Watch with Rick Steves — Switzerland Favorites

[Music] good evening everyone and welcome to monday night travel with rick steves europe welcome also to our first show of 2022 i'm delighted to be here with you this evening my name is lisa friend and i'll be your moderator so please put your travel dreams in the upright and locked position as i have the pleasure to introduce our tour guide for the evening rick steves hey rick lisa happy new year happy new year and happy new year to everybody who's joining us as lisa said for our first show of 2022 we enjoyed a couple of weeks off and it is really good to get back at it and today we're going to go to the best of the swiss alps so make yourself at home i just love it on mondays it's i feel like a thousand travelers just walked through my front door and we're all gathering together to enthuse about our favorite travel dreams and we're going to make them come true as soon as the time is right you know we're going to go to the alps right now and um before we do that we have to make sure we have our right meal and our right drink i've got some raclette here and this is a standard swiss delight high in the alps in fact we're going to have some some roclette in zermatt in a few minutes but you drizzle your melted swiss cheese on your boiled potatoes you got some nice pickled um onions and some pickles and i've tossed in a little bit of tomatoes there and we're going to wash it down with some nice swiss white wine and fondant is one of my favorite wines in europe you don't get very much of it because they don't make very much of it and it's kind of expensive and it's kind of a swiss secret but the fundant is a refreshing wine and remember that when you're in switzerland you want to try the wine while you're there yeah hey and um we're going to head off to the alps in just a minute but i want to let you know we've been having so much fun thinking about shows we're going to do coming up i've just got my my next three months of shows laid out here and i'll let me just review this this is just an exciting lineup tonight we got switzerland favorites next week we're going to be joined by samantha brown and she's got a new show that she's excited to share and i'm excited to share it with her uh two weeks from tonight we're joined by my son andy and andy has lived for several years in colombia in south america and i went down there a month before kovid hit and had a wonderful time exploring his beloved columbia and andy's going to join us two weeks from tonight to share about colombia i know it's not europe but hey he's my son and i'm the boss and we're going to go to columbia okay and it's going to be a great evening after that we're going to go to andalucia with our favorite guide in southern spain concepcion delgado if you've been to sevilla you know concepcion then we're going to go to sienna with anna piparato and we're going to celebrate that wonderful tuscan culture and then cameron hewitt's going to join us and cameron you've seen him uh a number of times on monday night travel he's our most most busy and prolific co-author and cameron has just written his first book it's called the temporary european lessons and confessions of a professional traveler i had to read this whole book because i wrote the forward and it's a great read and cameron is just such a smart traveler such an insightful guide and he's collected his very favorite pieces of travel writing here over 20 years of writing in this book temporary european and you can only get the temporary european right here at ricksteevs.com in our travel store for a couple more months until that book has its big debut nationally in the bookstores but cameron will be with us on february 7th uh after that of course it's valentine's day so we'll have a little bit of romantic europe and then we're going to go to sicily with alfio di maro then i'm going to teach germany i'm just going to give a straight out my favorite lessons about germany after that then we're going to go to ireland with stephen mctillamy and late in march it's tuscany with roberto becky so we've got a lot of fun travels coming your way on monday night travel and it's a chance for us just to share our love of europe i want to take you just for a second to ricksteves.com because that's where you've got sort of a sort of headquarters for all of this information go to ricksteevs.com you can click on monday night travel i want to remind you you can sign up for the next couple of weeks travel classes if you want to or our episodes of monday night travel but also remember we've got 50 more than 50 all the shows we've ever done great italian wine experiences st patrick's ireland food tours across europe offbeat wonders norwegian favorites quirky museums you name it it's all right there also when you go to ricksteevs.com you can go where we go when i'm putting together these special evenings you can go to classroom europe and you can put together a playlist as you like this is designed for teachers and if you go up here into public playlists you can just type in monday m-o-n-d and you get all of the monday night travel playlists we've used over the last months and for instance tonight it is monday night travel switzerland favorites and if it has listen right there in a little ribbon you know that our team member here gabe has put together a curriculum for teachers and homeschooling parents so you can have discussion points and way to have an interactive experience and let this help your student better appreciate the fun and the learning we can enjoy when we go traveling and we're going to go traveling right now we're going to go to switzerland and any time i go to switzerland i'm so excited to have the film crew with me but i'm also so nervous because you need good weather i also always give us a couple of extra days over the course to shoot for bad weather so we can make sure we're in these towns when the sun is out we're going to start in a region of switzerland and if you know my program if you've been on our tours if you know my books you know i love it's called the burner oberland or the bernice overland depending on the language you're speaking remember switzerland has four different languages and the burner orbland is the area south of interlaken there's two valleys that go out there one is grindelwald where all the tour buses go and where all the hotels can handle them and the other valley is lauterbrunnen where all the farmers go and where there's not many hotels good enough or big enough for the tour groups we love lauterbrunnen and that's where we're gonna settle down and you know i'm thinking right now after my exciting hike around mount blanc a couple months ago where am i going to hike next and it's down to two to two areas i want to go i could go to the burner oberland what you're going to see right now and make some beautiful six or seven hour hikes from a base up in the in the alps there or i could go to the italian alps the dolomites it's still up in the air but i'm thinking about that as i watch this and i hope you can stoke your travel dreams too so right now together and i want to thank you for joining us as we kick off 2022 on monday night travel let's go right now to the glorious swiss out whether traveling by train or by car mountainous switzerland has fine infrastructure and you can get nearly anywhere in the country in just a few hours the burner oberland is a particularly scenic region its lauterbrunnen valley which stretches south from the city of interlaken is a wonderful springboard for some of my favorite swiss alp experiences lauterbrunnen valley with its vertical sides and flat bottom is u-shaped a textbook example of a glacier-shaped valley while the main town also called lauterbrunnen sits on the valley floor neighboring towns hang on cliffs i mean literally hanging on a cliff those are hotels those are restaurants those are cafes you can sit there on their terrace and you can gaze down the cliff into the valley a thousand couple thousand feet below ya that's murin m-u-r-e-n-m-u-r-r-e-n and if you look farther to the left hanging on the next clip in the distance that's little gimmel ball that's my home when i'm in this region