A Surprise at the Jungfrau

It’s a privilege to travel with your mom.
It’s even more of a privilege if you get to travel with her to the Swiss Alps, a place she’s wanted to see her entire life.
Fast forward 30 years and while we had travelled, neither of us had yet made it to Switzerland.
It was time.
She paid, I planned.
Our itinerary swelled to eight countries.
We did the Golden Circle Tour in Iceland, ate the traditional meat soup with buttered biscuits, toured Salzburg and ate Tafelspitz and dumplings with crisp roasted pork knuckles and swam in the Adriatic with a tanned, plump bellied Croatian wearing a white speedo.
After 22 days we headed for Zurich.
In hindsight, Switzerland got lost in the planning stages amongst all the other places we planned to see on our trip. Tell anyone who’s been there that you’re heading to Switzerland and they’ll ask if you’re going to the Jungfrau.
Perhaps it was fatigue and a genuine attempt to save my mom some money, but I neglected to book that tour opting instead for the cheaper tour of Interlaken and Grindelwald. The Jungfrau was just too obvious. Surely other tours were just as enjoyable.
Had we not boarded the tour bus that morning to find that we were the only ones NOT going to the Jungfrau, things might have been fine.
The bus buzzed with anticipation, giving us the distinct feeling that everyone was heading off to a party we weren't invited to.
In the end our slightly brash tour guide named Kid, suggested we join everyone else. So up the Jungfrau we went.
Kid took a liking to my mom, the only white haired woman on the tour and showed a respect to her I appreciated. Originally from Thailand he recognized a picture of a butterfly and a flower painted onto her camera case by a lady she'd met on vacation in Chiangmai ten years earlier. They bonded over this and from then on my mom could do no wrong.
Kid scurried our group along, directing us onto trains, into elevators, and up flights of stairs. He knew all the picturesque spots and would take our cameras, hurrying us into poses, encouraging us to jump in the air, our arms outstretched to the sky.
I have a picture of my mom laughing, arms out to her sides, the vast Swiss Alps behind her.
It was serendipitous that we made it to the top of Europe after all. But as beautiful as the Alps were there was something more memorable.
On our way back to Canada, my mom said, "You know what I'll remember most about Switzerland? Our tour guide"