SwissViss: Interlaken and Bern

Friday, August 19 - Sunday, August 21 2011

Interlaken has been one of our most anticipated trips since coming to Switzerland. With good reason, too - it’s one of the main highlights of all of Switzerland and tour guides recommend the Bernese Oberland region (where Interlaken is located) as a ‘must-see’. While there is a lot to see in the region, our sights were set on conquering the Jungfraujoch, the highest railway station in all of Europe at 3,454 meters / 11,332 feet (appropriately titled “The Top of Europe”).

We left Geneva on Friday evening in order to head up the mountain as early as possible on Saturday (the earlier the better to avoid clouds). We spent a relaxing evening in Interlaken walking along the milky-blue river water and admiring the evening views of the Jungfrau through the lower alp peaks closer to town.

The next morning it was all business. Well, not really, but we woke as early as we could manage in order to book it to the train station and make the 2-hour journey to the top. We dropped our bags in a locker before taking the train toward Lauterbrunnen, the gorgeous valley town surrounded by waterfalls at the base of the mountainous trio – the Eiger (“ogre”), Mönch (“monk”), and Jungfrau (“young maiden”). The legend says the Jungfrau (looking at the picture to the right, the peak on the right) is protected by the Mönch (middle peak) from the mean Eiger (left peak). The trip isn’t cheap - with our half-price Swiss rail cards, the journey still cost us each 90 CHF round trip!

The journey to the top of the Jungfraujoch was absolutely stunning. As we got closer and closer to the massive peaks, they became even more awe inspiring. (And the colder and colder the temperature became—so glad we brought some warm layers.) The last 30ish minutes of the climb was actually tunneled directly through the Eiger.

The train stopped a couple of times to let people out to admire the different views from both sides of the mountain. One side was full of lush green scenery (looking back down toward the valley which we originated from) while the opposite side was an ice field that climbers use as their dangerous playground.

We got back on the train for the final leg of the ride and finally reached the top of Europe. As you can see, the views from this height were fantastic. To the southeast we could see the Aletsch Glacier, the longest in the Alps at roughly 23 km /14 miles. The opposite view was more of the lush valley below. In the last photo below you can see lines on the left side of the hill - these are actually avalanche protection barriers installed after a devastating avalanche in 1978 that buried half of the town of Wengen, below.

Before heading up there, we didn’t exactly realize how much there was to do at the top of the Jungfraujoch. Dave had actually sprained his foot pretty bad the week before so we weren’t planning on doing any hiking. However, when we found out that we could venture to a hut that was even higher than the Jungfraujoch we had to do it. We set out on the snowy path wishing that we packed something with a little more traction than athletic shoes. The round trip took us about 1.5 hours (part of that time was us stopping a few times considering whether we were really committing to the slippery hike). :)

There was also “Snow Fun” (yes, it was titled that), including zip lines with a rather rough ending and some sleds and snow tubes, which could be described best as “sad” solely based on the crawling speeds that the slope’s downgrade allowed.

After we had our fill, we descended back down to the mini town (if you could call it that) of Kleine Scheidegg, the transfer point from the Jungfrau train. We were greeted in Kleine Scheidegg by the bicycle leg of an Alpine triathlon. The climb up the hill to Kleine Scheidegg was so brutal that some participants actually had to walk them up the hill. There was something very amusing about seeing these athletes competing in a serious competition while riding next to Alpine cows in the middle of the road. But hey, if you’re going to do a triathlon, what better place to do it?

Instead of riding the train back down to Lauterbrunnen the way we came up, we decided to hike a couple hours towards Männlichen, which we could then take a cable car back down to Lauterbrunnen through Wengen. This turned out to be an amazing hike with all sorts of views and plenty of cows along the way.

By the time we made it back down to Interlaken and changed out of our warm clothes, it was early evening and time for us to head over to Bern for the second night of our weekend adventure. Before we left, we took one last look back at the Jungfrau and spotted the Jungfraujoch station sitting perched between the Jungfrau and the Mönch.

