To get to Interlaken, I cycled over the Brunigpass. Camping at the foot of the mountains last night was a stroke of genius, because it was one hell of a climb uphill! This was probably the hottest day in Switzerland yet (possibly even in all my travels to date) and it was a scorching, humid 35 degrees as I did the two-hour, 1015 metre climb. But it was definitely worth it. The slow wind uphill went for about 8km, but the stretch heading down into Interlaken was a bit longer, so I was screaming down the mountain towards the lake at good speed. There were hardly any cars which was fab, so I had all the road pretty much to myself as I leaned into the corners on the switchbacks. Definitely makes the climbs worthwhile when you get such an awesome downhill run! By the time I’d reached the bottom, all my sweaty clothes had dried from the rush of the wind.
Interlaken is a pretty cool town, and it almost seems to exist just to cater for backpackers. I think every second shop was an adventure sports place trying to send you rafting down a river, or jumping out of an airplane over the alps. During the winter, it’s all about extreme snowboarding and the like. Fantastic stuff, I think everybody at the hostel probably did something off the long list of activities during their stay there. Except me of course, I had my itinerary worked out, and I brought my own bike along, so I didn’t need to hire one. But I’ll take the free map, thanks!
I spent the first afternoon in town just chilling out, relaxing after the climb, and also taking a rest from the four days of cycling I’d just completed to get to the centre of Switzerland. The hostel I was staying at was called the ‘Funny Farm’. It had the kind of vibe of a place that once used to totally ‘go off’ but had somehow gone on a terminal slide over the past few years. The building out the back was almost derelict in appearance, and you could be mistaken to think that you were staying in a squat, not a hostel. There were all sorts of bar areas, swimming pools and the grounds were enormous, but it was the little things that gave it away. Like the fact that one of the pools had no water, the spa didn’t work, the nightclub downstairs was appallingly craptastic, and the beer prices were just a little bit too high to prevent people from getting absolutely slaughtered. It was a place that had been awesome once, but was now in decline. Still, the rather large group of young travellers, mainly Americans, made the most of the happy hours around the main pool, a second happy hour around a campfire bar / beer garden thingy, and we generally had a good sociable time.
My second day in town was jam packed. I cycled Bessie up into the higher valleys that I came here to explore. Grindelwald was first on the list, I knocked it out of the way early because it was the furthest away, though in saying this, it was only 18km away. I had underestimated the climb – I went to about 930m, just a little short of the huge Brunigpasse climb the day before! Fortunately this time I had no luggage on the bike, so it was a bit easier. Grindelwald was the kind of place you think of when you see the ‘Sound of Music’. Picturesque valleys, green fields full of flowers, and in the distance, the mountains lording over the whole valley, covered in snow and each peak sporting an icy glacier. The Eiger and the Jungfrau mountains were both easily visible from the valley, it was an amazing sight. I could have taken a train up into the Eiger, but it would have cost me about $300 AUD for the trip, and I couldn’t quite justify that! Though I’ve heard it’s one of the best train trips you can ever do in the world. The Swiss build the train line in a tunnel running up the middle of the mountain, and near the top, they cut a hole in the side of the mountain. The train stops there, and you get to look out across the glacier, and the view is apparently breathtaking. Then you head up to around 4100m, the highest train station in the world. One day I’ll come back and do that, but this time, I’ll settle for a hike up the mountains. So I left Bessie chained up in the main street of Grindelwald, and hiked up the mountain another 400 metres or so, to get a fabulous, unspoilt view of the valley and grabbed some fantastic photos. I had to wait a couple of hours for the cloud to lift (typically, stinking hot days every time I’m cycling, and the moment I stop to do some sightseeing, I wake up to find think cloud cover!) but eventually it did lift and I’m glad I waited.
