Preparing for Re-Entry

Our time away from “Real Life” has come to an end, and we’re saying farewell to Switzerland, cleaning and packing, and will soon be back in the USA.

A few days ago I took a walk along the Aare river, and it was so beautiful that once again could not resist taking a gazillion photos. When we arrived here in September, the Swan family had a teenager who was pretty big, but still brown like the Ugly Duckling! Now he is turning white, and seems to have a mate.

When I announced this trip, I said it would be like coming home, and in fact, it has felt that way. Although I have now lived in the USA for 42 years, my formative years were spent overseas. My pre-teen and teen years were in Europe, and I find myself feeling very much at home here.

I had to get used to the feeling of being an outsider, and not speaking the language, but now it feels familiar. When we moved to Denmark, I was 11, and I attended a French School, so I was too busy learning French to worry about Danish. Still, next time we come here, I plan to work on my German first!

Spending 3 1/2 months without a car has been wonderful! It also means I’ve become an excellent walker. I generally walk an hour or two every day, and if we go on a day trip somewhere it can be more like 4 hours.

I have learned to enjoy it. Recently I took lessons in Nordic Walking, something the Finnish cross country ski team has used for off season training for years. I hope to keep up the walking when I get home.

Two slight problems with that: One, although I can always go for a walk at home, I can’t walk TO anything useful. Here I walk to the grocery, post office, papeterie (stationary store). Two, although I’ve been walking so much, I have gained weight because everywhere I walk, I encounter bakeries with the most delicious pastries; and of course, in Switzerland, one must test all the different brands of chocolate! I am preparing myself to go into withdrawal soon….

Anyway, I still have loads of stories to tell about this trip, so keep checking here, and I’ll keep writing. We have visited so many places here: Chur, Zurich, Luzern, Basel, Bern (3 times), Neuchatel, Aigle, Lugano, Lausanne, Murten, Stein-am-Rhein……

We’ve seen so many gorgeous churches, castles and art museums.

Check out my tapestry blog, Tangled Web, for stories about Swiss tapestries. I have to tell you about the Jean Tinguely Museum in Basel sometime, it was truly inspiring. So that’s a little preview and hopefully I’ll still have time to blog when I get home.

I’ve realized that one could travel for 3 months and write about it for 3 years! Not that I plan to keep it up that long. I just wanted to let you know where I am in real time!

It’s been awesome, Kim says we are practicing for retirement; so far, I think we’ll do fine! We love Switzerland, and are already planning our next trip back here. Kim ended up doing 38 hikes!

Luckily for us, it was an abnormally warm and dry autumn. We are leaving just in time, as today it snowed all day, about 5 inches of wet sloppy snow.

We have one more day to tie up loose ends, then Wednesday we get up early and say goodbye to Interlaken, at least for a while.

Here’s one more photo of the Monch and Jungfrau. The light was hitting from the west near sunset, accentuating the details.

Switzerland, 1909

 

When Zoe and Jason were here, back in October, we visited Ballenberg, the Swiss Open Air  Museum near Brienz.

This is an amazing place, with actual antique buildings, from 100 to 500 years old, that have been moved from the different regions of Switzerland, and set up at the museum, complete with gardens, fields, animals and outbuildings. 

The example from the Bernese Oberland shows a farmhouse which includes living quarters, stable and hayloft under a single roof. This makes it easier to care for the cattle in a snowy winter. You do see a lot of houses like that around here, hmmm, it seems to me that the one we are living in is like that, although the various barns are used for bikes, storage, and hanging laundry rather than housing cattle.

There are all kinds of daily life demonstrations from cheese making, shingle making, and saddlery, to sheep shearing (which was why we visited on that particular day).

In retrospect I wish we had visited on the day they had the “Farewell to Bachelorhood” demo, that sounds interesting!!!

There are thirteen different building groups, each including houses, barns and other buildings, like cheese aging sheds, fruit drying kilns, wash houses, even a lovely little chapel. 

Each group is from a different region of Switzerland, so you can see the different styles of house from each region: stone houses, timber houses, thatched roofs etc.  

The museum is very large, 660,000 square meters, so it’s hard to see it all, especially on foot. We did notice some families with small children being driven around in horse drawn carriages.

Not every activity happens every day. The biggest disappointment was that nobody seemed to speak any English, so we were not able to ask questions.  

This struck me as kind of strange, since most people in Switzerland who work in the tourist industry do speak English, and Ballenberg is promoted quite aggressively to tourists.

