Made it! Made it to the cable car down, then coffee in a cashierless store, a bus, a train, two more transfers, and all of this in quite a rush.
It's a little scary traveling in the evening to tiny villages in the mountains where your hotel is supposedly booked, but you never know what might happen. The higher I went, the less modern the trains became. The doors opened with a handle that you had to turn and push, digital displays with stops or even the train and route number were gone, the benches got narrow and hard, and the train itself — empty and rattling. When you get off at an intermediate station in the evening, everything is closed (shops here close early, around 7 or 8 o'clock, depending on the canton), there are few people, and the lighting is quite modest. You get a total feeling that these are wild places, and anything can happen. Although, of course, this is most likely a mirage brought on by exhaustion and traits of borderline personality disorder, aka emotional lability.
I'm thinking now that it's no accident I'm so eager to take some tricky route somewhere without much of a need. Sure, it's nice not to get up at six (I haven't done that in many years), but maybe the real reason is something else. There is an adventurer inside me craving adventures in our predictable world. When you're rushing somewhere, and your route is complicated, it's like you're busy with something important, adrenaline and dopamine, all that stuff. Plus, traveling to god knows where at night is romantic.
I got there fine, albeit in about three hours. I stepped out into a light drizzle and hobbled towards my shelter. A tablet on a desk was waiting for me there instead of a clerk, but the latter soon showed up too. Interestingly, he didn't ask for my passport, or anything at all really, but just handed over a huge skeleton key, like in a movie about the 19th century. In our moronic bureaucracy, on the other hand, you fill out a piece of paper nobody needs yourself. And people say the Swiss love order. Apparently, their order somehow works even without filling out stupid forms. Or maybe it's just because the hotel was named in French: "Old Boutique Hotel By The Glacier And Post Office". Boutique means a pleasant, gentle approach, without filling out pieces of paper.
I didn't manage to buy anything to eat, 'cause I had no cash. Of the food in the hotel bar, only two slices of cake and free caramel biscuits for coffee were left, plus a couple of welcome candies in the room. That's what I had for dinner.
