Jungfraujoch, Switzerland (2023)

On our last morning in the Interlaken region, D and I went up to the famous Jungfraujoch. The "joch", or saddle, connects two major 4,000m (13,000-ft) peaks in the Bernese Alps: the Jungfrau and the Mönch. The Jungfraujoch sits at 3454m, or 11,362-ft, above sea level and the Jungfraujoch - Top of Europe is the highest train station in Europe. We took the Jungfraujoch Railway, the highest railway in Switzerland and Europe, to see a branch of the largest glacier in the Alps, the Aletsch Glacier, from one of the highest astronomical observatories in the world, the Sphinx Observatory. Yes, there are a lot of superlatives here and it truly was a superlative experience!

Swiss legends and etymology of the Jungfrau, Eiger, and Mönch names

There are many interesting explanations and legends concerning the origins of the names of the famous triumvirate peaks of the Bernese Oberland.

One Swiss legend says that a family of cruel giants once lived in Wengernalp, the alpine meadow nestled in between the great peaks of the Bernese Alps. They were famous for their evil nature and when an old, poor man in ragged clothes came to ask for some milk, they refused. The old man snapped back, insulting the giants, and the giants tried to do away with him. However, the old man turned out to be a mountain spirit and cursed them. The father became the Eiger, the sons the Mönch peaks, and the daughter the Jungfrau (meaning "virgin" or "maiden").

A more common legend says that the Mönch ("Monk") peak protects the Jungfrau from the Eiger ("Ogre") peak by coming in between them. The Mönch has had many different names, but the transition into its current name began with the word "Münche", which describes the alpine pastures that horses would graze every summer under the peak. The mountain, which sits above the Munich Alps, was then called "Münchenberg", then "Münch", and eventually Mönch.

The etymology of the Eiger can be traced as far back as 1252 and it was one of the first Swiss high peaks to be named in documents. One interpretation is that the first settler below the Eiger had an Old High German name: Egiger or Agiger. Therefore, the mountain above his pastures was referred to as "Aigers Geissberg". Another interpretation is that the Latin word "acer" developed into the French word "aigu", both words meaning "sharp" or "pointed". Then there is a third explanation based on the common former spelling "Heiger", and how it may have developed from the dialect expression "dr hej Ger", where "hej" means "high" and "Ger" was a Germanic throwing spear, describing the shape of the mountain.

The Jungfrau has had the same name since the 14th century. During that time, there were many Premonstratensian monasteries where the cloaks, hats, and berets worn by the monks and choir virgins were pure white. Many believe that the name Jungfrau was inspired by the dress of the Premonstratensian choir maidens due to its shimmering, white summit. Author Thomas Schöpf wrote "Chorographia ditionis Bernensis" in 1577 and stated that the inhabitants under the Jungfrau -- a mountain covered in eternal snow and ice and inaccessible -- compared it to an untouched virgin and thus gave it the name we use today.

History of the Jungfraujoch railway

The Jungfrau Railway was founded by Adolf Guyer-Zeller, a Swiss entrepreneur, who first thought of tunneling through the mountains in 1893. The construction of the tunnel began in 1896 and took 16 years to complete. Although Guyer-Zeller's ambition was to reach the peak of the Jungfrau with the tunnel, the railway reached only to the height of the Jungfraujoch saddle after construction completed. Before 2016, the railway would stop at both the Eigerwand ("wall of Eiger" where "wand" means wall) station and the Eismeer station to allow passengers to look out the window. The Eigerwand station was used as an access point by climbers and rescue parties, and even used in one of the final scenes of a Clint Eastwood spy movie, The Eiger Sanction before it went out of commission.

The Eismeer station is still an active stop on the Jungfraubahn (Jungfrau train), and passengers can leave the train for a five-minute break to look out through two large viewing windows onto the "sea of ice", which is what Eismeer ("ice"+"sea") means. The stretch of the Jungfraubahn from Kleine Scheidegg to the Jungfraujoch ascends 1400m (4,600-ft) in just 35 minutes!

Getting to the Jungfraujoch

Buying Jungfraujoch tickets

When you buy tickets for the Jungfraujoch, it includes admission to the Sphinx Observatory's observation deck and the Ice Palace, which is a small "museum" of ice sculptures of animals. The tickets are super expensive and tend to sell out days ahead in the summer, especially the morning time slots. The advantage of going in the shoulder season was that we were able to book our tickets just a couple of hours beforehand and more or less get the time we wanted (+/- 30 min).