above lauterbrunnen means loud waters an apt name waterfalls plummet from cliffs all along the valley staubach falls one of the highest in switzerland drops nearly a thousand feet [Music] the valley with its riverside trails traditional farmhouses and chorus of surrounding peaks cheering you on is a magnet for nature lovers [Music] towering high above are the icy jungfrau monk and iger peaks named for the legend of the young maiden jungfrau being protected by the monk or monk from the mean ogre or iger and that is the iconic famous notorious north face of the iger right there it's one of the most uh dramatic and challenging and famous climbs for rock climbers in europe and they get better and better at that and i i just i'm sort of enamored with these different documentaries that talk about different daredevils high in the alps but nowadays they race up that north face of the eiger the world record is two hours and 23 minutes to go from the bottom to the top of that rock face you can a businessman can leave interlaken in the morning after breakfast climb that whole thing and get down in time for lunch it's incredible and perched on a saddle between two of those mountains is the jungfrau yoke station and that's where we're going by train [Music] from the valley floor a cogwheel train takes tourists and mountaineers alike on this ear popping journey as we gradually climb the views continually unfold [Music] eventually we arrive at kleine scheidig a rail junction at the base of the peaks [Music] for well over a century this has been the jumping off point for rock climbers attempting to scale the foreboding north face of the eiger [Music] kleine scheidig has souvenir shops hearty food for hikers and rustic 19th century hotels a reminder that tourism is nothing new here so this is such a scramble when we're filming because it's a sunny day everybody's there there's crowds everywhere we don't know when the trains are coming and going we don't know when the local guards are going to tell us you can't have the camera here we don't know who's coming off the train and i've got an on camera got to remember my lines i've got to get it at just the right time and i want an interesting backdrop and what i'm talking about here is how emerging economies tourists from saudi arabia from india from china and so on are flocking here to the burner overland because they just can't get enough of the alpine drills and i wanted to have a shot where we have an example of that cross-section of humanity coming to switzerland and the train came in my cameraman said rick stand there and he gets it all set up and he goes okay roll and i just was so excited i could hardly contain myself and i get one shot at it because if i miss it all the people are gone and we have a boring on camera check out the serendipitous good luck of this on camera as we have this wonderful festival of people from all over the world coming to enjoy switzerland the craze for social media these days and with millions of people from countries with emerging economies now able to afford that dream trip to europe famous destinations like this can be really crowded do what you can to minimize the crowds arrive early arrive late it really helps continuing our journey to europe's highest train station the ingenuity of swiss engineers is apparent as we climb the railway they built back in 1912. amazingly our train tunnels threw the iger on our climb all the way to the jungle [Music] think about it the swiss drilled this tunnel through solid rock it's four miles long this train is smooth and they did it a hundred years ago why to show off their engineering skills and to celebrate nature halfway up the train stops at panorama windows while expert rock climbers can exit here into an unforgiving world of ice and air sightseers get their thrills by simply marveling at the icy views continuing up the tunnel from here the train's cogwheels earn their keep you emerge at 000 feet the jungfrau yolk spectacular views of majestic peak stretch as far as you can see cradled among these giants you understand the timeless allure of the swiss alps the jungfrau yolk is like a small resort perched on a mountain ridge from the highest viewing point you can see the alech glacier which stretches about 10 miles to the south while shrinking with the warming global climate it's still the longest glacier in the alps the air is thin people are in giddy moods the station is a maze of shops restaurants and amusements a tunnel is actually carved through the glacier to a cavern of ice sculptures an especially big hit for visitors from lands where ice is a rarity outside on the glacier people enjoy the scene from here many venture even higher as a snowy trail leads to more mountain thrills but for me i'll call this good and savor the sense of accomplishment i get when climbing to 11 370 feet before lunch wow that was a glorious moment the weather was great and we knew we were getting some good footage for this tv show up next i just want to remind you we're going to head off into an example of how they're making the mountain lifts a little more exciting to make up for the high cost you got to pay to get that high altitude mechanically and i also remind you this swiss wine very refreshing it goes very well with the food you're going to eat high in the swiss alps fondant that's the name of the swiss wine i like and raclette raclette is melted cheese and the probably the roclet is after you if you're making after a little while it gets it gets hard but it drips on there it's so gooey it's so wonderful we've also got our pickles our beautiful boiled potatoes it's very local style and when i eat roclette i remember the first time we filmed rock clint we had it on that big rack and the swiss cheese was just melting off in slabs the cameraman wasn't quite ready to go it takes a while to get all the lights set up and so on he burned his finger everything was melting all over the case there was just a comedy of errors and i learned at that time you need to eat at a restaurant the night before eat exactly what you're going to eat the next night when you film then you know the tempo then you can be prepared then you can film a much more relaxed and better meal hey before we carry on i do want to thank our team we got lisa friend helping us right now as our moderator we've got julian worden and she's behind the scenes and helping you with your q a and i also want to remind you we got gabe gunnick and he's heading off to jamaica for a couple of weeks but he'll be back with us shortly we've got ben green and he's over in st petersburg right now on a study break but we've got a wonderful team here at monday night travel and we couldn't do without you guys so thanks to all of you also we want to remind you we're going to have q a as soon as this video is over so if you got any questions i'd love to answer your questions put them in that q a section also we use the chat section here to put links to important places we're talking about related to what we're seeing with our monday night episode so don't miss the opportunity to take advantage of those links and right now i want to go to uh an example of how an otherwise nondescript lift station can suddenly become a hit if they add a little bit of cheap alpine thrills this is halfway up the shelton it's a station called berg birg that historically nobody ever stopped at now they do because you've got this wonderful included little thrill walk and the swiss people tell me hey we're charging a lot for these lifts we've got to add some value extra so remember when you're paying for the lift rides they come with these little extra thrills that you can enjoy let's do that right now at the berg station b-i-r-g wow it's gonna say good dark let me say wow i'm in switzerland and i'm about 8 000 feet above sea level there's the iger monk and jungfrau and these swiss [Laughter] [Music] let you get the sense that you are quite an adventurous person you have to work pretty hard to hurt yourself but uh i'll tell you i like this it's a new thrill in the swiss alps and this is the berg stop b-i-r-g halfway up to the shillton from the little town of buren high in the swiss helps in the