Swiss Heartland Untour, Spring of 2002
by Janice and Derek Ransley, Lafayette, CA
June 5 was transition day. Our friends at Idyll had mapped out our train journey from Avignon to Lyons to Geneva to Lucerne to Sachseln. The new TGV station in Avignon is still a mess and Avis is still located in a “temporary” building. However, it was a different one from when we arrived.
After having carefully been given specific numbered seats in a specific rail car for the ride to Lyons on a TGV, we were taken aback when we were told to grab any seat in one of the forward rail cars. We didn’t have any tight connections except in Lucerne. We traveled from Lyons to Geneva with a Norwegian guy who had been on vacation in Crete. Janice met him in the Mr. Clean at the station in Geneva and helped him out with a two-franc coin when he needed to use the john.
As we traveled the weather got darker. The language around us started to change from what seemed like melodious French to the harsher German. We wheeled our luggage to Platform 12 in Lucerne to be waved onto the train by a guard who was anxious to give the “Go” sign. We came in to Sachseln in pouring rain. I guess that we weren’t hard to spot. Two figures charged towards us with umbrellas and directed us to their car. This was our introduction to Luise and Niklaus Schalin. We were even more appreciative when Luise whisked us upstairs to their quarters for a cold-cuts and asparagus dinner. We had worked on our French before the trip, but not any German. High school German was deeply buried but we did manage a pretty good exchange, thanks to Janice.
The apartment is wonderful; light, nicely furnished and well equipped. Janice wondered if the kitchen had ever been used. We were shown the TV and the fact that it had CNN. We borrowed CDs to play on the CD player/radio. We looked across the road to a field that sometimes contained sheep and sometimes cows both with bells.
Thursday was orientation in Meiringen. We walked the 10 minutes to the Sachseln station and caught the train. There was quite a gang of Idyll folk to greet us, most of them having worked for Idyll for about 20 years. Madeline Thoni was the ringleader although each one had their say.
Afterwards, we had lunch in town and then headed towards the Aareschlucht Gorge. (H&BG F1 Page 33) It was a pretty day and the walk took us past houses and hills that made us feel that we were indeed in Switzerland.
The gorge is well worth a visit. The gorge was two to thirty feet wide with the river Aare rushing between two walls of rock. There were either tunnels in the rock to walk through or platforms built out over the river. It was spectacular! The gorge is 1400 meters long. When we emerged, we decided to walk to Innertkirchen and then catch the little one-car train back to Meiringen.
When we got to the station in Meiringen for the trip home, we discovered a potential problem. It turns out that the trains from Interlaken and from the Lucerne direction both come into the station from the same direction. Also the trains to both destinations go out in the same direction and at about the same time. We made careful note, of course.
The following day found it raining early and a heavy overcast obscured the hills. So we decided to go to Lucerne. We followed a walking trail that showed on a tourist map. This took us through the old town and across the covered bridges and to some of the churches. We felt that Lucerne to be a very attractive city, probably more so if the surrounding mountains could be seen.
We had good fondue for lunch and then headed to the Rosengart Museum, where a kind lady figured how to politely ask me if I qualified as a senior. The museum itself is interesting because it has high, white walls with openings between galleries so that one can see parts of several galleries and art works. The main floor was devoted to Picasso. Upstairs, was a fine collection of Impressionists. The basement was Klee. I guess I hadn’t appreciated that I didn’t appreciate Klee.
We headed home to watch Ferrero beat Safin. We went out for dinner but found that Idyll’s claims for Sachseln’s restaurants were overly optimistic.
June 8 was also gloomy. We caught the train to Brienz and then the boat to Giessbach (H&BG B6 Page 11). We took the funicular to the Grand Hotel Giessbach, a very attractive and fancy looking place close to Giessbach Falls. We started the walk to Iseltwald in light drizzle. We first crossed a bridge over the falls and then took a side path. This brought us to another bridge, this one being under (behind) the falls. An interesting viewpoint! Iseltwald looked like a pleasant little town, but we weren’t unhappy to see a boat to Interlaken pull towards shore. Coffee and tart on board was a well received. A large COOP, right across from the station had sprung up since we were there in 1989.
