Swiss Grand Circle - 14. Ballenberg and Lake Brienz Cruise

500 museums to choose from courtesy of the Swiss Travel Pass, and this was our favourite.

Now we’re definitely not museum buffs, though we did visit about a dozen museums across 8 cantons during our time in Switzerland, partly because they were all free for Swiss Travel Pass holders. No other museum came even close to Ballenberg in terms of entertainment value, photogenicity, sheer size and ability to engage family members of all ages for an entire day.


Combining Ballenberg with a pleasure cruise on the turquoise waters of Lake Brienz -- also free for Swiss Travel Pass holders -- became the perfect wind-down after two days of hiking and glacier viewing high up in the Jungfrau and the Schilthorn. Our 16 day Swiss Grand Circle was nearing its end.


Basing ourselves out of a rental apartment in Lauterbrunnen, the decision was tough for our third and final day: the First - Bachalpsee hike followed by a zipline ride, or perhaps a leisurely trip up Schynige Platte, or the legendary First - Bachalpsee - Schynige Platte trail for a serious 11 hour hike. We wished we had a fourth or even fifth day in the Berner Oberland, but that’s just a perpetual craving of every serious traveler.


Our morning started at Interlaken Ost where our boat was just a three minute walk from the train station. With several departures per day in summer peak season, our little ferry would embark on a 90 minute journey down the full length of Lake Brienz, finishing next to the Brienz train station where passengers could seamlessly transfer to trains for Interlaken or Lucerne, or in our case a local bus for the Ballenberg Museum.


Making stops on both the northern and southern shores of Lake Brienz, our boat pulled into the 800-year-old town of Iseltwald where numerous B&B and a cheap hostel has formed a backpacker hotspot, halfway between Interlaken and Brienz to take advantage of this idyllic stretch of the lakeshore as well as the numerous hiking opportunities nearby.


Occupying the tip of a tiny peninsula on Lake Brienz's southern shoreline, Schloss Seeburg was just one of many romantic sights on one of the most spectacular ferry routes in the Alps. On the opposite shore one could spot the Brienz Rothorn railway, a steam-powered cogwheel train climbing 1700m to the local summit.


Waterfalls plunged into perfect turquoise waters reminiscent of Plitvice Lakes. Above the pictured Giessbach Falls is the oldest funicular railway in Europe, a 140-year-old antique that still chauffeurs guests up to the cliff top hotel for a panoramic view.

After 90 minutes our boat arrived punctually -- as one might expect of any Swiss means of transport -- at the small town of Brienz where a short ride on the local bus brought us to our highly anticipated destination.


I feel that the word museum does a great disservice to Ballenberg.

This is far from just an exhibition of old buildings, but a Swiss Cultural Property of National Significance as well as the undisputed national centre for preservation and learning of Swiss handicrafts and traditional construction techniques.


Boasting an extraordinary collection of more than 100 historic farmhouse and functional outbuildings from all corners of Switzerland, Ballenberg Open-Air Museum is larger than the Disneyland in Anaheim and attracts a quarter million visitors -- mostly Swiss -- in its 6 month operating season between April and October. A curious visitor can easily spend a full day or two without getting bored, which is why the museum offers a two-day pass as an option. And of course, visiting is free for holders of the Swiss Travel Pass.


The museum grounds is organized into a multitude of independent villages representing 12 different regions of Switzerland, from Appenzellerland at the Austrian border to the alpine heartland of Berner Oberland (pictured) to the Jura in the far west. As it can take more than 30 minutes just to walk from one end to the other, the presence of an East and a West entrance -- both served by local buses -- turned out tremendously useful to avoid backtracking.


Our favourite was the Central and Bernese Midlands village, a fully functional demonstration farm with its own herd of Swiss dairy cows and impressively preserved farmhouses dating from as early as the 1600s, including the pictured labourer's house from Aargau with a thatched roof.


