This blog post is part of Wander & Listen by The VFD Collective
It’s the most beautiful season of the year again. What’s your way to celebrate and cherish the season? I’ll tell you right ahead I’m pretty basic. So you’d think of carefully curating a yellow to rose to wine-red to coffee colored leave collection, making pumpkin-spice-flavored-everything - especially coffee, apple picking and taking long forest hikes in the rain, right? Yes, you couldn’t be more right (although, no, I use my very own espresso machine with beans I took home from Brooklyn, sold somewhere near Broadway).
Anyways, all these things tend to feel even more magical (who’d guessed that?), it’s that icing on the cake you can add atop, with a carefully curated collection of songs that I thought would match the mood of this time of the year. Here’s the way I’d like to share these songs with you: The songs speak for themselves (sing? quite literally!), I promise. I’ll link the Spotify playlist, pick some lyrics quotes in between my little travel journal and guide of three spectacular places in Swiss Alps for a day trip I can’t wait to share with you. Let’s go!
1 Lötschentaler Höhenweg
These are the glory days
So why are you scared
We are young
We are the risks we take
I breathe strong
James Ollier as in ‘Glory Days’
It’s golden hour every hour here. But what makes this place sensational in every way is its vegetation, more specifically the larch (German: Lärche) trees. These trees are pyramid-shaped trees, just like… you know… the xmas trees, but they lose their leaves in fall to survive the harsh, cold winter in the high altitude of the Swiss alps.
When walking through the forest, you’ll feel the bliss, dancing around in joy, with all of the high peaks around you keeping you safe and sound.
Let’s burn
Let's turn rubble
from a love to light
Keep warm
in the storm
Breathe awake a little fire
Only for the lonely nights
Canyon City as in ‘Lost Sparks’
How do I get there?
I took the RE train from Berne. After a long tunnel, Goppenstein is your place to get off and take the bus line (591) into the valley. Locals recommended me to go to the cable car station at Wiler, which takes you up Lauchernalp, one great place to start off the 3 hour (full focus) or 5 hour (taking pictures all the way) hike to Fafleralp. Basically, as long as lots of people are hiking with you, you can’t be wrong or lost. Towards the end, a beautiful lake will cheer you up. Once you reach Fafleralp, it’s best to take the same (hourly operating) bus back to Goppenstein. For the road trip folks out there, there is a camping place as well and a great place to start a lot of adventures in that area.
2 Crestasee
You're like an island
A moment of silence
In a hidden bay
Unknown Neighbor as in ‘Island’
It’s the first sunrays waking up the calm, crystal clear lake in the morning that make Crestasee one heaven of a place. As an engineer, my funny thought was how mean it was to add nonlinearity to such a resting system watching the stones I threw softly drawing circles in the water. What would be your thought?
For me to arrive there at 8 am in the morning, I had to take the first train from home at 4:30 am. To avoid the crowds, it’s never wrong to add that insanity to your trip and get there freakishly early. You won’t regret as there’s still a lot to see around Crestasee lake and it will get more touristy. I recommend you to then either first hike to Caumasee lake (which is like a bit more than an hour of a hike away) where the sun is all out or to check out the Ruinaulta (Rhine Gorge) first, also within an hour of hike.
Travel to the Lake by taking Postbus number 81 from Chur. Be sure to get off at the right, eponymous station. From the bus station, it’s just a short walk with quite a view.
“A thousand miles away
There’s a place I know
Would you walk that far with me
And leave your home”
3 KLÖNTALERSEE
Oh, that’s the time I still had my drone.
If I’m lost, I’m lost on purpose
Please God don't find me
If I am running I am running away
All on my own
Andrea von Kampen as in ‘Portland’
Klöntalersee actually happened on a lazy Sunday afternoon where I had nothing to do, where it was half sunny, half cloudy. Half the chance to see a picturesque sunset. I took my DSLR camera, polaroid camera, drone (camera), phone (camera) and car keys, and drove one hour out of Zürich. What a great decision, I thought, once again overwhelmed by the colors of fall. If there’s one thing Switzerland doesn’t play hard to get, then it’s the reflection game. In fact every attempt is a hit, as you can tell!
As it was pretty late that day, I couldn’t go on a hike. Instead, a sufficient amount of fall pictures later, I sat down at the dam, soaking in the last sunrays and watching the evening sun gradually disappearing behind the mountain in the west. But… that doesn’t keep you from taking full advantage of all the hiking possibilities around the lake. There are plenty of them.
Getting There by public transport is easy. Up until October, PostBus will take you from the Glarus S bahn station (with train line S25 departing from Zurich HB) all the way to the lake. More adventurous is to drive up the mountain roads. Two campsites are also available next to the lake.
there's a place
I've dreamed of
Where I can free my mind
I hear the sounds of the season
And lose all sense of time
Hollow Coves as in ‘Coastline’
The Playlist Reveal
Enjoy :) Playlist embed doesn’t work right now, so just click on the picture will take you to the playlist right away:
This blog post is part of the Wander & Listen by VFDCo blog post series where I write little guides of magical places I have traveled to, while sharing a perfectly mood-matched Spotify playlist. This time, I’ve visited three places in the Swiss Alps - two lakes and one hiking trail in fall, accompanied by my Fall Campfire playlist.