On the other hand, most of the other visitors seemed to be Swiss.

I would have liked to talk to the woman who was spinning, or the ones selling handmade felted hats, or the ancient guy making baskets.

I was able, just barely, to drag up my few words of German and ask the sheep shearer a question that had been bothering me for a while: whether it was a problem shearing in the fall, wouldn’t the sheep get cold without their fleece?

In my experience sheep are sheared in the spring, so they can be nice and cool over the hot summer and have their winter coats ready for winter.

He just said “No they will not be cold.”

OK, I guess…..

So actually, now that I’m researching Ballenberg online, I realized I’ve  learned more from the website than I did from my visit, although I still don’t understand why they shear the sheep in the fall….

Still, we did have a good time, especially Zoe who has a special rapport with cows. These are the traditional Swiss cows, called “Braunvieh,”  which I think are so pretty.

She enjoyed the piglets too, and I enjoyed taking lots of cool photos to share with all of you!

This one is the loom room inside a house that was VERY smoky from the fireplace.

 

Interlaken - Unterseen

“Between the Lakes,”  in Latin, and "Below the Lakes" in German.
The river Aare flows from Lake Brienz in the east, into Lake Thun, with an 18 foot drop! Not all at once, there are a number of sluices. As the river comes through town it is canalized, and split into 2 parts.
The water is a bright turquoise because it’s melted glacier water, and full of minerals.
Our house is in Unterseen, just over the river from Interlaken, and only a 8 minute walk from Interlaken West train station. Interlaken Ost station is about a 20 minute walk.
With 2 train stations, plus the Postal Busses, you can go just about anywhere anytime.
You can also take a boat across either lake, but they shut down for the winter a few weeks ago.
Fortunately we rode across Lake Brienz back when the weather was nice and warm.
I can’t figure out why Wikipedia says that Lake Brienz is “gloomy!” It’s undeveloped, and I suppose 100 years ago some people thought that was depressing compared to Lake Thun, which had houses, and castles and small cities.
When we were here in 2000, I took my in-laws, and my daughter Lucy on this same boat, to this same village, in search of the famous Brienz Woodcarving School. It was quite a long walk for the old folks, and when we finally reached the school, much to our disappointment, it was closed.
When Kim and I went in September, wouldn’t you know, it was closed again! Is this a family curse? Perhaps next time we’ll check the hours first.
“Bödeli” is the name of the flat plain between the lakes, encompassing Interlaken and Unterseen. So you see Bödeli Bread, Bödeli Bar and lots of other Bödeli things.
Although it’s very flat here, next to the lakes, the Bernese Alps are right next door, and you can see them most days from the front window of our house, or from anywhere in town.
The big 3, from left to right, are Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau (Ogre, Monk, and Maiden). We can only see a piece of the Eiger, but if I ride my bike about a mile down the road, I can see all three. Thinking about climbing them?
Speaking of bikes, there are bikes and bike trails all over. You see little kids riding their bikes home for lunch (yes, most people here go home for lunch!), and even late at night, I look out the window and see the occasional bike going by with their bike lights on.
My favorite bike trail starts a few blocks away from the house, then takes you past some farms (with cows of course), a shooting range where they also land paragliders (I know, it sounds like a bad combination, but they are actually separate), then the golf course, then the woods along the river.
It’s almost impossible to get lost here, because of the lakes, the mountains and the river. (Nevertheless, my children can tell you that I DID manage to get lost in 2000….but I have an excuse, I was not yet oriented).
Interlaken is THE place to be for hiking in the Alps. There are a number of hostels, including one called the Backpackers’ Villa, which we visited to use their internet cafe for printing purposes. It looked very clean and organized, and is VERY cheap. Interlaken is considered the adventure mecca, and there are many outdoor adventure companies for paragliding, bungee jumping, canyoning, etc. They also do base jumping in Stechelberg, but I’m not sure any company is crazy enough to promote it…. this is jumping off a cliff wearing a parachute, and waiting till the last minute to pull the cord.
Interlaken is also a popular tourist resort, with lovely 19^th Century hotels, the Casino Kursaal, expensive watch and jewelry stores (right outside the casino of course), and lots of overpriced souvenir shops. Many tourists come here to take the Jungfraubahn to the Jungfraujoch, “the Top of Europe.”
On a clear day you can see the train station (the highest in Europe), on the joch (ridge) to the left of the peak.
Likewise, on a clear day, you can see for miles from the station! I went there with my Mom in about 1970, and it clouded over, so all I saw was the inside of a cloud. Zoe and Jason were luckier last month.
Unterseen is an endearing mixture of small 19^th Century hotels, restaurants, nice shops, small modern apartment buildings, historic houses, rickety old barns, and farms. All nestled right next to the Harder Kulm. Every day we hear the cows with their bells, walking along the street behind the house. I guess they go to a pasture somewhere down the road.
At about 4 pm, I always joke that whatever we are doing till the cows come home, we can stop now. The other day I passed a lady driving a tractor down the street, steering with one hand, and hanging onto a toddler with the other.

