-You’re just in time! exclaims Remo, a young Swiss who will measure more than two meters. This Friday is the annual yodelling festival.
In the vicinity of the auditorium, almost everyone wears typical costume. They, in an embroidered blue blouse or with a vest and short-brimmed hat. They, long skirt with apron, bodice and white shirt. Most move with a sure-footed mountain gait and sport sun-baked faces. Inside, on stage, those happy tunes that have always resounded through the alpine valleys follow one another, with their sudden changes in register, which jump from normal intonation to falsetto. They are sung by different formations, a children’s choir, another for women, one for men and another mixed, solo singers accompanied by accordion. I can even enjoy a set of alpine horn players.
The public comes and goes. The party is still outside. In the bar, the choirs are released with songs to which the full clientele joins. In addition, the different cantons of the Swiss Confederation have set up tents where you can taste their dishes and stages for musical groups. In the Geneva tent, I order a reclette, with its melted cheese, potatoes and pickled onions; in Berne, smoked sausage. And I swallow it among the songs, toasts and laughter of the table companions.
The next morning, I wake up with a song between my teeth, although the menu for the day is very different. Liz, a Peruvian living in Switzerland, accompanies me to take the Lauterbrunnen rack railway, which she leaves us at Kleine Scheidegg.
-From here you have unbeatable views of the mythical north wall of the Eiger -assures Liz.
I believe it, but by sight, nothing. The cloud surrounds us, a habitual phenomenon in this mountain, which prefers to cover, modestly, the repeated tragedies that it claims. Ice and stone avalanches, sudden storms, snow and icy cold have crushed so many mountaineers that the authorities forbade their climbing, which provided an additional incentive, culminating in the first ascent in 1938. To Heinrich Harrer, a member of that first roped, the feat earned him to be photographed with the Führer and join the expedition that intended to crown the first peak of eight thousand meters. But World War II got in the way. He caught them in India, where the British authorities seized them. He escaped by crossing into Tibet, where he would spend seven years. It was not until 1947 that the second ascent of the north face of the Eiger was completed. Louis Lachenal, who was part of that roped party, would be precisely the one who crowned Annapurna, the first eight thousand defeated.
I’m sure you can draw lessons from those epics, although what my grandmother used to tell me would help me: be careful, you’re going to fall and kill yourself. But today I do not run such crags. The only thing that awaits me is a change to another rack railway, which describes a wide curve and enters the mountain. We stop at Eigerwan, at 2,865 m altitude, with large open windows on the north face of the Eiger. The route runs through the bowels of the rock. It is a pharaonic work, a whim, which took thirty lives. Up to six strikes were called and, among other offers, the provision of a bottle of wine per worker per day was guaranteed. It took fifteen years, until, in August 1912, the route was inaugurated. It ends at Jungfraujoch, at 3,454 metres, the highest station in Europe. There we are greeted by a lobby where you can buy all kinds of souvenirs: Swiss knives, crystal balls with snow inside, dolls, postcards… There is also a mailbox, so they know where you write from.
A tangle of tunnels pierces the mountain. They are going to find restaurants, windows to the abyss, an ice palace… Along the way, lying on benches, those who suffer from altitude sickness rest. There are half asleep, others with vertigo and some who inspire because here the air is too fine.
And, to culminate the work, an elevator ascends one hundred and twenty meters more, until it reaches the Sphinx observatory, balanced on a spur of the Jungfrau. Outside, on the terrace, a handful of Indians try to catch the flakes of snow blown by the blizzard. We are surrounded by glaciers, the peaks of Mönch and the Jungfrau, considerable abysses, edges like razors and infernal cracks. All over there, in the mist. And I’m sure there’s a yodel for this moment, but I’ll leave it for another day, I’ll just get some breath.