That was all supposed to be one day, but I managed to knock Grindelwald out of the way by just after lunch. So I decided to do Gimmelwald / Lauterbrunnen straight away and then perhaps I could leave Interlaken a day earlier than planned, and possibly check out Bern, which I would have skipped otherwise. The cycle trip down the valley, back towards Interlaken was so much fun! I think I broke the speed limit for most of the way down, hard to do on a bike. And I set a new max speed on the bike – 59km/h. Not bad considering I also had the brakes on for most of it! Yes I was wearing my helmet too, in case you were wondering.
I headed up the Lauterbrunnen valley, to find a very amazing, nearly unspoilt place. There were about 35-40 waterfalls all the way along, run off from the glaciers high above. The main attraction I headed for was the Tunnelbach (check) waterfall. For a small fee, you could head inside and see this amazing waterfall that literally cascades through the middle of the mountain. They have a lift that takes you up to the top and there are about a dozen different viewing stations. The waterfall carved its way into the mountain over millennia, and you’ll get wet if you stand on the wrong part of the viewing platform! It’s extremely fast and furious too, they say that 20,000 litres of water come out of the mountain every second. And something like 22,000 tonnes of rubble and rocks will come down through the tunnel as well every year. The waterfall is the glacial runoff from the four biggest glaciers, two of which are the Eiger and the Jungfrau (I can’t remember the other two names just now). Anyway, there’s a video of it if you wanna watch it.
I headed a little further up the pleasant valley, nearly all the way to Gimmelwald, but I figured that that would have to be another trip also. Gimmelwald is a small Swiss traditional town about 1400m high, and you pretty much need to go on a cable car to get there. Not easy with a bike! Apparently it’s unspoilt because some clever villages a few decades ago felt threatened by the possible development that would destroy their quaint little village, so they managed to have the valley declared an ‘avalanche risk zone’ which prevented any further building. It’s the kind of place you can go to and walk up to a cow with a huge bell around it’s neck, and the villagers wear traditional clothing and stuff. They also use electric fences, so I found out the hard way when I tried to paddock jump to take a few photos. I remember cycling along here and out of nowhere I see this bloke plummeting out of the sky. He’d clearly just jumped off a cliff and I swear he was about to land right in the path of my bike, before he pulled a shute cord and landed in the paddock about 10 metres from me. His whole family was there watching him basejump from probably about 1000 metres, and I wouldn’t have thought much about it except that it was a bit startling seeing somebody randomly falling through the air!
So anyway, Interlaken gets the thumbs up for a pretty cool destination. It’s a great base for doing everything in the surrounding region. I chilled out the final night with the happy hour at the beer garden / campsite bar. I ended up in a conversation with two brothers from Perth, I can’t recall their names but they were very opinionated and one was a bit of a pyromaniac. When I sat on a log stool at the bar which nearly collapsed underneath me, in our drunken state, it was unanimously decided that it was an OHS risk to leave that there, and that given the state of disrepair of most of the hostel around us, the staff probably wouldn’t miss it, so two of us picked up the huge log and dumped the whole chair onto the fire, which quickly caught on and created a glorious blaze that we sat around for hours and drank. When I finally called it a night, and deciding against going to the nightclub in light of how much fun I didn’t have there the previous evening, I instead headed out to grab a feed.
Roaming around looking for a kebab joint or something, I was stopped by a policeman who was standing in the middle of the road, who wasn’t so much concerned by the fact that I was cycling around on my bike after having a few beers, but more the fact that I didn’t have any lights. I got off by playing the ‘dumb tourist’ card and received a stern but friendly “I think you walk from here”. Begrudgingly I walked until I was out of sight, then nearly back at the hostel, I found a pizza joint near another hostel and ate one of the best pizzas I’ve ever tasted. It had a garlic butter base sauce, instead of the usual tomato paste. Beayuduful!
That was where the fun ended. I was woken up by a Canadian fellah who was snoring like a foghorn all night, then by a bunch of bloody Asians who decided to repack their entire travelpacks whilst everyone was sleeping. But at least I got some sleep once they’d all gone off on their ways and could sleep off the hangover.
