« 20 July 1941 || Table of Contents || Title Page || 28 January 1943 »
11 May 1942
An unforgettable Saentis trip. The sky gray as the pelt of an ass. I apologize to Robert for not bringing better weather. He says: "Is human life full of sunshine? Doesn't it get its meaning from light and shadow?"
Drawing on a cheroot, he enters my compartment. We ride to Urnäsch, and talk about Herisau, whose beautiful old village district can't be seen from the train. A market town, Herisau is the beehive of Appenzell commerce. In neither Upper nor Lower Rhoden is there a more populous town. But the honor of receiving the Swiss kaserne fell to the Herisauers of the Trogen Landesgemeine in 1862 after a hard choice went against Teufen. Fourteen votes had to be taken. Robert said that at the laying of the foundation the bedrock was found to be marshy, which led to witty debate in the Great Council. Someone recommended that the kaserne be built three stories high and then, after it sank, it would be two stories high, as planned. Today Herisau might be swarming with army trainees or with patients who run to wholistic doctors [Naturärzten] and dentists with their problems.
Chatting like that, we arrived in Urnäsch, that lies in chive-green meadowland. Here in 1673 the last bear [sic. in Switzerland?], almost 200 pounds, was killed. As we crossed the village in the orange-yellow Post bus we had to force our way through a herd of stubborn brown cows, with three herdsman smoking their silver fitted traditional Linauerli pipes, and Whitey, running back and forth like an excited sergeant driving them all up the mountain.
On the Schwaegalp cablecar, which has run to the peak of the Saentis since August 1935, we're the only passengers. It's as though we're in a high altitude balloon, as we approach the 51 meter high mast through a thick fog that turned the Saentis massif into a steamy washhouse. Unfortunately the 2,100 meter trip, with an elevation change of 1,200 meters, is over in 10 minutes. Our trip was extremely dramatic, as a wild hailstorm began to pound the windowpanes with ice and snow. When we press our noses to the cold glass we can see the snow-covered limestone boulders approaching like threatening cyclops. Impressions of [Hödlerscher] impact. It's incomprehensible to us that there was so much opposition to this cable car. Aren't there still dozens of trails to the summit on which the ruddest strollers can pester wanderers? Why shouldn't the old and sickly have a chance to enjoy the mountain range? So we ask, and so we enjoy the dramaticmenu that's spread out before us.
We spent the two-hour layover visiting the government weather station. An icy gale shook us as we, without hat or coat, trudged through knee-deep snow to the little stone house in which the Berner Ernst Hostettler and his wife have lived for eleven years, penned up during the nine-month winters with no company but themselves. Every year they take a three-week vacation to visit their son in Zurich to see the elegant stores and the Circus Knie. But eventually the air pollution, the sweltering heat of the city, and the traffic grow tiresome, and they go to the Berner Oberland or Walis. "One must break with everything that one has built as a lowlander to be able to bear the isolation here" said the weatherman, as we thawed out in his parlor. He grumbled a bit about the many hikers and photographers whose pushiness spoils his work.
This work occupies him about 16 hours a day: he sends his first report at about 6:30 AM central European time to the army weather station. There are five more reports for the army, the Duedendorf airfield, and the central Meteorological Institute in Zurich. The last readings are at 9:30 PM, but they are just a summary. To be of any use, these oservations require a close knowledge of complex instruments and the 45 kinds of clouds in the international weather manuals, which have 500 headings. Robert sat quietly on the sofa through all these explanations. But as we pushed through the snow to the pub he said "Instead of a view from a mountain we've had just as interesting a view into two peoples' lives."
In the pub we learned that it's been about a century since the Saentis was closed to international tourism. The first shelter was built in 1846, two decades later the first snack bar, and in 1887 the government weather station, where in 1922 the gruesome robbery and murder of the Haases occurred. Another tragedy occurred on July 5, 1832 (sic), when colonel Anton Buchwalder from Delsberg of the Swiss Survey was struck by lightning while building an observation platform. The helper standing next to him was killed, while the left half of Buchwalder's body was paralyzed. He walked and crawled back down to Toggenberg.
So we had no shortage of topics for conversation after our mountain trip, as we strolled from Urnäsch to Appenzell. On the way we saw a number of little wooden houses of monogram embroiderers with delicate Mediterranean features sitting at their narrow windows. Robert said that they have to work continuously, morning till night, to earn four francs a day.
In Herisau I said "Let's drink a gloss of wine to the Appenzellerland!"
"I'll do do that!" said Robert, and courteously tipped his old felt hat.