The weather was no better next day and was beginning to get old. The literature suggests Ballenberg Open Air Museum as a potential wet weather trip. (DB Page 10) It was a pretty good choice. Old buildings from all over Switzerland have been gathered in a hilly part of the country and reconstructed. The buildings are quite widely spread out and it was indeed fairly hilly, so we got some exercise. It was well done. It was a Sunday and there were many folk in native costume and also a drum and fife band in costume to entertain us. While waiting for the bus back to Brienz, I wasn’t alert enough to recognize that we could have caught the bus to Brunig and returned home from there.
While waiting for the bus we chatted with a Japanese couple and an English couple. That’s the kind of experience that adds uniqueness to a trip. We were to run into the Japanese couple again in Grindelwald where they were spending two weeks. We also saw the Brits again too.
You can’t fight Mother Nature! A fourth day of grubby weather was getting to me. Low cloud, fog and drizzle! We decided to go to Lauterbrunnen regardless of the weather. We caught the funicular and train to Murren. There were few people around and the town looked drab and one could not see across the valley. It was lunchtime and the shops were closed. We ate our sandwiches sitting on a sheltered bench and then took the reverse Grandfather’s Walk (H&BG B4 Page 10) to Grutschalp (I don’t understand why the walk is described in the H&BG as going from Gutschalp to Murren which is uphill!). That took about an hour, arm-in-arm under the umbrella. The only thing of interest was a couple of recalcitrant cows that wouldn’t go where they were bidden.
June 11 and I couldn’t believe it. The skies were clear! I was up at 6 AM and going through the literature. We chose to go to Schynige Platte (DB Page 15), where we had been 13 years before. The trip was to Interlaken and to Wilderswil, the first stop on the train to Lauterbrunnen, and the cog rail to S.G. We were squeezed into wooden benches in a section of a two-car train. The train twists its way up the mountain affording views of the lakes Thun and Brienz. As we got higher, the train passed into a tunnel. As we emerged, there was a collective gasp from all on the train. Before us appeared the Jungfrau, Monch and Eiger in all their snow-covered glory. That was more like it! That was what we came for!
We stood admiring the mountains from across from the station. Then we headed uphill following trail signs for the Panoramaweg. The loop follows a ridge that looks down on Lakes Thun and Brienz with Interlaken situated between the two. Turn away from that and you have the wildflower-covered slopes and the mountains. What a choice! I can still feel the excitement as I write.
After the walk and drinks at the café, we headed for the station. Things got a little testy as one of the two cars of the train was “Reserved”. Apparently, groups can make return reservations (I think). We took the train to Grindelwald on the way back. It certainly is in a beautiful location but it is a lot busier than the Idyll towns.
The next day was even clearer. An early start put us at Lungern and I think that we were the first on the gondola to Schonbuhl (DB Page 16). We transferred to a chair lift to reach the top. We seemed to be surrounded by mountains, which we couldn’t readily identify. We started on a trail that started out being quite wide but started to narrow fairly soon. The signs were to Hoch Gumme. There was a spectacular lookout towards Lake Brienz. We found ourselves walking on a trail that had a shear wall to our right and a sharp drop-off to the left with two to three feet of trail between. At one point a steel cable had been hammered into the rock as a handhold. The next challenge was a snow bank across the trail with previous walker’s footsteps in the snow and a slippery slope below. A young fellow went bounding up the trail and stomped across in no time. Janice made it across with great nonchalance while I cowered. Eventually I timidly walked the 50 feet or so.
We didn’t have a map to follow and we could see that none of our choices had much appeal. The loop around the mountain looked much longer than we planned on. A seeming short cut up and over the mountain looked made for goats. We turned around and I had to face the snow bank again (but did a little better that time-honest!).
It turned out that the fellow who passed us earlier was scouting the trail for a repair gang. A couple of the workers teased us by standing shoulder to shoulder barring our way. Swiss humor, I guess! I told the foreman, who spoke some English, that I didn’t like the snow bank. He announced to the workers that “the Englishman doesn’t like our snow bank so we better fix it”. “Javohl!”