shadow of the agar monk and jungfrau and i am rick steves working hard having a great time wishing you happy high alpine travels remote towns may be beyond the reach of your car but all are accessible by various lifts one of my favorites is the idyllic village of gimmelvald look at that village there just look at that beautiful village i just want to take a moment to remind you that everything we do in our tv shows we have an ethic if we shoot it you can do it you don't need any special gear you don't need any special permission this is all about accessibility this is not lifestyles the rich and envious it's lifestyles of you and me it's people's travel coming your way on people's tv public television i'm so thankful for that platform to share my love of travel with you also i spend a lot of time and a lot of energy with my staff of 100 people here in the seattle area updating our guidebooks and everything and every one of these shows is covered in the appropriate guidebook of course this is switzerland and anything you're going to see in this little evening entertainment would be covered in here with all the information you need to put your travel dreams into smooth and affordable and meaningful reality there's all these little insights to the culture it's there you just gotta equip yourself with good information and expect yourself to travel smart and you will so we're gonna go into gimmelwald right now and uh if you've enjoyed our program over the last 30 years you know i love gimmel bald and whenever i come into gimmelvold i connect with my buddy ollie ollie's the school teacher in this little village it's a just a humble little farm village where almost everybody has one of two last names it's a town that's one of the most well one of the poorest and humblest places in switzerland it survives off of governance government subsidies basically and i come into town almost unannounced and and i just say ollie let's take a walk and the stuff that ali shows me the town never runs out of things to share with you and uh remember this is a little community where the little kids they don't play house they play barn literally they play barn and they they drive around in toy tractors and uh we just had so much fun dropping in on a father-son team doing their cutting the hay later on we're going to see them making the cheese from the milk and so on we stopped into a restaurant and we come into a restaurant we see all the travelers enjoying the place we just said hey don't look at the camera have a good time we'd love to have you in our show and right now we're going to take you to give a vault with the help of ollie to see the wonders of small town high altitude switzerland the village established in the middle ages precariously on the edge of a cliff was one of the poorest places in switzerland gimmelwald works together like a big family in fact most of the hundred or so residents here share one of two last names van omen or foits my friend ollie long the village school teacher enjoys showing me around this is the oldest house from 1658 and the woodwork is generally unpainted just bleached in the sun originally hay up top and cows below for generations families have lovingly tended their vegetable gardens they still are relied on to put food on the table and this one comes with an artistic side retaining their traditional ways farmers here make ends meet only with help from swiss government subsidies they supplement that by working the ski lifts in the winter modern tourism has contributed to the local economy as well pension gimmelwald's terraced restaurant is filled with happy hikers at dinner time enthused by the memories they earned with today's hike [Music] i've been coming to gimmelvault all my life and it never gets old by the way this is one of my all over europe i've got my favorite benches just benches for magic moments this is about a hundred yards down the lane from my beloved walters hotel walter hotel gimbal ball roll walter passed away just two years ago new year's day 2020. bless his soul bless his heart he is such a beautiful guy and he gives so many people such a beautiful memory and many times with just glowing with all sorts of alpine happiness i'd take a little break from the fun in walter's chalet i'll walk down the lane and i'd sit here and i'd watch the moon rise over the mountains i'd look up at the stars i'd listen to the avalanches in the far side of the valley i'd imagine what it was like through the generations in this humble little village and what a privilege what a blessing it is to be able to go there and experience it myself and to be able to share it with all of my travelers these kind of benches magic moments with the world changing as fast as it is i find it refreshing to know that there are places like this that still embrace their traditions dairy is the traditional industry here collecting grass to get their cows through the winter on these steep slopes is labor-intensive [Music] each family fills silos with enough to feed a dozen or so cows but we're here in summer and the cows are in the high elf enjoying a diet of fresh grass and flowers from their milk some of the most prized cheese in the world is still made in the traditional way now this is the traditional way it's not some show put on for tourists this is something i wanted to capture typically tourists go to the most famous little kitschy touristy village and they'll see something just like a little disney for cheese lovers and it's better than nothing that's for sure and they get their sample but i would much rather take advantage of the hard-working tourist information offices program in a town like murren and meet your local guide and hike up here to this little hamlet get to know this family three generations making cheese like they have for ages and then they welcomed us with our camera but it's remarkable to me number one how many travelers never go to a place like gimmelvold when they could and then number two how many of those rare and unique and special travelers that do venture all the way to gimbal vault don't take it one step further and take advantage of the guided tour put together by the local tourist board two days a week cost you a few bucks and then you get to actually visit a family and learn how they make their cheese check this out we're joining a small tour group organized by the village tourist office of the countless visitors in this valley these travelers took the initiative to enjoy this intimate peek at local culture in action once the milk is heated to just the right temperature the cheese maker using his teeth as well as his hands masterfully scoops about 10 kilos of curds from the bottom of the cauldron he then plops the sopping cheesecloth into a circular mold it's quickly pressed to remove as much of the liquid or whey as possible as the moisture is removed and the aging process begins a wheel of wet curds becomes a wheel of alp cheese frequently brushed with brine and stored flat on shelves in a shed like this one for up to two years [Music] in the high country i also enjoy a chance to hear traditional music and up here along with yodling that means the long legato tones of the alporn the elporn has a range of nearly three octaves but when i finally got here this day this man was so happy to see me and i didn't i gotta admit i didn't know why and he introduced himself to me he said for 15 years i've been entertaining rick steve's tour groups but i've never been there with one of the tour groups while he was entertaining him and it was so nice to meet a man who is an icon in our swiss tour program these are the kind of real people with something from their culture that they can share it is such a delight to be able to connect with people like this who really are the living example of a mountain culture in this case this is one of the beautiful things again about traveling and of course in alporn is kind of a touristic cliche just like wooden shoes or just like lederhosen just like folk dancing in norway or or just like a whirling dervish in turkey but every one of those touristic cliches are anchored in that culture and with a good guide good tour good information you can understand