To give you an idea of how beautiful the city of Bern is - it’s listed as World Heritage site because of the resilient condition of it’s city buildings, many dating back to the 15^th century. We also found plenty of interesting landmarks in Bern…

Bern’s parliament building – although closed while we were there so we’ll need to stop by for a quick visit in the future.

The Swiss National Bank, which is the equivalent of the U.S.’s Fort Knox, holding half of Switzerland’s gold supply.

The Prison Tower marks what used to be an outer wall of the city. Through expansion of the city, the tower has been simply reduced to a landmark.

The Bern Cathedral (under construction so we will have to go back another time) overlooking the scenic Aare River dam.

The main Kramgasse street, running through the center of Bern, is particularly interesting as it is lined with cellars, which previously served as merchant stands on this extra wide street (as opposed to a large trading square). Some of them are still open and you can walk down inside, like at this Internet café.

And finally, a quirky aspect of Bern's art history - a fountain created in 1983 which was heavily disliked by Bern citizens shortly after it's inauguration and they wanted it removed. Unfortunately for them the fountain has stayed and over the years has grown to what you see in the picture below - an overgrown, algae-infested fountain dribbling water into the pool below. We think the citizens were on to something. :)

Albert Einstein lived in Bern for a period of his life and we walked by his old home. Additionally we decided to visit the Bern Historical Museum, which seems to be informally coined the Einstein Museum because the temporary Einstein exhibit was so popular that they integrated it into the rest of the permanent museum. We spent a couple of hours learning about his life as well as the rest of Bern’s major historical contributions (including the world’s first artificial hip replacement in 1960). The most important one in our books? Goldfish crackers (best invention of 1959)!

When visiting Bern it’s a crime not to visit the old clock tower that has been in operation since 1530. The “show” itself it a bit lackluster (a rooster crows and some bear figures move in a circle), but the far more interesting experience is realizing people have been standing in anticipation in front of this tower, for 5 centuries. Now we can now say we’ve joined the masses… :)

The main driver of our trip to Bern (at least at this (hot) time of year) was after watching Rick Steves float down the Aare River, in one of his show’s episodes. We had to do that! Apparently thousands of other people did, too, as the river was packed. The way it worked was we rented a locker at the Marzilibad outdoor pool and then joined what seemed to be the entire youth population of Bern on a walk up-river about a mile until we reached what looked to be the most popular entry point. The water was cold, but refreshing at the same time on a 90+ degree day. The current was so fast that after a 25+ minute walk it only took us about 10 minutes to float back. The river is conveniently lined with these red handrails that allow people to grab on and get out of the water every so often. What’s a little nerve racking though is if you miss the last railing you need to figure something out fairly quickly before you reach the dam!

On our first float we passed under a bridge that people were jumping off of. On our second float we opted for that. It took a little bit of coordination to avoid hitting the floaters below and not jumping at the same time as the others on the bridge, but once we found the right moment (and Ang found a little bit of courage), off we went! What a fun way to experience a local tradition and combat the heat at the same time.

We still had a couple things to accomplish after our floating adventure. Because Dave’s foot was hurting pretty bad at that point and we were low on time, we decided to rent some free bikes (yeah, FREE, awesome!) to help us get around our last couple of hours in Bern. Our primary objective was to go see the bears at BärenPark. “Bern” actually means “bear”, so as part of the town mascot, Bern has set up a wildlife haven for 3 bears to play around in. They were really active when we saw them, climbing trees and such.

Up a steep hill from BärenPark is a surprisingly nice rose garden with picturesque views of the city below. In one section they named the different roses. Of course we took a picture of the Bellevue flower… and we laughed when we saw the “Circus Knie” rose, named after the Swiss traveling circus we saw last summer.

We ended our evening with dinner at the Brewery restaurant right next to the bear park. It felt very American from the entree selection, prices, beer taste, and overall atmosphere of the interior. We weren’t complaining! We loved the mugs so much we decided to pick up a couple for our collection.