When I arrived in Grunewald, I was told that the youth hostel was only about three kilometres from the station, so I and several other young backpackers that I had met on the train decided to walk to the hostel. What we didn’t know was that the hostel was three kilometres straight up the side of a mountain. As we trudged up the mountain we were embarrassed by the speed with which villagers three times our age passed us by. Despite our youth, the Swiss were much more adept at climbing than we were.