that it's a legitimate part of that culture it's for real and it lives to this day think about what we can learn just right now about the culture of the alport and realize that's just one little tiny example of these wonderful rich cultures you experience all over the world when you travel with no valves it's limited to the same notes as a bugle used throughout the alps this horn has played a role in this culture for 500 years to call cows from pasture to the barn for milking as a way for herdsmen in the high meadows to communicate with people in the valley below and even as a call to prayer through remote valleys [Music] okay now when we were done with that day by the way the next thing we were going to do was go up to the peak we're going to take the lift up to the peak and i was a little sad because everything was socked in with the clouds but my friends in switzerland always remind me it can be milky cloudy zero visibility down here but up in the top of the peaks it can be gloriously sunny we got on that left and went for that we broke through the clouds and it was a brilliant finale of our day of filming i'll tell you and then you got to be on your ball because the weather changes and the clouds rise like a rising tide pretty soon they engulf even the high peaks but do remember that early in the morning it's more likely to be sunny on top and even if it's cloudy deep in the valley like this it can be brilliantly sunny on top okay well what we're going to do now is we're going to go down into the valley at the end of the day we retired we're in the hotel with our group and then i get to hear the tinkling happy sounds of the bells of the cows and the goats and i realize oh my goodness this is the day the cowherds and the goat herds are bringing the cows from the high alp down to the low valley to the farm i ran around and got everybody out of their rooms get out in the street and here we got it and this is a slice of the real culture that surprises locals as well as tourists when the shepherds decide to bring their animals home to the bar [Music] between your hotel room in switzerland just relaxing in your cowbells that means to bring the cows down from the highest out and this is what's going on right now in the lauterbrunnen valley [Music] there's our tour bus right there our heidelberg bus 25 of us are in this humble little end of the valley hamlet sleeping in a sub-par hotel surrounded by all the most magical culture you could have sure you got a creaky hallway in the toilet down the hall but you got the cows coming down you're not dealing with the traffic jam and the noise and all the commercialism of the famous resort down the valley this is real travel this is why people take a rick steve's tour [Music] [Applause] and this is a ritual that's been going on for centuries right here in this valley and it's no different here in the 21st century [Music] i'm rick steves lapping up the cow culture high in the swiss alps and we're doing it because we're in a small town traveling through the back door happy travels okay now two hours away is the capital of switzerland the city of byrne and there may be a festival going on last time i was in burn there was an amazing festival happening i gotta admit i was all amped up i was ready to do my research i was gonna visit all the hotels and all the restaurants and this buskers festival took over the capital city buskers street musicians on every street there was a different band playing all day long at first i was frustrated i can't do my work i wanted to get to sleep it was late at night and still noisy and then i realized hey what kind of a traveler are you get out there and immerse yourself in the noise it was the greatest experience i this is perhaps my favorite festival anywhere in europe the buskers festival and i enjoyed a band i met a band here they're called tonkus the henge we got a link to their website on the in the chat section here but i just fell in love with this group and it was such a joyful time in the capital city know where the festivals are and be there [Music] [Music] but this is switzerland and it's the buskers festival in this whole city the capital of switzerland the parliament building's just a block over that way the whole city is filled with buskers it's an international busker festival and i just can't get enough of this [Music] so the whole city is filled and every street's got a different concert going on and we're surrounded by centuries of history and culture and people from all over europe you know when you're traveling it's really important to be sure you know where the festivals are and to be there happy travels from burn in switzerland [Music] in the 20s yeah okay enough fun we need some defense we got to remember switzerland is a mountain fortress it's lived through a tumultuous 20th century and you know back in the cold war when switzerland said hey we're neutral khrushchev nikita khrushchev in the ussr said neutrality in switzerland that is charming nonsense well here's why khrushchev thought switzerland's neutrality was charming check out this defense high in the mountains of switzerland century switzerland famous for its neutrality became an alpine fortress honeycombed with underground military installations behind this door hides an army hospital with several thousand beds anticipating an invasion switzerland had air strips buried in the mountainsides and pop-up tank barriers embedded in the freeways every strategic bridge and tunnel designed with explosives built in could be destroyed with a moment's notice my friend fritz huttmacher who just finished 20 years in the army reserve is giving away a few swiss military secrets so switzerland is famous for being neutral yes but over the last 70 years the alps got turned into a huge fortress now we have over 15 000 buildings like the ones around us with hidden guns and even the neighbors they were not aware what's in they were so secret fifteen 000 underground installations yes this barn looks like many others in switzerland but it hides a secret let's have a look inside [Music] wow look at this thing what was this for why did they have this here just for world war ii it protected the fortress the alps and is it was it used later than world war ii yes it got updated over the last decades and has new technology in so actually this gun works this gun works now children could have grown up and right outside these doors not knowing there was a gun sitting here not only children generations were not aware what was actually inside those buildings and this is not wood it looks like wood now that's solid concrete in this town four innocent looking hay barns conceal a network of tunnels connecting several of these big guns with the end of the cold war many of these once top secret sites are now open to the public as museums this is the gun we just saw couldn't talk yeah so fritz from headquarters they would tell them what coordinates to set yes started coordinates and they get into that calculator and the gun gets adjusted okay a quick demonstration shows how the gun was prepped and loaded this is not just a museum piece it feels like it could still work yeah if he had the life round we could still fire it today and these wooden houses look cheery and vulnerable from the outside but like nearly all modern swiss houses fritz's family home sits upon a no-nonsense concrete bomb shelter this is the door to our bomb shelter oh man so how much must this weigh a couple of thousand pounds concrete and steel oh yeah [Music] if you have a nuclear attack you're all then you all run in here swiss men are required to spend time in the military including about 20 years in the reserve and like minutemen awaiting an invasion they have their guns gas masks and ammo ready and waiting for years i took our groups when we had little minibus tours into a friend's house and we went down into their bomb shelter and heard that same story when you stay in a bnb in switzerland it's very likely to have such a bomb shelter down in the basement remember there's also big military installations that are actually tourist attractions now perhaps the most famous one is called fortress firing and we've got a link