If you're doing a bunch of train travel around Switzerland, I highly recommend buying the Swiss Travel Pass (STP), which gets you a 25% discount, or the Half Fare Swiss Pass, which gives you a 50% discount. There are different benefits to each, so make sure you read the details. We had a 3 or 4-day STP and the 25% discount definitely made going up to the Jungfraujoch less painful. Also worthy of note is that the tickets from Grindelwald are slightly cheaper than from Lauterbrunnen because of the shorter trip duration with the Eiger Express. Roundtrip tickets from Grindelwald cost CHF 211/person and the STP brings that down to CHF 158/person (~180 USD).

The Eiger Express

There are two ways to get onto the Jungfraubahn, or the Jungfrau railway: via Lauterbrunnen/Kleine Scheidegg or via Grindelwald/the Eiger Express. It completely depends on how you plan on spending the day, e.g. if you are planning on exploring either Lauterbrunnen or Grindelwald before or after the Jungfraujoch. Going up to the Jungfraujoch via Lauterbrunnen and Kleine Scheidegg takes a little over two hours, whereas traveling from Grindelwald and via the Eiger Express is about 90 minutes.

We didn't leave the hostel until about 10AM, and after factoring in the roundtrip travel time between Interlaken West and the Jungfraujoch (~4 hours total), we had to push our original plans of taking a 2PM train to Basel to a later one. If I had a choice, I would've picked an evening train so we wouldn't have had to rush through everything; however, my parents and relatives were arriving in Basel that afternoon and we had told them we'd meet up with them.

It would've been cool to get the full Jungfraubahn experience starting in Kleine Scheidegg, but taking the Eiger Express saved a lot of time. The Eiger Express gondola cableway takes only 15 minutes to take you from Grindelwald station to the Eigergletscher (Eiger Glacier) station. I've read that the train via Lauterbrunnen and Kleine Scheidegg is really scenic though!

The gondola is super comfortable and can fit about 10 people at a time; it's mostly plexiglass so you can get a good view from any seat! A lot of skiers and boarders take the Eiger Express up to hit the slopes, and we even sat with some Swiss national team skiers heading to practice on our ride! Pretty cool.

The Jungfraubahn

The passenger hall at Eigergletscher is pretty large, with windows wrapping around the whole building and a bistro as well. You can transfer to the Jungfraujoch without having to leave the building at all. The trains to the Jungfraujoch depart about every half hour and we had just missed the last one, so we walked around the building a bit to explore. Big mistake -- when we got back to the queue area for the Jungfraubahn maybe 15 minutes before the next departure, it was already wrapping around the building! There was also a priority lane for large tour groups and those with accessibility issues. We ended up just making it through before they cut off the line. So definitely recommend lining up early if you don't want to wait an extra half hour to hour to get on the train!

The train itself was really nice: cushy and comfortable seats. There were windows, but you were in a tunnel the whole time, so not much to see. The downside is that there weren't enough seats for everyone on the train, so a good number had to stand the entire 35-minute ride. If you're able to get on the train early, I'd really recommend getting seats that face towards the front of the train. The incline going up to the Jungfraujoch is so steep that if you're facing the back of the train, like we were, you have to constantly hold yourself back and press into the back of the seat so you stop sliding forward. It was surprisingly tiring and I was relieved to get off the train. On the way back to Eigergletscher, we sat in seats facing away from the front (looking back up towards the direction of the Jungfraujoch) so that when the train goes down the mountain, we could relax and lean back.

As mentioned previously, there is a stop midway at a station called Eismeer that has windows in the tunnel that overlook the surrounding peaks. The train parks there for about five minutes before continuing onward. We just stayed on the train because we didn't want to work through the crowd, push around for a small view, and lose our seats.

Jungfraujoch - Top of Europe

Sphinx Observatory

Our first stop at the Top of Europe was the Sphinx Observatory Observation deck. You get a great view of the Jungfraufirn, a branch of the Aletsch Glacier, on one side, and breathtaking views of the whole Jungfrau region on the other side. We were soooo lucky that day with our timing because it was unclear in the days before whether it'd be worth coming up to the Jungfraujoch at all due to the on and off rain storms and generally overcast skies. The general rule of thumb is that unless the skies are completely clear and you can see the top of the Jungfrau, it is not worth shooting your shot and buying the $200+ tickets because you will most likely see nothing but clouds.