We walked the 20 minutes from the gondola to the rail station in Lungern. This is another pretty town. We took the train to Meiringen and visited the Alpbachfall. We doodled around town before catching the train. I was reading the Trib and Janice was planning tomorrow’s outing. I eventually got that uneasy feeling that we were going the wrong way and indeed we finished up in Interlaken. The train in the Lucerne direction was pulling out as we moved into the station leaving us with an hour’s wait. We took the local to Meiringen and had a pizza dinner before eventually getting on the right train.
June 13 was another wonderful day. Madeline Thoni from Idyll was taking a group to visit the old houses in Hohfluh. There were about 20 of us. We enjoyed a chance to ask Madeline about the issues of living in the area as well as learning about the houses. As we ambled along, we were looking at the Wetterhorn peaks and the Rosenlaui Glacier. The whole group came for a lunch (I think that Madeline was surprised and pleased) at the Hotel Beren. Another nice experience!
After lunch we set out for a walk. This was the Hohfluh to Reuti walk (H&BG C3 Page 14). As the book says, it is a steep climb at first, then you walk on the level with the mountains to your right. There was a lot of activity as haying was the game. Everywhere you went, there were farmers with rakes, on tractors, with scythes, on hay-pick-up trucks working, often on very steep slopes. We took the gondola to Meiringen and went to visit the Nature Museum.
We were getting used to the wonderful weather. Today’s outing was from Melchtal to Sarnen via Flueli. (H&BG B1 Page 8 and F2 Page 33). We visited the very ornate church in Melchtal before we started walking. The walk was beside a stream for a while and then through the woods. We visited the Bruder Klaus shrines in Flueli while trying to temper my skepticism. It is a popular place for pilgrims who come by the busload. We continued on to Sarnen after visiting the Hochbrucke, a local jumping off point
Frau Schalin plays violin in the Sarnen Orchestra and invited us to a performance of Saen-Saens “Carnival of the Animals”. We went with Niklaus and enjoyed the evening. About 200 school kids were creatively dressed as the animals. The Schalins took us for a “drinken” (in this case, sundaes) to the Paxmontana Hotel in Flueli afterwards.
Again, super weather for our next trip. We went to Lauterbrunnen and walked to Stechelberg (H&BG A5 Page 5). This was slightly up-slope walk to view waterfalls. We skipped Trummelbach because we had visited years before. We took the gondolas to Murren. My what a difference! We had been there on June 10 and couldn’t see anything. Now the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau were just across the valley. Spectacular!!
Today is the day that the cows are taken to the higher pastures. We were alerted to their coming by the clanging of cowbells. I didn’t really understand why there were so many herders. Teenage family members were also roped in to move them along. The confines of Murren’s streets disguised the problems ahead. As soon as the herd emerged from the town, most of the cows headed for the nearest field. It was mayhem! Grandad was chasing up and down steep hillsides chasing the animals and a heart attack seemed imminent. Eventually all the animals moved along the road with one exception. A particularly stubborn cow wouldn’t move. We think that the presence of tourists dissuaded the farmers from using more aggressive means of persuasion. Later in the day we saw the same family group driving a van to pick up this cow.
We found a store in Murren with some English paperbacks, which was a blessing. We continued on the reverse Grandfather’s Walk to Grutschalp, which we had walked on June 10 when we wouldn’t have believed that there were mountains for miles. It is a superb walk! The mountain scenery changes as you walk. The views through the valleys opens up and the shoulders of the hills have towns perched on them. We could see Wengen and the train climbing to the Jungfrau. Cows and wild flowers filled the meadows. The walk took 90 minutes because we kept stopping for that perfect photo.
That evening we took the 20-minute walk to Hotel Belvoir for dinner. We had an excellent light meal sitting on a balcony overlooking Lake Sarnen. We started with gazpacho, which I always thought was tomato but was told that any vegetable could be used. There was a little donner und blitzen and a brief thunderstorm too.