In the 18^th Century, attitudes about nature began to change. Previously “wilderness” had a bad name, but after the Romantics like Goethe, and in the early 19^th Century, Lord Byron and Felix Mendelssohn visited Interlaken, suddenly Switzerland became the great new tourist destination. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was another fan, so much so that he decided to allow Sherlock Holmes to meet his (apparent) death here at the hand of Professor Moriarty in The Final Problem. Kim hiked to the scene of the crime today, the Reichenbach Falls,
Aaremuhle (Aare Mill, for the large mill with 4 waterwheels) was the name of Interlaken until 1891, when it was changed to make it easier for the English tourists to pronounce. Interlaken was the name of the local Augustine Monastery, founded in the 12^th C, but closed down during the Reformation.
According to a 1898 guidebook, Interlaken had become known as “one of the finest health resorts of Europe.” A doctor is quoted as saying that “after a stay of some weeks, scrofulous and rickety children are often so completely changed as to be hardly recognizable.” AHA! That explains why my scrofula and rickets are vastly improved.
In addition, one could obtain “Milk and Whey Cures” at the Casino Kursaal. Now you just see stores selling crystals and beads made from healing stones.
As the brochure says, “persons fatigued and exhausted by overwork and an irrational mode of life very often get back their former strength and elasticity” after a short stay here. Strength and elasticity sound great, but I just hope that when I get home, my mode of life will become more rational!

Hiking in the Alps

OK, that sounds a bit too melodramatic for a slacker like me. Kim is very ambitious and has done 28 hikes, averaging about 3.5 hours each. He likes to hike uphill, fast, and get a workout. I prefer a pleasant stroll, and nothing too steep.

This was not supposed to be the next blog topic, but since I spent hours yesterday uploading all my hiking photos into a Webshots album, titled Switzerland-Jan’s Hikes, I might as well write about it now!

I already told you about the Mürren to Grütschalp hike, so we’ll start with hike number two, but first, you might want to watch this Youtube video somebody took of the little cog train.

The next hike was a few weeks later, when our daughter Zoe and her husband Jason were visiting. We took the train to Lauterbrunnen again. This is a funny train because the back cars split off along the way and take a left turn to Grindelwald, so you have to make sure you get on a car that is continuing to Lauterbrunnen! That’s not hard though, every car is clearly labelled. Everything here is clearly labelled, especially when it comes to trains. I love the Lauterbrunnen Valley, but one day I was there at 11am, and it was SO cold. Half the valley was still in shadow. I guess that’s what happens when the cliffs are so high and valley so narrow.

This time, when we got to Lauterbrunnen, we took another train up to Wengen. another car-less ski chalet village, this one about twice the size of Mürren, with a population of 1050, many of whom are celebrities (apparently Robert Redford visits often). It’s also famous for hosting World Cup downhill and slalom races on the Lauberhorn every January. 

Then a cable car up to Männlichen, where we hiked to Kleine Scheidegg, which is a popular ski area right next to the Jungfrau, Monch and the infamous north face of the Eiger.

It’s actually a very easy hike, and there were many families with dogs and small children.  This time the photography was even more out of control as Zoe had a new camera, so between the 2 of us, we slowed a 45 minute hike down to about 2 hours. Oh well, it was gorgeous, and we got lots of nice photos.

When we stepped off the cable car there was a viewing platform with an incredible view of the valley below, but we decided to be good little girls and boys and use the rest rooms first.

I think these rest rooms were intended for people in formal wear, at least if you go by the signs, but nobody stopped us at the door. 

Imagine our dismay when we came out and discovered a cloud had plopped down on us in the meantime and the view was gone!

A lesson learned, never wait to take that photo of the perfect view, it could be gone in an instant!

Never fear, it always seems to clear up magically, and the views just got better and better.

There were only a few places where I had to lean against the uphill side of the path for fear of plunging to my death.

