Hans Castorp, age 23, travels by train from Hamburg through Swiss territory into the Alps. The air at such elevations is strange, and Hans notes the lack of bird life a mile above sea level. After two day’s travel, he arrives at a station near Davos, where he meets his cousin Joachim Ziemssen. Joachim was in a military academy, but his studies were cut short by his illness. Together, they leave the station and travel by carriage to the International Sanitorium Berghof, where Joachim has been staying for the last six months. Joachim’s ailment is vague, though he is adept at naming the particulars of his symptoms: “I still have sputum,” he says (7).

Joachim mentions that time seems to move differently in the sanatorium; he refers to life at sea level as different and notes that bodies leave the sanatorium daily by bobsled. The two young men have a morbid laugh together as they arrive. Hans intends to stay for three weeks. Joachim shows Hans to his room and informs him that an American woman recently died there. The room is efficiently and pleasantly designed. Several people of different nationalities occupy the rooms nearby.