Interlaken and Brienz

 

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Friday, June 3rd.

Today started with our three travelers catching the 9:02am (exactly) bus and tram from our motel to catch the 10:05 train from Zurich to Bern and then on to Interlaken with Brienz our ultimate destination. It's a recommendation of Dale Tomlinson from ARF creative services who told Kate about it the day before we left. So "peculiar travel suggestions being dancing lessons from god" (Kurt Vonnegut Jr), we decided to spend our one full travel day going to Brienz.

Some geography first: Interlaken (between the lakes) is a town between two narrow mountain lakes — Thunersee to the west and Brienzersee a short distance to the east with the town of Brienz on the far east end. You'll not be surprised that the town of Thun is at the far west end of Thunersee. This area is to the south west of Zurich with lots of mountains in the way. The route we take there is a fast train trip along the valleys through Bern, the route we take back is slow train over the mountains and through Luzern. This forms sort of circular travel route.

Before arriving in Bern the conductor came along to check our tickets which he asked for (in German of course). We didn't understand what he was asking and replied that we didn't speak German. He immediately switched to French and we were pleased to hear a language that at least sounded familiar. All of us have high-school French which we've long forgotten, nevertheless it was nice to hear. Anyways, we figured it out even though we're basically unilingual English.

We arrived Interlake Ost (the east end) about 12:30 and were able to quickly transfer onto another train for Brienz which we did even though we had planned on taking the boat ride from Interlaken. The boat ride is one and a half hours long but it didn't leave until 1:30 so we decided to take the train instead. The train is only one half hour. Our plan is to visit Brienz and then take the boat back. As it happened, we found that the Brienz train goes through Luzern — we ended up taking the boat back to Interlaken and then hopping a train again immediately for Brienz and our 6:00pm return to Zurich via Luzern.

Brienz was everything that was promised. It's a beautiful area surrounded by mountains with waterfalls that plunge high off the cliff and disperse into a rain/mist before hitting the ground and flowing to the Brienzersee.  The town is quaint, quite lovely, as is the lake. We had a beautiful sunny day, some shopping, a meal, a return boat trip (all covered by the Europe Rail Pass) and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.

Cindy and Kate didn't have a lot of time to go off onto the side streets and admire the architectureof Brienz. We did some shopping and went for an upscale fish lunch. We walked along the waterfront and then along the main street, finally finding a place that specialized in fish — local fish from the Brienzersee. We passed by places that had chicken cordon bleu and others with pasta and finally found a somewhat pricey seafood place. The waitress was really nice, not overly friendly or fawning, just pleasant and nice. She was a person we felt comfortable asking questions. E.g., one fish on the menu was described as being "from the basin" and upon questioning the waitress we thought it was a geographic "basin" in the sense of a "valley" but on leaving the restaurant we saw that it was in fact a fish tank outside the front door containing several live fish which are served fresh for dinner! 

Reg had "Saitling" (we think that was the name) while Cindy and Kate had "Felchen" (again we recall that was the name) which is some kind of lake fish that had no English equivalent.  Cindy's phrase book translated it as a kind of trout. However, it was very close to perch with white flesh and nothing like a trout with pink flesh. Reg had two fish and they were served whole — the waitress filleted one and Reg scrambled the other. The lunch was quite tasty.

The architecture here is pretty much uniformly wooden. Buildings are made of squared timbers with lots of fancy detailed work decorated with flowers — geraniums in particular. Back in Zurich, in the city, the buildings are all stucco. But the wood style of architecture is pretty common throughout the countryside. Brienz is also famous for wood carvings. We didn't buy any 6' tall men carved by local craftsman (c.f. cigar store Indians) but Cindy and Kate did buy some more transportable woodwork. They bought a wood turned bowl and a little wooden box for rings and jewelry.

Cowbells are a big tourist draw too. The cows actually wear them — we think so the farmer can find them. Genuine used cowbells at antique shops fetch a good price and are preferred over the made in Japan tin versions. Up on the mountain side you can see cleared meadows with quaint little barns also of wood. We suppose you'd have to carry the wood up the side of the mountain as roads are very few and far between.

Our friend Martin, who we visit later on during this trip, skis in this area. We wanted to take a train to 11,000' but didn't time it right — it's also expensive at over 100f! But worth it they say.

Kate had a boat schedule that said we could ride back to Interlaken and then return to Brienz to catch the train over the mountains to Luzern. We did have a bit of a boat ride to enjoy the views on Brienzersee but the mate, or deckhand, whatever he was, had a different ideas. We backed down a channel to the dock before Interlaken and were told, or more or less guessed, that it was the end of the line — everyone off. The mate confirmed this to Kate but she insisted that the schedule said it was to return to Brienz. "Oh, that's the summer schedule", he replied. She counters, "Oh, what's this? Isn't this summer?". We have a 2l bottle of Chianti "rotwein" we were sharing so that might explain her persistence. As we are first class European Rail Pass we can ride on the upper decks on the boat and enjoy the view and the sun. But to get back to Brienz we have to take the train (again).

Back on the train heading out of the Interlaken district we climbed an incredible incline up and over a mountain pass between Brienz and Luzern. We've never been on such a ride! The Meiringen to Brunig-Hasliberg portion is an amazing steep climb on a cog-train over the mountain pass! We hung out the window snapping photos of the valley where we had been, the cows in Alpine meadows, and one another hanging out the windows (see photo above). Cindy cautiously reminds us of a long ago incident when she was a camp counselor where one of her campers lost her head out of a bus window when it went too close to a building! We are forewarned, careful but undeterred.

The crappers/WC's on trains really vary. The train in the morning was quite modern. This old cog train over the mountain pass has a toilet that dumps directly onto the track — you can see it rolling by when you lift the lid (as you have a pee). Cindy is very distressed by this but we've seen this in Canada too. Kate and Cindy bought some beer with stopper tops, the kind we see with Grolsch beer in Canada, it has a similar bottle. Somewhere along the way Reg opened one and managed to soak everyone. It was one of those natural beers with yeast still floating around that's easily disturbed. Since Kate is already stained with red wine ("rotwein") she's very forgiving. That night we wash our jeans, T-shirt, and Kate's jumpsuit in our tub at the motel. We wonder if they'll ever dry in this dank dark motel room.

When we did the one hour Lucerne, we had to switch trains, we wandered across a wooden footbridge (the "Chapel Bridge") near the train station. It must have recently burned down as it's been freshly rebuilt. If it had burned down that would have been quite the conflagration.

In the diary Reg writes:

Speaking of "dry "as I write this I'm sitting at the Wollishofen (that's an area of Zurich) Bahnhoff (train station) at an outdoor restaurant trying to get another beer. My German isn't great but I did locate the toilet and did get one beer ordered. They speak French too and I'm only marginally better there: "ein Bier bittee" vs. "une bière s'il vous plaît". How does one say "pretty please, I'm begging for another beer!"

We had a great day today. Our full day exploring Switzerland together. We zoomed around the countryside by boat and rail; we got to see some mountains, we had a lovely lunch and we really enjoyed ourselves.

Slides scanned and notes composed during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, March 2022 — as if living through the OMIGOD! COVID variant wasn't bad enough! The diary entries were made by Cindy, Kate and Reg at the time.