Our hotel was in Interlaken, which meant that there was a three part journey to get up to the Jungfraujoch. The first stage was by car, to Grindelwald. My wife had made a very diverse mixed music cassette that we played on the way. We were driving uphill for a while on a wooded road. An Allman Brothers song had just ended. The next selection was a very grand orchestral piece by Aaron Copland. Just as the first crescendo came in we rounded a curve in the road and got our first view of the mountain range ahead of us. It was like a film score.

The next leg of the trip was by train from Grindelwald to Kleine Scheidegg. The temperature dropped quite a bit by the time we arrived at the higher altitude. We realized then that the bulky winter jacket my wife had dragged all around a warm September in Europe was still in the trunk of the car. It promised to be even colder up at 13,000 feet. She bought three or four souvenier T-Shirts and wore them all under her light jacket, stuffing in the plastic bag they came in for good measure.

From Kleine Scheidegg you can see the grand panorama of three famous alpine peaks right in front of you. That is, if the sky is clear. On that day, it wasn't. It was completely overcast. It was an expensive train ride to get up to the top. It had already been an expensive vacation and we didn't want to spend a lot of money just to be fogged in somewhere else. We saw the cogwheel train come back down from the mountain. As the passengers got off I looked for the right person to ask about the weather at the top. The third and fourth people off were a couple in their 50s dressed in white sneakers. At least then, white sneakers were a sure sign of American tourists. They told us that on the mountain you were actually above the clouds. They were right...