We really stretched it out until the last minute to buy our tickets so that we could be 99.5% sure that the skies would stay clear when we were up there. The sun was out, the skies were blue, and we got to see everything #blessed. There was really only a two-hour window that morning where the skies were clear; it was overcast again by the end of our visit at the Jungfraujoch. And by the time we were heading back to Grindelwald on the Eiger Express, the Jungfraujoch was completely engulfed in clouds.

The observation deck gets pretty crowded, so it was hard finding a quiet spot to do a selfie in!

Some facts about the Aletsch Glacier: it's composed of four smaller glaciers that converge at Konkordiaplatz (Concordia Place), which is a flat area of snow and ice lying south of the Jungfrau. The entire glaciated area between the cantons of Bern and Valais -- which the Aletsch Glacier is a part of -- is known as the Jungfrau-Aletsch Protected Area under the Konkordia Charter. It's a UNESCO World Heritage site and the first World Natural Heritage site in the Alps!

The thickest part of the Aletsch Glacier is at Konkordiaplatz and measures 900m (~3,000-ft) thick!

The Eiger trail is on my bucket list of hikes I have to do some day -- it's not very difficult and all the pictures of it are just breathtaking (see on Alltrails). However, it wasn't going to open until June, so our timing was off by a long shot. I was super bummed about it and definitely plan on coming back to do all the hikes we missed out on.

Mönchsjochhütte is a 45-minute hike from the Jungfraujoch to the highest serviced hut in Switzerland. You can book a stay there and spend the night at close to 12,000-ft! It sounded so cool, but since we had to get back to Basel, we weren't able to make the time to do the hike (also the hut similarly doesn't open for bookings until late spring/early summer). Next time!

A firn, like in the name Jungfraufirn, refers to partially compacted névé: ice that is at an intermediate stage between snow and glacial ice. Névé is snow that has been left over from past seasons and gets recrystallized into a denser substance, firn. While this is the scientific definition of firn w.r.t. glacier formation, in colloquial language, it can be used to describe a form of "old snow" and older snowfields, which is why you'll see glacier names ending in -firn. See: Grosser Aletschfirn, Jungfraufirn, Grüneggfirn.

The tallest peak in the Bernese Alps is the Finstaarhorn, which rises to 4274m (14,022-ft), and is the most prominent peak of Switzerland. I think that is the peak we got to see at the Sphinx Observatory, but I could be wrong.

We spent a lot of time up here taking as many photos as we could since we probably would not pay for this again the next time we visit this area. It's too expensive and was definitely more of a YOLO experience.

A bunch of these adorable Alpine Choughs hung around the observation deck the whole time we were there. They were definitely very used to getting fed; they'd waddle right up to someone, turn their little heads to make eye contact with the person, and inevitably the person would pull out a cracker because they're so cute. Some of them would even hop onto your arm or let you pet them if you gave them a treat first!

The Ice Plateau

After coming down from the Sphinx Observatory, we went to the bottom floor to get to the Ice Plateau. It's about a 5-minute, dark walk through a deep tunnel that bores through the mountain and opens out onto a small plateau where people can get onto the snow and ice -- or if you're a skier, this is the launching point for a sick ride down the slopes and onto the Jungfraufirn.

The moment we walked out of the elevator, we were blasted with cold. That tunnel is absolutely freezing. The air was so icy and we ended up doing a light jog to keep warm and get back out into the sun faster.

When you exit the tunnel, you have to go down a moderately-steep slope to get down to the plateau. In summer, this is probably not an issue at all (although I don't know if the snow there ever fully melts), but for us it was a little tricky with the ice. The snow was super-packed down and had probably melted and refrozen so many times, that the surface was pretty slick all-over. There's a bit of a rope you can grab to help you waddle down or pull yourself up the slope.

We spent a while watching all the skiers line up and zip down the snow one-by-one. There were even some larger skiing groups in the distance, making their way across the glacier!

