in the caboose I was in. I got off to take a few more shots of the train and the golden hour and noticed another Asian lady trying to push and pull the water closet to no avail. Odd, I thought, I've never experienced this in NL but then again, at least that WC doesn't ask you to pay 50 euro cent.

Forget about the loo, so I took a pic of the train station and noticed that the rail it's on looks like that of the usual ones we see. For the last time, I took a pic of that rail on the thumbnail. Flashes of the history of that railway which I saw on pics hanging on the rock walls of the tunnels we went through to get to the ice palace, went playing in my head. The ones who built it never get to have a taste of its service for they all passed away before they could even finish it so while I felt ripped off after paying for the ticket on the way up, I realized how privileged I actually am.