to it in the chat section right here on our monday night travel page and you might want to work that into your trip next time you're in lucerne lucerne's a wonderful town and from there you take romantic steamer boat rides up and down the lake and one of the stops puts you right at the doorstep of this amazing swiss fortress in the mountain totally hidden boats connect towns around lake lucerne that's its english name but the swiss call it the fear vault status a literally lake of the four forest cantons that's because it lies at the intersection of four of switzerland's cantons or states romantics will want to ride one of the classic paddle boat steamers a short ride drops you at any number of interesting sights one of which comes with a surprise [Music] imagine it's 1941 your swiss your country is surrounded by hitler and mussolini the nazis are on the move what to do [Music] turn your mountains into a hidden fortress the swiss managed to make their rugged mountains an even more effective barrier how by lots of strategic tunneling one example the fortress furrigan has done its duty recently decommissioned it now welcomes visitors interested in switzerland's secret defenses in central switzerland we have now nine forts like this bigger ones and smaller ones there are installed i think in total 44 cannons the swiss implemented a plan to retreat into the mountainous heart of the country and defend themselves with a series of hidden fortresses dug into the mountainsides like this one here we entering the bunker number two you see here the cannon you can turn it the elevation and the azimuth so i can sit here on the gun can i sit on this yeah you can push this down okay 62 fine yeah and then i go i want to go to 21. fine yes yes wow there it is 62-21 the top of the peak and fire with the advent of the cold war in the 1950s the fortress was retooled for the threat of the ussr the swiss have since found documents indicating that both the nazis and the soviets actually had plans to invade switzerland this is the bedroom for 100 soldiers 50 beds they have to share it because they have to work in shifts this is the dining room and over here the kitchen and all these rooms and other forts have been built for survival of switzerland hitler took belgium netherlands and we had the feeling we are next wandering through this hidden fortress you're reminded how perilous switzerland's position was in the 20th century and how committed the swiss were to defending their freedom wow zerma wow wow wow it's amazing to think of how switzerland has this um this system where from some headquarters if if the terrible day came they could push buttons and all the roads all the bridges all the tunnels would collapse and it would become a mountain fortress thank god they've never had to do that all right well we know we got security now we're going to go back on our vacation we're going to go to a very famous and popular beloved mountain resort called zermatt i never really liked zermatt because every time i went there there was no matter horn to be seen that's the danger it's a big long dead-end road and by the time you get there if the matterhorn is not out you wonder what am i doing i'm just surrounded by tourist chalets but when we went there to film a couple years ago man oh man the matterhorn was out it was gorgeous we just went crazy shooting we shot way too much we shot twice as much as what we could fit into the show so the clip i'm going to show you now never was aired a lot of people want to see they say what i want to see what's on the cutting room floor well generally you don't want to see what's on the cutting room floor but this is a bit of cutting room floor material that i just love it's never been broadcast but we'd love to share it right here so here is the full look at the mountain resort of zermatt beautiful swiss alps at the foot of the matterhorn was essentially built for enjoying the alps it's hugely popular with skiers in the winter and hikers in the summer with its many lifts it's a springboard for countless trails and unforgettable viewpoints the weather's great and we're hopping a train to one of the most dramatic views in all the alps the gornergrat cogwheel train has been wowing visitors since 1898. the trip comes with sweeping views first of the town of zermatt then of the iconic peak that draws so many to this region the matterhorn now that's the famous view obviously if the map the matterhorn have you know just as often you look at it from a different angle from somewhere other direction and you don't even recognize it as the matterhorn so this is that what they call the chocolate box fuel it's gorgeous but remember there's a lot more views than that of the matterhorn uh you know you could spend days with zermatt as your headquarters and you get a mountain pass that covers you on all of these countless lifts and 360 degrees around you and the matterhorn is just a small part of that mountain glory the train climbs steeply into the high country it takes us to over ten thousand feet where we reach the end of the line across the tracks an old hotel solidly caps the gornergrat ridge grand views stretch in every direction [Music] stunning matterhorn views demand the attention of hikers but there's more monterosa is actually higher than the matterhorn in fact at 15 200 feet it's the highest point in switzerland and a thousand foot shear drop below the platform stretches the mighty corner glacier it seems many of my favorite hikes start part way down my favorite lifts or train runs hopping off this train about midway i'm in for a sensational yet easy hike getting to these exciting spots with so little work and so far from the crowds i feel like i'm cheating and i love it [Music] there's just something about the matterhorn the most recognizable mountain on the planet that attracts people it's a dangerous mountain to climb each year while several thousand make it to the summit about a dozen die trying and with global warming the permafrost that keeps it solid is thawing making falling rocks a new hazard surrounding zermatt as if to enjoy views of the matterhorn from every angle are dozens of lifts and hundreds of miles of trails as is the case throughout the alps handy signposts make it clear where you are what's the altitude and how long it takes to hike to various points by the way those times one hour 30 minutes 40 minutes 2 hour 20 minutes so on they're kind of humiliating because it always takes me about a third longer to get there and the swiss are fond of saying they are clocked by local senior citizens so they truck out on those walks but at least you get an idea of how long it is to walk in different directions and those those signposts are just so much fun to help guide you through these wonderful corners of switzerland it's always nice to hike with a local expert and to get a little more out of my next walk i'm joined by a passionate fan of all things alpine climber and guide amide perrick amade this is just a beautiful spot tell me about yodeling well in switzerland actually we have four different official languages but we have another one language of the mountain it's called yodeling and if you want to communicate with somebody way over in the other valley then you yodel that's a loud voice but not everybody can do it because it is a special voice when i speak i speak out of my chest in yodeling it's back in here that's then i it sounds like that [Music] it's a totally different voice and you have the voice or you don't have it but you cannot learn it so if you're very happy give me a happy yodel well when you're very happy then maybe you go a little bit in a different way like [Music] so centuries ago the farmers would communicate your son is up in the high alp what would you do well then i just give him a yodel and see how is she doing like [Music] now he can hear me and i know everything is good and i know maybe the cows are giving more milk while hiking above zermatt you can drop in on centuries old farm hamlets a favorite of mine is zoom say you know i love to find a village like this when i'm home basing in a bigger more modern village at the valley floor because it lets me imagine what the