Whether you're out on the Ice Plateau or on the observation deck, definitely make sure you brought enough layers beforehand. I was chilled to the bone even with my windbreaker, a puffy, a thermal layer, and a base layer. My hands were stinging from the cold because I foolishly forgot to pack gloves. Don't underestimate the cold, even on a sunny day like ours!

The Ice Palace

D and I did a speed run of the Ice Palace before heading back up to the departure floor back to Eigergletscher. The "museum" is actually pretty cool (pun intended); in fact it's quite cold (badum-psh). Anyway, all the aisles and halls were dug out with picks and saws by mountain guides in the 1930s. When you walk through the Ice Palace, you are actually walking through and underneath the Jungfraufirn! Yes, the very same glacier that you get to overlook from the observation deck. Wild.

The collection of sculptures was small but the detail in each set of sculptures was impressive. The halls are narrow and one-way in some parts, so you can't really dally for long at any one spot. In the main hall where all the paths join, there was actually way too many people for the amount of space. We felt like we got the gist of it, so we pushed through the throng and took the stairs back up to the main departure floor to avoid the long lines for the elevator.

Other Jungfraujoch activities

The Top of Europe is truly a made-for-tourists destination: there are several different restaurant and fast-dining options, souvenir shops, outdoor gear shops, watch shops with Swiss brands like Tissot, Omega, Rolex...etc., and also the highest Lindt shop in the world. There's even a post office -- the highest post office in Europe -- where you can mail your postcards and gifts with a special Jungfrau stamp. Pretty neat!

D and I were kind of hungry at this point in our Jungfraujoch experience since it was getting close to 1PM. Everything was so marked up though that we decided to just skip lunch and stick to eating the remainder of the snacks we brought with us from California. We did buy one thing to supplement our snack stash: a bag of Lindt chocolates. They had a big section with dozens of bins, each filled with a different flavor, that you could pick from and bag however many of each you wanted. There were some specialty flavors that you don't usually see like blood orange, chocolate coconut, or strawberries and cream. When I did a high school summer exchange program in Germany, my favorite flavor was stracciatella, which is like cookies and cream. I remember bringing several bags of it back to the U.S. to gift and share (but I think I kept most of them...).

Apparently you can also sign up for a chocolate-making course, or simply watch the chocolatiers do their magic in-store if you don't want to pay more into the experience. Unfortunately, half of the store was closed for renovations, so we didn't get to see any chocolate-making!

From Top of Europe back to Basel

Before we got in line for the Jungfraubahn to head back to Grindelwald, we went up the Sphinx Observatory again just to soak in the grandeur of the Aletsch Glacier one more time.

The line for the train back down to Eigergletscher was not as crazy as the one heading up to the Jungfraujoch. We were basically able to get first pick of seats, so that was nice. Hopping on the Eiger Express gondola was even more relaxed, since they just kept coming up and there were little to no people in the station. I guess we caught a lull.

Of course, I had to keep taking photos on the way down even though it was the same view as the way up. In my defense, sometimes the light is dramatically different and it changes the whole shot!

When we were back on the bus going from Grindelwald to Interlaken, I finally was able to grab a seat on the side of the bus I wanted. For the past few times we'd taken the same bus, it was always so packed that we couldn't even get a seat. The bus goes over a bridge at Lütschental, where the river seems to perfectly bisect the valley and the mountains. My jaw-dropped every time we crossed this bridge and I was so excited to get this shot because the meadows around it were carpeted in little yellow flowers. It looked like something out of a fairytale. I'm still not 100% pleased with my final shots, since I missed the brief moment where the river is right in the center of the frame. Still, you can get a feel of how pretty it was.

It was mid-afternoon by the time we were back in Interlaken and the next direct train back to Basel would be departing in the next 20 minutes. The timing was tighter than I thought it would be, so we huffed it from the bus station to the hostel (to pick up our suitcases) and then back to the train station as quickly as we could. Luckily, the train was a little delayed and we had a few minutes to catch our breath before getting on.

I was similarly very excited to grab seats on the lake-side of the train this time. On our ride from Basel to Interlaken, I sat on the opposite side, which was mostly just looking at meadows and houses. I would gaze jealously at those who got all the views of the lakes and mountains in the approach to Interlaken.

If you'd like to follow the rest of our adventures in our 20-day trip through the Rhine River region of Europe, you can find the whole collection of posts in 20 days on the Rhine River (2023).