All in all, we ended up spending about three hours at Jungfraujoch. We also had a bit of later start than planned, so when we finally made it to the Eigergletscher station, it was around 3:30pm and we were pretty hungry for some lunch. I had made a note to eat at the Restaurant Eigergletscher, but we got quite turned around after getting off the train and couldn’t find our way out of the station. We were probably looking around confused when a station worker came up to us and asked if he could help. Mr. Strange said we were looking for the restaurant, and the man, quite sarcastically, said, “Well, I don’t know all the restaurants.” I said we just needed to know the way out of the station, and continuing his tone, he said, “There are many ways out. You can take a train. Or a cable car.” Feeling he was being obtuse on purpose, I finally clarified that we were looking for Restaurant Eigergletscher, to which he informed us was closed and only seating groups, anyhow. Baffled by this unhelpful man, we turned and walked back inside the train station. There was a place there called The Wall Bar, but after checking the menu, I saw nothing that LS would probably eat, so we ended up at the train station cafe right before they closed for the day, where Mr. Strange and LS had a croissant and I had a cookie. Lunch of champions!

Around 4pm, we started out on our hike of the Eiger trail, which was estimated to take about two hours. About five minutes after we started, however, LS proclaimed she needed the restroom, so we headed back to the train station. Mr. Strange and I joked that we never wanted to see this train station again.

We finally started our hike for good, which was beautiful and quiet. We only saw a handful of people on the trail, mostly coming from the other direction. We were headed downhill to the town of Alpiglen, where we would catch a train back to Kleine Scheidegg. We passed the Eiger northface, crossed a couple streams, and happened upon a waterfall before starting our final descent through a cow pasture. 

We finally arrived in Alpiglen around 6:45pm, a little later than planned. We looked around for the train station, then saw a train leaving, so walked in that direction. The train station was quiet, no one else around, and when we looked at the board to see when the next train was, we discovered why. The train we had just seen moments earlier was the last train of the day. Mr. Strange and I looked at each other, while LS started to panic a bit.

I calmed her and we took inventory of our options: hike 4 miles uphill back to Eigergletscher and the train station we never wanted to see again and hope there were still trains, continue hiking downhill to Grindelwald, or potentially stay overnight in Alpiglen. I consulted Apple Maps and saw hiking the Grindelwald should take an additional hour and a half, which didn’t seem too bad comparatively, so we decided on that option. Mr. Strange went into a local restaurant to confirm our options, and the woman there agreed that was the best option. So off we went for an additional 3.5 miles to Grindelwald.

We were getting low on water and every fountain we passed had the dreaded “kein trinkwasser” sign on it, as if they were teasing us. We carried on, even though our knees were killing us by this point, as we had descended over 3000 ft.

At one point at the edge of Grindelwald, we reached a bus station. A quick check of the schedule, however, showed that we had also just missed the last bus. So we trudged on. We crossed a bridge into town and then our journey started back uphill to the station. It was so close yet felt so far with every painful step. We finally, finally reached the station, and the heavens parted and revealed there was one last train toward Lauterbrunnen in half an hour.

We sat and waited, just happy to be sitting.

We boarded the train when it arrived, which took us to the Zweilütschinen station, where we had to await the next train. We sat inside, and it was there that we happened across a group of four people, who inexplicably had done our exact same itinerary. They had started in Jungfraujoch, then came down to Eigergletscher, hiked the Eiger Trail, missed the train in Alpiglen, and hiked down to Grindelwald. And they just so happened to also be headed back to Murren. It felt better to be with others in the same predicament!

The train finally arrived but was eight minutes behind schedule, and we all wondered whether the bus to Stechelburg would wait for the train or if we’d have to wait 30 minutes for the next bus when we arrived. When the train stopped in Lauterbrunnen, the seven of us booked it for the bus and found it there, waiting patiently. We laughed in relief. The bus delivered us to the cable car station, where we were routed through Gimmelwald, so two cable cars later, we were all safely back in Murren. We bid farewell to our new friends and headed back to the hotel. It was 11pm by this time and everything was closed, so we ate a measly dinner of peanut butter cheese crackers that we had brought from home and went to bed.