village i'm staying in looked like a couple hundred years ago when it was just a little humble gathering of farmers and log cabins that's the case with vermont of course vermont today is several hundred mountain chalets that are hotels it just a few centuries ago looked just like zoom say [Music] so why did people live in a little village like this the people they used to live here mostly in the summer okay so this was a high help yeah exactly the hair out here and then they spend with the cows and everything up here how old might this be office houses i would say they're between four and five hundred years old but please yeah this would be my image of zermatt when it was yeah exactly that looks four or five hundred years ago these houses are around that age there's nothing new no no no no no when they built these houses i have to tell you they did everything to themselves and they didn't have nails they had to put it everything's together we would you know the wood was little sticks and then they put them nicely in and they put all the lumbers nicely together like that in this lumber that we're looking at it it must be very old oh yeah so can you imagine what a delight it is to have a local guide like this just uh walk with you and hike with you i'm really lucky to have that but i'm i'm aware that i'm going there as your your guide and i'm taking notes carefully and i get to pick their brains and collect that all together and then of course weave that information into whatever guidebook of mine you're using but right now we're going to come up on a little information from amide and it's the kind of information that just enriches your visit to a nondescript little hamlet like zoom zay again the more you bring to your sightseeing the more context the more understanding of what you're looking at the more fun it is how do you get that you can hire a local guide you can do your research ahead of time or you can equip yourself with a good and a good guidebook take it with you and expect yourself to travel smart and you will here's a good example of the kind of information you need to know if you're going to stumble into a little hamlet like zoom say that's a special treat this large tree and that's very very hard boot look at that on the roof is all these heavy stones because in the winter was a lot of snow and they didn't shuffle the snow off and they had to put heavy stones on the roof so how did the people survive well you know the people they had their own garden for instance they got their own food and the garden was growing mostly potatoes salad and also some lyrics but not a lot more so this garden could have been here 300 years ago oh i would say at least or even longer because every family had their own garden these little storage houses what did they store we hang them the meat in there because here in this area in german we never smoked meat we always air dry air dried look at that storage houses and they're sitting on a stone and you're asking yourself why they're sitting on the stone then the rats and the mice and all the bugs kind of climbing in and they keep everything's nice and clean so these stones that are like plates they frustrate the rats that's right they're sitting there like a mushrooms and today tourism makes this little hamlet much more wealthy exactly in the old days we had a lot of goats we milked the goats so they we'd rather milk the tourists zermatt straddling its tiny river is a small town of six thousand with a big tourist industry it has more hotel beds than residents and they're often completely full nearly everyone earns a living one way or another from tourists who flock here for a peak at the peak about 2 million visitors a year arrive by train cars are not allowed electric carts weave quietly through the pedestrians the town is a collection of over a hundred modern chalet-style hotels with a well-organized and groomed infrastructure for summer and winter sports and this crowd-pleasing herd of traditional black neck goats which parades through the town every day has had it with selfies and is heading for the barn [Music] if you explore a bit you can discover pockets of traditional charm [Music] 200 years ago zermatt would have looked more like this little more than a gathering of humble log cabins [Music] with the first ascent of the matterhorn in 1865 zermatt helped kick off the golden age of mountaineering then with the arrival of the train shortly after that the town became more accessible and more popular appropriately grand hotels were built to accommodate aristocrats who came from all over europe especially from england for the mountaineering the church marks the town center [Music] and just behind it is the lovingly tended little mountaineers cemetery it's dedicated to great climbers and mountain guides many of whom died on the mountain and this tomb remembers the unknown climber [Music] wow i just was remembering how you know we were prioritizing for the high country to get the mountains and the trails and the lips then we'd get down into town pretty late in the day and there was things i wanted to get in the town i wanted to get those beautiful goats with the black heads and the white rear ends and they were on their way home twice a day they will go through the town for the tourists and we missed it but we got them just heading home and you know they could smell the barn we stopped our cart we jumped out we ran over we just barely snuck them into the show then we got into the town and i wanted to get some yodelers out in the street just expressing their joy to be there and uh i realized the band had just broken up and they were heading home and they were tired and i found the leader and i just begged please can you regather on the main square just do one song for us of course if you do one song you gotta do it three times so our cameraman because there's that one cameraman so we can get every angle and they agreed and we got them assembled back in the main square and i was so thankful because we got to show off this joyful little slice of swiss alpine culture enjoy now uh an honest-to-goodness bunch of happy yodlers and singers and accordion players and so on from zermatt works hard to keep its visitors entertained and tradition-loving locals seem delighted to do just that [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] is [Music] [Applause] and i'm capping my day in amadeus favorite restaurant to learn about swiss cuisine and wine what are we eating well we're eating here the typical local menu it's called rocklet and how you can see it's melty cheese [Music] and i've just enjoyed my rock blood it's almost gone i gotta say this is good but that's a lot better right there after a good day of hiking uh high in the mountains in a beautiful restaurant in switzerland rocklet don't miss it boiled potatoes pickles and silver onions very simple it's very simple and they started many many years ago in our area how do they make the rockland well it's actually very simple you need a rocket stove and the rocklet stove is very high heat on the top you put the cheese on that heat and then it melts in as soon as bubbled you scrape it off put it in the plate and serve it with boiled potatoes pickles and onions very simple swiss white wine i find it very good what is the name it's fonda it's a simple local wine and it fits very well with the chocolate yeah you do not see swiss wine in the united states not really now because we don't export it a lot first of all we don't produce a lot secondly it's quite private expert on food we want to drink the wine ourselves yes you all the best nice all the best from the town of zermatt a mighty cable car takes us to the summit of a peak called the little matterhorn and we're enjoying the fruits of a huge investment in the local infrastructure the people in vermont explained to me that in the last few years they've spent half a billion dollars 500 million dollars to improve their lifts and this lift we're on now is certainly state of the art and it goes as high as you can go by lift anywhere in europe prices are steep as the community has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in their mountain lifts in recent years