Richard Turen
This was all new to me. I was on a multigenerational Tauck Bridges tour, taking in Europe's Alpine region in late June. There were parents, grandparents and 21 kids, about half of whom were well-behaved teens. My daughter had made friends on this trip, and I can say that nearly everything exceeded our expectations. But it was a tad busy.
I measure trips by the number of pages I get to read before falling asleep. This was a zero-pager.
On day three of our eight-day tour, we traveled on the famed Glacier Express from Andermatt to St. Moritz in Switzerland, fulfilling a lifelong dream.
About midway through the trip on the misnamed Express, I realized that I really have a specific answer for those who sometimes ask, "So what is your favorite place in the world?" This is it. The Alpine meadows and the lakes surrounded by snowcapped mountains. These trains that reach impossible heights and go where no construction crew has gone before. After Rochester, Minn., the Alpine region of Europe is the most satisfying destination I've ever experienced.
We had come down from Mount Pilatus days earlier, after the world's steepest cable-car trip. On the way down from the mountaintop, we heard a strange sound, and I looked for a speaker in the cable car, marveling at Swiss ingenuity. But I was wrong. This was no recording. We were passing cows, and every cow in Switzerland wears a set of bells so they can be heard in the snow with low visibility.
The first half of the journey in the bright-red, first-class car on the Express took us from Andermatt's small train station to Chur, the lowest point on its route. We initially climbed with the help of giant cogwheels, incongruously passing a golf course surrounded by snowcapped peaks. We entered the Rhine Gorge, part of the landscape referred to as the Grand Canyon of Switzerland.
Then we climbed again, headed to the pedestrians-only center of Zermatt. It was cold, rainy, dark and dismal. But later that evening we joined our new friends and their daughter for a family dinner in a wonderful restaurant that served a menu of stick-to-your ribs Swiss home cooking. We were bundled up in sweaters. There was candlelight. The kids were deep in conversation.
The next day, we entered the Engadin Valley, where both kids and adults had a full day of mountain climbing. We took a cable car up to Diavolezza where, at 9,000 feet, we got incredible views of the Alps and the Morteratsch Glacier. I walked slowly up the steep walking path, arriving where the kids and their instructors had gone on ahead. There was a mountain stretching straight up to the sky. One of the kids had climbed to the top. With heart in mouth, I realized that the child was mine. She waved as she rappelled back down. What was that worth as a travel experience?
Later, there was lunch at an Alpine cheesemaker workshop set in the middle of the woods just outside a small village. The cheese was being made in front of us, the kids in our group were helping, the food was delicious and afterward the staff organized a Swiss Olympic competition.
The next day we drove into Austria for a walk around idyllic Innsbruck, the 15th century capital of Emperor Maximilan's Habsburg Empire in the state of Tyrol. After lunch, we went to the edge of the city for a personal tour of Innsbruck's high-tech Bergisel ski jump. The kids seemed enthralled by the Olympic skiers who showed them the course and described their training methods. They didn't mention that once airborne, each skier has a perfect front-and-center view of the city's cemetery just below. As a final gesture, all of the kids were invited up the skier's cable car to the very top jumping-off point, a location closed to the general public.
That evening, we were off to a mountain hut for an evening of Tyrolean food, music and outdoor activities for the kids. I did not think that a two-person Austrian oom-pah-pah band would go over as well as it did. But the beer was excellent, as were the sausages, so late in the evening the music sounded fine.
But our hut was special. It was right next to the border of Italy. In 1991, two German hikers were walking a seldom-used path near our location. They found a body that they assumed must be a mountain climber who looked like he had died several months earlier in a climbing accident.
The body was transported to the medical examiner. Then archeologists were called in. The body, nicknamed Otzi, had been preserved in the ice, and on examination, he turned out to be the oldest European mummy. His date of death was estimated to have been around 3359 B.C. Later, it was discovered that the body had actually been found just over 300 feet within Italian territory. The Italians have claimed him as their own. We toured a small museum, and we heard the story near the site where it happened. The kids in our group were enthralled.
However, there had been a problem with our itinerary. On the first day of the tour, we were notified that our hotel in a charming Tyrol town would not be available. Instead, we would be staying at a place in Langenfeld called The Aqua Dome.
As we drove through the mountains to our substitute, we were prepared for disappointment. The town of Langenfeld is Tyrolean perfection, down to the required church steeple soaring up to greet the surrounding mountaintops. We passed through it, made two turns and there was a huge, modern-looking hotel that was really an Alpine thermal resort.
It was all stone, glass and wood. There was a beautiful spa area and 11 pools of different types and temperatures. There was a brine pool with underwater music, huge domes you could swim to and then take steps up to enter. You found yourself sitting in the largest hot tub on Earth facing the snowcapped mountains. There was a massage pool with light impressions and an entire building dedicated to aquatic facilities for children.
We loved it. My wife has been named the world's top spa specialist by Conde Nast Traveler several years running, yet even she had never seen a wellness facility on this scale. It is owned by Vitality World, a Swiss company that runs wellness resorts.
The next morning, we decided to spend six hours taking in "the waters," an unexpected pleasure in the Alpine air.
On the last evening of our stay at the Dome, our tour guide, a masterful English woman who lived in Tyrol, asked the group to gather in the lobby before dinner.
There, a handsome young man stood by her side. He introduced himself as the owner, with his parents, of the hotel where we originally had been scheduled to stay. Then something happened that was a first for me and perhaps symbolic of the small, quality touches of humanity one finds when touring with Tauck.
He apologized for not being able to host us. It seemed entirely sincere. He explained that he had signed a contract with Tauck, but reconstruction and updating of his property hit a snag when workers discovered antiquities during the building process. He said his entire family felt saddened by not being able to host us, and he reached for a series of large envelopes. He wanted to invite all of us back to Tyrol to enjoy a complimentary stay. But then he said something else:
"My family hopes you will think kindly of us and our wonderful part of the world, so we would also like you to accept this with our apologies," he said.
Every family was handed an envelope containing 500 euros in cash.
The next time I have to deal with customer service at a hotel, an airline or, say, Comcast, I will remember this kindness from the Hotel Klosterbrau in Seefield in Tyrol, Austria. I will remember what hospitality really means in its truest sense.