The trail was plenty wide and flat, but I have an irrational fear that I will fly off the path….perhaps it’s not really a fear, but a secret wish to fly. Whatever. 

Hike number three was a real hike. Just behind the house there is a large hill named Harder Kulm.

Kim has climbed it many times, and he took Zoe up her first day here, while she still had jet lag.

The elevation gain is about 2,450 feet. Well, I saw an ad for a Nordic Walking class on the Harder, and Kim made the mistake of saying he thought I’d never make it to the top.

That did it, I had to go.

The trail was very steep, but well maintained, still I did get lost a few times, once walking on a gravel road for a while. Suddenly I arrived at a small bridge and there was the Funicular passing underneath me, and there about 30 feet below me, on a small footbridge, was a couple who were on the real hiking trail. We looked at each other and I shrugged and called out “Um, well it looks like I might have taken a wrong turn?” and the man answered “Just keep going UP, always UP!” It looked like their trail would soon intersect with my road, and just ahead I saw where it did, but then I got distracted by a small farm with cows. I decided to use the video feature on my camera to capture the sound of their bells.

Then I noticed a gate across the road ahead, and a sign that seemed to be saying “Keep Out.” (My German is pathetic) After standing around looking baffled for a few minutes, I saw my fellow hikers emerge from their trail behind me, cross the road, and continue on the trail, which I had missed completely. They explained to me that we had to go around the cows, so now we began hiking together.

Honestly, I don’t know if I would have made it to the top alone. What am I saying, OF COURSE I would! Maybe. Sometime.

While I was hiking alone, I thought of my mother’s advice, as she struggled to convince 3 little girls to walk up a steep hill, to just turn around and walk backwards for a while. It does actually help, because for one thing you are now looking downhill, but also, you use different muscles.

At one point I got hungry and decided to eat my apple; I apologized for eating in front of my new hiking companions, but they had their own apples so it was fine.

Typically klutzy, I dropped mine and it rolled down the trail, then into some grass, and for a moment we all thought it would take off for Interlaken, but it finally came to a stop not too far away, and I retrieved it. 

There were some alarming parts of the trail, but the apple drama made me feel a bit safer.

“After all” I thought, “the apple is completely round, (unlike me, I’m only a little round) and it came to a stop without even grabbing anything, so if I trip and fall, perhaps I will NOT plunge into the abyss?”

It ended up taking us 2.5 hours to reach the top. 

There, as is typical in Switzerland, is a gorgeous viewing platform, clean restrooms, and of course, a lovely restaurant, where I found decaf coffee, and ate a piece of something called Charlotte de Pere. YUM!

Also typical here is that the funicular runs every 30 minutes. We were a little shocked that it only took 10 minutes to get down! We joked that it should be free for those who hiked UP!

My fourth hike was not really a hike at all, but rather a visit to a previous hike site. The day after we all hiked from Männlichen to Kleine Scheidegg, we woke up to see snow on the mountains.

There was snow all along on the Jungfrau and other high peaks, but now the snow line had moved down. So when my sister Sally was visiting 2 weeks later, we took the cog train from Grindelwald up to Kleine Scheidegg to check it out. Lo and behold, our lovely hiking trail was covered in snow.

A few days later, on a gorgeous warm sunny day, Sally and I made our way up to Mürren, and then, after a hearty cheesy lunch of Rösti, and Fromage en Croute, we hiked down the road to Gimmelwald, a tiny village that sits on the edge of a cliff overlooking the fabulous Lauterbrunnen Valley.

This hike was completely downhill, and not too gradual either. For the first time my knees actually hurt the next day.

Near the end of our hike, we encountered a farmer who had a large hose and was spraying what appeared (to all our senses) to be liquified cow poop! We had to step carefully as some had sprayed over the road.

When we arrived in Gimmelwald there was a nice little cafe, but somehow the ambiance was not encouraging, so we took the next cable car back down to Stechelberg, in the Lauterbrunnen Valley. Down in the valley there was yet another farmer spraying cow poop, so we decided it must have been National Poop Spraying Day.

Did I say down? This cable car ride was VERY steep and thrilling, and on top of that we could see paragliders jumping off the cliffs and sailing down to land right next to the station.

That’s it for my mountain hikes. There have been a lot of hikes through cities, and vineyards too, so stay tuned.

And don’t forget, there are many more photos of these hikes on Webshots.

Just click on the album titled “Switzerland – Jan’s Hikes.” Hopefully soon we’ll have an album from Kim’s hikes too, because he has some really stunning, perhaps even terrifying pictures!