these lifts are absolutely state of the art and just experiencing them is worth the splurge at 12 700 feet this is the highest cable car station in europe while the view of the matterhorn from this angle is not the iconic postcard profile the views from this observation deck are stunning on a clear day the alps fill the horizon with all their glory okay so here is a photograph i took in 1978. this is a time when i drove many bus tours around europe and it was probably 90 of the people who took those tours were women so typically we'd have what eight girls and me on a bus and uh we'd be driving around and if you see a cute hitchhiker well they want to stop and pick them up and i said well only if he teaches us to yodel so they said great we stopped the bus this guy's name was krista he said he's going to the town in the next valley or something so he can hop in but you got to teach us how to yodel and here he is he just didn't pause he turned around he faced the mountains and he did this wonderful yodel and it was so beautiful and we all learned this yodle and little did christoph know that 40 years later i was going to be singing that yodel that he taught me as i was leading another bus around switzerland when i'm in a really good mood and i get the opportunity i can't help but share my kristoff yodel so two years ago i was or three years ago i was leading one of our best of the alps tours it's our my way best of the alps i love this itinerary the alps of italy austria switzerland and france in about 13 days and i just couldn't contain myself and i broke out in eodl and there just happened to be a video camera rolling and this is a song that once you hear it you cannot unhear it and i'm going to inflict it on you right now and i hope it gets you in a happy mood to enjoy the alps next time around here we are yodeling on the tour bus high in switzerland [Music] and then you ovulated [Music] [Music] thank you christopher okay there you go that's why not many people take that tour and take another one now it's a lot of fun you get giddy when you're high in the alps hey i've had my roclette and now it's time for a little dessert and when you're in switzerland you can keep it simple just by having your toblerone and your hot chocolate uh toblerone if you've been to switzerland you know ah this is really a treat for everybody it comes in these in this fun design where you break off little bits and as a tour guide you spend a lot of time giving people what's called a click you want to click you break that and um so good and um you wash it down if you want chocolate on chocolate with some hot chocolate and that's good and if you want to make it even better you splash in a little bit of peppermint schnapps and that in a swiss alps is hard to beat i hope you've enjoyed our look at my favorite angles of the swiss alps hey lisa it's time for some questions it is time for some questions rick uh before we have the questions could we please have a word from our sponsor our sponsor well sure ooh i was gonna say peppermint schnapps but i think i'll be a little more selfish let me tell you about our facebook page because i'm not that tuned into all the numbers on social media but i understand i'm nearing one million friends or followers or whatever you call it on facebook a million people get to tune in to my facebook posts i've got 925 000 now and i'm having so much fun sharing stuff i mean just in the last week alone i think our biggest post was one celebrating the art of alphonse mucha and that's featured from this book that we published a year or two ago europe's top 100 masterpieces but it's just a glorious look at the art of europe on our facebook page we've also got fun stuff i mean we got bingo for our tv show there's four different bingo pages here you can have a party and uh every time i do something silly on the show that i do on all the shows and you can see it there you can play bingo or you can make a drinking game out of it but that's a lot of fun um just um two weeks ago or so we met our goal for our annual fundraiser for bread for the world we raised a million dollars to fund their work to fight hunger i challenged people i said if that five thousand people can give a hundred dollars i'll match it with five hundred thousand we did it we raised about 1.1 million dollars between us all to empower the work of bread for the world to do great things in washington dc to remind our government of the importance of recognizing the needs of hungry people when they make their budget a national budget is a moral document and it should reflect our feelings about taking care of those who are needy around us so i'm thankful for all of the travelers that joined us in that over five thousand and we celebrated that with a post on facebook if you're not following rick steves on facebook you missed that little bit of news i had a great interview a couple of months ago on npr's world cafe podcast it's all about music i didn't know i had so much fun about music in me from my travels until i had this wonderful person at world cafe interview me for npr it's about an hour long interview featuring my favorite musical moments in europe like tanquet and the henge that we saw just there in burn um but that's a fun um podcast interview and anytime a good interview is done by me i love to share it or done with me and uh just that was for me just a fascinating look at the music in europe that we've picked up over the years also as i mentioned cameron hewitt our lead co-author has just written his first book the temporary european and this is a collection of cameron's very best writing over 20 years it's available in the bookstores in a couple of months but right now cameron's book is available only on our travel store in our website and how do you learn about that well we've got an excerpt from the book on the facebook page rick steves on facebook so that's a word from our sponsor if you like travel i bet you'd like to get on board at rick steves on facebook okay lisa let's have some questions um okay we have a lot of good questions this evening and since we were just talking about art um there was a question if from trevor when you're planning a trip to switzerland do you recommend any larger swiss cities any museums or should you just stick to the natural assets trevor that is the most important question or it's just a critical question because people generally go to switzerland for the mountains and they forget there's wonderful cities in switzerland and one year i decided i'd want to do a tv show of switzerland not going into any mountains and just show off the urban delights of switzerland burn lucerne zurich lausanne there's there's so many great cities to see in switzerland and they have amazing charms if you go to ricksteevs.com go into the tv section look under switzerland there's 150 shows there they're all free you can watch them without any breaks without me interrupting no commercials or anything like that just click and watch urban switzerland for half an hour and you'll see what i mean but a good look at switzerland has a balance of the cities and the mountains thank you rowena in kenmore wants to know eleven thousand feet for the young far yolk is there a problem with altitude sickness hey rowena i went to kenmore elementary maybe we were neighbors i love kenmore hey um altitude sickness um you can take a lift as high as 12 000 feet and when you're up there you do feel light-headed and it is you get exhausted hiking stairs and you can't imagine somebody going up much higher than that if you're if you're not a mountain climber like like i'm not a mountain climber and it's you feel the thin altitude um i find it's just kind of a fun experience you just feel a little woozy you feel a little bit um lightheaded you get winded in a hurry when you're 12 000 feet i i'll tell you a little story can i tell you a little story please once i did a stupid thing i was sliding down the glacier on a garbage bag and i got going so fast i couldn't stop and it was icy and i thought i was going to go over cliff and i thought the only way i can stop myself is to jam my hands into the ice and i did it i stopped myself i saved my life but i had