Tales of an Amorphic Destiny

Bern and Lauterbrunnen

July 10th, 2007 at 03:50pm James

After leaving Montreux behind we drove north and stopped in the town of Yverdon-les-Bains to visit the Maison d’Ailleurs, ("House of Elsewhere"). This museum contains ever-changing exhibits dedicated to "science-fiction, utopia and extraordinary journeys" and when we visited we were lucky for them to be exhibiting the work of Christian Scheurer.

Schurer has provided concept art and architectural design for many films and video games including The Fifth Element, Dark City and The Matrix. It was amazing to see examples of his original paintings and concept sketches and how they evolved into being used in the final versions of various movies and games.

The lakeside town of Neuchatel was on our way and so we also stopped in there for a look. We strolled through the old part of town and then hiked up the hill to where the college, chateaux and castle were once protected from invaders by heavy fortifications.

We kept heading north and after another night of camping in the pouring rain, we went in to explore Bern, Switzerland’s capital city. While it’s often overlooked in relation to Zurich we found Bern to be a beautiful city, built up from the steep slopes that lead down to the river.

The old town was very quaint – we walked past Einstein’s old house and on to the massive clock tower that dominates the area.

The fountains with the statues on top are all around the old town, the most striking one depicting a troll eating small children from a sack!

On the way out we also had to see the city’s famous bears. Apparently the town’s name came from a bear that Duke Berthold V had killed and so bear motifs still abound, including these guys who spend their lives in a bear pit being photographed by tourists like us.

Leaving Bern we drove south-east in the direction of the region around the mighty Jungfrau, an area famed for it’s natural beauty, specifically its mountains and waterfalls. As we drove into town the Weisse Lütschine river was roaring, engorged with the waters of the snow melting high on the peaks around it.

Our campground was beautifully situated in front of the Trummelbach Falls and so after setting up camp we went for a stroll to take in the scenery.

We took the trail up to the falls themselves and with almost complete disregard for wet-weather gear, (I’d put on my leather coat, that was about it) we walked up through the tunnels and behind the waterfall itself. When the wind whipped up there wasn’t many places to hide from the spray, but it was a spectacular site nonetheless.

That night we went for what was going to be a quick drink in the campground bar. A tour group of Aussies, Kiwis and Japanese were hanging out after dinner but they were probably a bit too povvo to afford the Swiss drink prices and after they all departed we were left in the bar with a group of  Royal Marines who were doing high altitude training in the area.

United by the strength of Her Magesty’s mighty Pound Sterling we ended up staying on untill about 2:30 in the morning, eventually chatting with Gary from the  north of England and Des, a Scotsman who was up there as a chef for the younger blokes. There was some excellent banter and Des pointed out a few places to check out in Glasgow, (his hometown) when we vist Scotland in a few weeks.

The next day we were surprisingly sprightly and so we went for a hike up to a glacier outside nearby Grindelwald. Everything was going well until we saw the steps…

We counted 999 of them on the way down, but the weather stayed reasonably nice and the climb to the top was exhausting but still enjoyable.

At the top of the walk we were still some way from the glacier, but we could see the base of it from the edge of the gorge that we ended up on.

After the hike back down we were ravenous, so we picked up some mariated pork, mushrooms, and corn from the supermarket as well as a packet of Rosti mix. We still hadn’t tried this national Swiss dish, which is similar to Spanish tortilla but with a little more cheese. We BBQ’d up a storm back at the campground  and even managed to get the rosti to hold together after an initial unsuccessful attempt at flipping it.

The Trummelbach falls are beautifully lit at night and so Sarah took a few shots before we finally hit the hay.

We woke up refreshed by the cool mountain air an after saying farewell to Des in the marines camp we set off for our next destination. Some more photos of the beautiful Jungfrau region are here.

Entry Filed under: Europe