David Howell Travel Photography and Map Blog

Does your image of electric transportation look like a tiny light weight car that can only drive around town?

Do you imagine it powering over mountain passes and up precipitous cliffs? In the Swiss Alps transportation is provided by a network of electric trains and cablecars. They serve tourists gaping at the alpine scenery and carry supplies to small car-free mountain villages….

Dreaming about travel. Savoring travel. Remembering travel.

Decent and kind people who you don’t share a common language with. Unexpected challenges. A smile. Patience. A comfortable seat at the window on a long train ride deep into the Alps. Curiosity with rewards. Quiet narrow country roads. Wind rustling the leaves of trees along a river whose name you can’t pronounce. Sheep bells. A muddy river in spring flood flowing out of a Mexican jungle. Birds with impossible colors….

Sitting on your porch you can see Jungfrau.

On warm summer evenings you watch the alpenglow on the glaciers and listen to waterfalls and bird songs. Perhaps you sip tea and relax with a world class view of the Bernese Oberland….

The background image on my business card is a self-portrait in old town Bern, Switzerland. It is a vague reflection in the window of a door in an old stone building. There is a scooter and a bicycle parked in front.

When someone asks where the photo was taken, I tell them that it is Bern which is the capital of Swizerland. A frequent response is, “Isn’t Zurich the capital?”

Jungfraujoch. The Top of Europe.

The Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau. Three peaks at the top of the Bernese Oberland in the Swiss Alps.

The fable is that the Mönch (Monk) which is in the middle protects the Jungfrau (young woman) from the Eiger (Ogre). Mountain lore.

Jungfraujoch is a train station, observatory, and restaurant at the top of the Mönch. The entire area is served by a network of electric trains and various cable cars and tramways….

Yvoire, France is a beautiful medieval stone village.

It is easy to imagine the setting of village life in the mostly intact old town section. It is harder to realize the difficulties of providing food, water, and defense for this lakeside village.

Yvoire is on the south shore of Làc Leman (Lake Geneva) on a prominent point between Geneva and Évian-les-Bains….

In the early days of mountain recreation most of the Alps were referred to by some people generically as ‘Switzerland’, even if they were actually in France or Italy or Austria etc. It was a descriptive term to describe the stunning high peaks.

The big mountains had been feared for millenia as places of danger and homes to beasts and dragons. Nobody had been to the tops and imaginations ran wild. People feared that their would be no oxygen. Myths and fables were vivid and terrifying….

Today is International Women’s Day.

It is a day to recognize and honor the importance of the work of women; their work at home and away from home. It is also a day to recognize the limitations on women’s involvement, safety, education, advancement and equal pay….

What does that have to do with this photograph in Swizterland?

How’s the commute? Will it be another day of gridlock and anxiety?

My main transportation is a bicycle. It is easy to get around small towns with a bike. It is even easier when towns plan for bicycles and pedestrians.

Even though the street in this photograph is cobblestone there were quite a few bicyclists in this old town section of Bern, Switzerland….

A sunny stroll through wildflower pastures. The sound of clanking cowbells and the thunder of huge waterfalls. The pride of a well-maintained chalet. It is spring in the Swiss Alps.

The walls of the glacially-carved Lauterbrunnen Valley launch many snow-melt waterfalls in the spring. In fact the word Lauterbrunnen means many fountains.