a bloody butt and a very bloody set of fingers and i went down to the doctor in the valley floor and he just thought another stupid tourist and he sprayed some stuff and he said get out of here and then i had paid for an all-day pass on all the lifts that day so i thought well i got to keep traveling so that afternoon i went up to the jungfrau and i got up to 12 600 feet after losing all that blood and it's the only time in my whole life i've ever passed out i passed out in the elevator on the human front yoke i bet you didn't know that i just told you and i thought i've never blacked out before well i lost some blood and that combined with the thin altitude it must have all been a perfect storm of silliness and um i learned a lesson so don't lose a lot of blood and remember you get a little thin headed when you're up on top of the mountains in the script i think i said everybody's in a good mood you're giddy you do the halfway to heaven tango i called it i'm sorry i cannot believe that story i don't i don't tell that story unless i've been drinking um chocolate for two shows um let's see so continuing on with weather uh it was wonderful to see uh the alpenhorn player but did the fog disappoint you were you sad for the shot that it wasn't clear you know it's i remember it vividly we got there and i just thought oh it's cloudy it was just milky and all you could do is like ghostly you could see the chalet you know and you could hear the the goats or the cows or whatever but you couldn't see them and then there's the the man with his majestic alporn and then we started filming him and we realized this is really a blessing it is so ethereal it was almost mystical and this gorgeous man with his beautiful alporn and shrouded in those clouds and it really focused all attention on him and it kind of took us out of the 21st century and it made it a timeless scene and i think it was some beautiful filming so in that odd case to have all those clouds was it was a real real bonus and then i remember i was a little depressed because we had to go to the top of the mountain as i think i mentioned we got on the lift a couple hours later milky clouds down here and then we just popped through those clouds and it was squintier eyes bright it was like glorious cut glass peaks brilliant blue sky you know twinkling everything the light the color was just popping and i was reminded it can be all socked in the valley floor local people will look up into the clouds and they say yep get on the lift it's good up on top and as you know i think lisa from gimbal vault the people in gimbal know hey i'm the shelter it's fine but don't dilly dally because as the barometric pressure changes or whatever happens in the afternoon that bed of clouds rises and i remember i was on the shield horn with some important work to do and i could see the tide coming in as far as those clouds covering up those peaks and i knew we got about half an hour let's get busy and i'm sad for people who dilly dally down in the valley when it's sunny in the morning and it gets sucked in in the afternoon you need to be the early bird to catch the peaks yes sure do uh people want to know more than one people uh why were the cows wearing flowers and do they do that parade every day like the goats oh no that was i don't know about the flowers but that was for real that's not a touristy thing you don't see that very often but there is the ritual when they bring the cows down they put the big bells on them and they deck them out and open flowers you know and they bring them down but it just takes the valley by storm people shut down their stores their little shops everybody gets out into the streets it's a it's a festive day it's a happy time because the cows are coming down yeah in september usually um you know i don't know exactly um but it is something that they don't have a date i mean yes it would be a seasonal thing and it would probably be the end of the summer season when they're up in the high meadow because he got the high meadow and then they closed that down and they go down into the valley floor at the end of the of the season so it's probably in the fall okay and then our last question um you were talking in the video about a bench for a magic moment and that really struck home with me and i wanted to know if you do you have a bench in a report a bench in every part you know looking at that bench i just really had very very special memories i mean i've had so many beautiful days in that little village and if i have a favorite place whether it's on a fjord or on the south coast of portugal or on a hilltown in tuscany or maybe on on the rhine river or the loire valley i usually have a little spot i like to go where i just can feel the wind you know a ruined castle on a little hilltop above assisi where saint francis was and i go there and i just take a moment to really get into it you know whether it's the riviera or a hilltown or an alpine village i was just hiking around mount blanc with my girlfriend shelly and several times we just realized hey let's put on our shoes and go outside it's not time for bed you know we want to go out there and enjoy the stars and and just feel the the bite in the air and you got to take those moments too many people are are in the hotel bar just looking at a tv show when they could be out there on a bench enjoying something magic you got to find the moments and the mark of a good traveler is a traveler who takes home those moments those memories so yeah i treasure those little benches those little special spots around europe and and they're waiting for all of us and that's a nice question thank you very much for that and i want to thank all of you for joining us i hope you've enjoyed our look at the swiss alps i want to remind you we've got a lot of travel coming up next week we're going to be hanging out with samantha brown and she's just we all know and love her work she's been on public television now for four or five years she's been making tv travel shows for i don't know 20 more than 20 years samantha's great she's been on our monday night travel before and we're going to have her again next monday also two weeks from tonight we're going to be joined by my son andy and he's a great traveler he's lived he spent several wonderful years in colombia in south america and he's going to share with us his love of colombia and i can hardly wait to take you to columbia thanks to andy after that we've got just week after week of travel so happy new year thank you so much for joining us and i want to close with a few bloopers to remind you that if you're not screwing up and laughing at yourself you're not having enough fun because part of traveling is getting out of your comfort zone and making those mistakes and enjoying the bumps in the road let's have a few bloopers right now thanks so much and happy travels okay do i look macho feel good gut hey i'm popeye the sailor man okay excuse me thanks for joining us the cistercians worked to recreate the povertyness and subpoena whether enjoying its traditional culture high in the mountains or savoring the joys of good lamar or living in the woodwork there's a world of cultural riches outside of prague and in this sorry okay these were the early greeks the hostage crisis was a way to radicalize the industrial alcohol with an order helps prepare you to better appreciate the actual historic sites are you ready to travel let's go traditions are strong here if you're looking for this today as we ponder today as we ponder the cave the king gave a balcony from this speech transcribing texts was an important work at the clooney at the at the abbeys before there was a printing press this became a center of the cathars a heretical group of christians a radical group of christians but if it decided to walk it would walk like a monster stiffly with no understanding of the subtle interplay between hips and shoulders [Music] good night julianne night rick goodnight lisa happy new year lisa good night happy new year rick happy new year everyone [Music] you

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Length: 75min 27sec (4527 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 14 2022