It was a warm and rather humid Sunday. I had visited Bern over 30 years ago but Janice hadn’t been there. I assumed that you should go via Interlaken but it probably is faster to go via Lucerne. When we got there, the place was dead. We wandered through the old town but, of course, the shops were closed and only a few tourists were around. It seemed that all the main buildings were being renovated even the famous clock tower and the railroad station. We followed a tour suggested by Michelin, and made the obligatory visit to the bear pit. We had lunch but enthusiasm was waning. We found that the train timetable demonstrated that it was best to return via Interlaken, which we did in an air-conditioned train.
June 17 was warm and rather hazy. We chose to go to Lucerne and go for a boat ride. The boats were full of groups of children or teenagers. We sailed over to Burgenstock and took the funicular. Then it was a 25-minute walk in the shade. The views of the lake and the surrounding hills, mountains and towns were impressive, but dampened by the haze. We took the elevator (fastest outside elevator in the world!) but again the views of the mountains were muted by the smog. That’s what you get for seven days without rain! We took the boat to Alpnachstadt and the train back to Sachseln and cleaned up to go to Idyll’s farewell dinner. This was a pleasant event with interaction with other Idyllers, accordion playing and alpenhorn solos.
Our last full day in Sachseln was intended to be low-key. Janice had spotted a craft shop in Hohfluh and wanted to purchase a table runner. I realized that, except for the two times that we visited Lucerne, we had started every day by taking the train in the direction of Meiringen. This is a beautiful ride. The station at Sachseln is a matter of feet from Lake Sarnen, with green mountains rising steeply forming the backdrop on the other side of the lake. Next stop is Giswill, where another engine is added for the pull over the hill. The train immediately begins to climb. Lake Lungern comes into view with its green mountains, and, as we get higher, snow-capped mountains appear on the horizon. Kaiserstuhl then Lungern appear as collections of houses and church spires in green meadows that sweep down the hillside from the train tracks to the lake. Brunig is where we lose the extra train and we go, very slowly, down the slope to Meiringen.
We got off in Brunig, and naturally the bus was waiting. It turned out that Hohfluh is closed on Tuesdays. Plan B surfaced, so we had coffee and excellent goodies at the bakery while we waited for the next bus to Reuti. There we continued on the gondolas to Planplatten. It was cooler and less humid at that elevation.
We walked out along a ridge and watched a couple of hang gliders start their ride and tried to capture their efforts on camera with a mountain background. The views were again spectacular. The mountains rise sharply from the valley floor, streaks of waterfalls and patches of snow along their sides and snowcaps on top. We saw families with very young children begin the hike downhill.
After lunch, we headed down to Meiringen and an internet café/bar where we watched the end of a World Cup soccer game and sent e-mails to family. As we walked to the station, Janice spotted the table runner she wanted in a shop. A great final day!
We enjoyed our three-day visit to Zurich but the weather continued hot and humid. The Hotel Engimatt is way over-priced for a non-air-conditioned hotel and doesn’t seem to give Idyllers any breaks. Also, there is a nearby clock tower that strikes four times an hour all through the night.
Afterthoughts:
- We have now experienced four Untours. It is a great way to spend a vacation and the Idyll staff and hosts that we’ve met are wonderful.
- In each place, it was easy to get laundry done and we didn’t use all the clothes we brought with us, so the idea of packing only half of what you think you need (as Idyll says) is not far-fetched.
- Our Briggs and Reilly wheelie bags are great, but they weigh 17 pounds empty. We are checking out LL Bean.
- Even with the amount of information Idyll gave us, it is difficult to get a real appreciation of the distances and times involved with travel until you get to your destination. In our case, Sachseln is (in round numbers) 30 minutes from Lucerne, 60 minutes from Meiringen, 90 minutes from Interlaken and 120 minutes from Lauterbrunnen. So to consider a trip which blithely announces the starting point as being Lauterbrunnen, you face at least 4 hours of travel that day. It means that you spend a lot of time on trains. Also, the trains don’t run late into the evening and so you can’t seriously consider concerts or dining up or down the line. This felt like a limitation at times. The summer timetable kicked in on our last Sunday, but that didn’t help much.