Brienz Village and Lake
Not only railroad and carriages, but even automobiles go over the Brünig, so it can be imagined that it is not strenuous climbing, nor are its views, though attractive, grandiose.
After leaving the summit, we fairly annihilated space, and by dinner-time had reached the village rejoicing in the euphonious name of Giswil. We put up at a rather comfortable inn where we seemed to be the only guests, but the proprietor’s children appeared so incredibly numerous that we decided he had gone into the hotel business to get their groceries at trade rates.
I asked the maid waiting on us at dinner what time the train left for Lucerne in the morning. She said she wasn’t sure, and would I come down and examine the time-table in the lower hall? It was a very large and complex sheet, some three feet by six, but I thought I could master a time-table—any time-table. We all have our little vanities. I took plenty of time at it and at last found the column and the correct direction and emerged triumphant with the information that the train left at 7.15, and accordingly gave careful directions that our coffee was to be ready at 6.30 and we were to be called at 6.
Things were just a trifle late next morning, and as we were not sure of the distance to the station, we bolted our breakfast and hurried about the paying of our bill and walked at an uncomfortably rapid gait, arriving with just the desirable five minutes to spare, according to our watches. To our surprise the ticket office was closed. So were the baggage office and the freight office. There was not an employee in sight. Were our watches wrong? Had the train already left? Even so, it seemed incredible that the premises could have been completely deserted so quickly. At last, having nothing else to do, I began to study the time-tables on the walls. And then I made a discovery. The train we were trying to take ran only on Sundays and the 12th of May, and it wasn’t either! The regular week-day train wasn’t due for an hour.
I wish to say that the conduct of my companions at this juncture was truly magnanimous. The laugh was very distinctly on me, but they didn’t laugh it. They expended all their risibility on the 12th of May. That annual date on which our train ran seemed to tickle their funny-bones exquisitely. They never once reproached me for the too-hastily swallowed coffee and the precious minutes of sleep that might have been, but wandered off to visit the cemetery or some such cheerful spot, while I read Baedeker and kept guard over the knapsacks in the waiting-room.
If there had been a train when we thought and we had only five minutes before it was due, we certainly should have missed it, for I think it took the station-master a good twenty minutes to make out our tickets. They involved a whole ten miles of railroad travel from Giswil to Alpnachstad, and a boat trip from there to Lucerne. The tickets were long folding affairs in many sections, as for a trip across the continent, filled in at many places with writing (there was also a book in which the poor man had to write an extraordinary amount), and I think they cost us eighteen cents apiece!
The approach to Lucerne by boat instead of by train must be a very pleasant one in any respectable sort of weather, but our day had turned into a gray drizzle with a gale of freezing wind. Mists and clouds shut out all the mountains, and the face of the lake was lashed into a sort of impotent baby fury. It was this kind of a day, I am sure, when Gesler had Tell unbound to take charge of the imperiled row-boat. It was not perilous on a modern lake passenger boat, but neither was it joyous.