Ups & Downs

Vers l’Eglise to Aigle

Our original plan had been to continue with the Via Alpina south into the Valais section of Switzerland and from there west to France and Mont Blanc. But from the moment we had started planning the walk, David had his heart set on going to the Montreux Jazz Festival. If we continued walking west from Gsteig, we could be there in 3 days. I had never been particularly interested in going to Montreux, and had been humoring him in the hopes that circumstances would intervene. At this point, however, the prospect of hanging out for a few days on the shore of Lac Léman listening to music sounded mighty attractive.

The next morning we bid what we expected to be a temporary farewell to the Via Alpina and headed west over the Col de Pillon to Les Diablerets, our first town in Francophone Switzerland. The whole day was warm and sunny, and the local farmers were all going crazy harvesting the hay that had been too wet to harvest for the previous month. Everyone, including me, seemed to have come down with hay fever.

It was a fairly easy walk, lots of it on road, over the col (the French word for “pass”) and down to the bustling resort of Les Diablerets. There we checked e-mail, stocked up on groceries, and had a huge picnic lunch of salad and rotisserie chicken next to the fountain in a tiny park in the village square. We discovered that the local campground was not in Les Diablerets but in Vers l’Eglise, a 30-minute walk past Les Diablerets. Vers l’église means “toward the church,” which created a certain amount of confusion when we were getting directions from the tourist information office. As we understood it, the agent said, “It’s not in the town; it’s toward the church.”

“OK,” I said, “where’s the church?” She looked confused, and we understood her reply to be, “No, it’s in the village, toward the church,” when what she actually said was, “No, it’s in the village, Vers l’Eglise.” Eventually she showed us a map, which cleared up the confusion, and we headed out of town.

The small campground was next to a roaring stream. There was, indeed, a church in Vers l’Eglise; David and I went to a violin and organ concert there that evening. There had been some misunderstanding between the organizers and the musicians, and a few minutes after the concert was supposed to have started, the pastor of the church made an announcement in French that the organist wouldn’t be there for another half hour. We were sitting behind an elderly couple from New York, who apparently couldn’t speak French, because they started complaining loudly about the delay. I explained to them what the pastor had said, but they continued to make rude comments. When they wanted to say something that they didn’t want David and me to understand, they would switch to Hebrew, which they spoke fairly fluently but with heavy New York accents. My Hebrew is a bit rusty, but it’s good enough that I understood a lot of what they were saying. I was considering saying something to them in Hebrew on the way out after the concert, just to see how they would react, but they left early.

Although we’d eaten a camp meal before the concert, after it was over we went to a little restaurant for a second dinner. The restaurant was obscured from about shoulder height up with a blue-gray haze. I had forgotten that nearly everyone in the French-speaking world smokes Gauloise cigarettes, which as far as my nose can discern are made from dried camel dung. There were nine people besides us in the place, and 8 were smoking Gauloises; the 9th was smoking a pipe! I got very upset and told David that I wouldn’t set foot in another restaurant until we were back in the U.S. That prompted a long heated argument. David put his libertarian hat on and said that there should be no no-smoking laws. And no licensing of electricians or doctors, and no health inspections of food providers. I not too politely said, “Bullshit!” I get really cranky when people smoke around me and I can’t escape. (Note from David: Dad is one of those people who feels that smokers are inherently evil people and deserve to be shot long before they have the chance to develop lung cancer. I’d like to point out that at the end of the meal we found ourselves in conversation with everyone in the restaurant, all of whom were incredibly friendly and personable.)

Anyway, we both had fun speaking French to the locals at the campground, the church and the restaurant. It’s surprising what a different mentality the Francophones have from the Teutonics. Everything moves at a much slower pace, and the buildings are certainly less well maintained. The one thing that was common was that everyone continued to be fascinated with our marathon backpacking trek. At each of the last 4 campsites we’d been given a break on the going rate after telling the proprietors our story!

The 4-hour walk from Vers l’Eglise to Aigle the next day took us 5½ hours. From the minute we left in the morning, the trail signs were terrible. Again, we were struck with the contrast to the German-speaking portion of Switzerland where, for the most part, the signs were impeccable. Several times the signs sent us in directions where the trail either petered out or ended up at a farmer’s front doorstep.

At one point we had to walk on a very busy mountain road for about 2 hours. Most of the drivers were very polite and slowed down and/or gave us plenty of space. One driver, though, seemed to want to play chicken with me. It might have been because he was speeding and there was a car coming past in the other direction just as he reached me, so he couldn’t move over. In any case, he came past me with no more than 12 inches to spare. As he passed, I hit the side of his car as hard as I could with my trekking pole. I was waiting for him to stop and yell at me so I could shove the pole down his throat, but he just sped on. It was a stupid thing to have done, since the pole was on a strap around my wrist; if it had gotten caught on something it would have ripped my arm off. A minute later I noticed that the rubber tip of that pole was missing. The force of the blow must have torn it off. I would have to buy a replacement, but I decided it had been worth it.

We found a lovely campground on the outskirts of Aigle, a vineyard town on the Rhône River about 10 miles upstream from Lac Léman. A few miles away on the other side of the valley we could see the mountains of France.

A final note on facial hair before I let David take us to Montreux. Both David and I stopped shaving the day we left the U.S. In my case, it meant that by this time I had quite an acceptable full gray beard. In David’s case, it meant that he had the barest shadow of a moustache on his upper lip and half a dozen scraggly whiskers on his chin. But was he proud of those few whiskers! Whenever we were near some place that had a mirror, he would preen and boast about how awesome his beard looked. I would allow as how I seemed to be winning the beard-growing contest, at which he’d get very offended … . But I guess I’ll let him tell you his side of the story.