Retirement at Ballenberg is the ultimate aspiration of all old Swiss farmhouses. When a rural building of significance is ready to be demolished or replaced by a modern version, a team of experts from Ballenberg would study and dismantle the building, stone by stone and wood plank by wood plank, to be reassembled here and restored to its former functionality, complete with native farm animals as was the case of this pig pen from suburban Brugg.


As an authentic working farm, Ballenberg isn’t shy about demonstrating the art of raising livestock for the purpose of turning them into sausages in its century-old smokehouse. Serious visitors can enrol at Ballenberg’s course centre to study the art of meat curing, wood turning or perhaps iron forging in multi-day and even multi-week programs from the country’s leading experts.


The cold-smoked sausages and cured meats, some of which are ready-to-eat for picnics, can be purchased at the village meat shop hosted inside another historic farmhouse. One important note for fellow budget travelers: Ballenberg is one of the rare tourist attractions in Switzerland that actually welcomes visitors to bring their own food and have an old-fashioned family picnic under the tree.


Where we couldn’t afford to splurge in restaurants, we went full-out in our cheap supermarket picnic with some Migros shrimp appetizer (my favourite!), green salad and cherry tomatoes, cured landjäger sausages and rohschinken, Emmentaler cheese and local bread, all washed down with a bottle of white. And if this somehow wasn’t enough, there was the option of picking up a grilled wurst at a hot food kiosk at the next village.


The self-sufficiency of the village was evident in everything from its farm plots full of native vegetables and medicinal herbs, livestock for its own milk, cheese and meats, and a functional water mill to grind its own flour for the resident artisan to churn out fresh bread from its wood-fueled ovenhouse. In fact the ovenhouse produces more bread than the museum restaurants can consume, and the rest is available for purchased at the museum shop.


The village was coming alive on this September day with the potter churning out new stoneware, the weaver creating cushion covers with her hand-operated loom, and the miller at the waterwheel grinding out fresh spelt flour -- all artisan products you can buy at the museum shop. In another month or so the wine press will come into action with the annual harvest of grapes, before the museum closes its doors for the winter.


To demonstrate that rural life isn’t a dying tradition, the museum has converted one of its 19th century farmhouses into a showroom of 21st century comfort with a modernized kitchen equipped with induction cooktops and a convection oven, well-designed storage spaces, airy contemporary bedrooms and a bathroom with a standalone jacuzzi tub. Needless to say this was my wife’s dream house.


While this wasn’t our first visit to an open-air museum -- the Gassho-zukuri Minka-en at Shirakawago and the Black Forest Open-Air Museum in Gutach im Schwarzwald come to mind -- it was certainly the largest and best organized we had ever seen. We could have easily spent the entire day here, but decided to hurry back to Interlaken in the late afternoon for souvenir shopping at the local Coop before the store closed early on a Saturday.


After two days in the mountains and one here on the lakeshore, our memorable stay in the Berner Oberland -- and our 16 day circular trip of Switzerland -- was coming to an end. That evening would be our last in the enchanting village of Lauterbrunnen before we moved to Lucerne for our final night.

Swiss Grand Circle - 13. Family-Friendly Hike Beneath the Jungfrau

We had plenty of warnings ahead of our obligatory trip to the Jungfrau.

Overhyped? Only if you encounter terrible weather.

Most congested mountain in Switzerland? One of the top two or three.

Most expensive second-class train by kilometre in the world? Most definitely.


Everyone loves the Jungfrau’s UNESCO World Heritage pedigree and dreamy scenery, yet most bemoan its daily besieging by masses of multi-national tourists, all converging at Kleine Scheidegg awaiting their exclusive train ride to the legendary Jungfraujoch. But there is a cheap(er) way to avoid most of the crowds as we found out, for novice hikers who wish to enjoy the Jungfrau without the exorbitant prices.


At a fraction of the price charged for a round-trip to Jungfraujoch, one could take the train as far as Wengen before transferring to a cable car up the local mountain of Männlichen, where a flat, family-friendly trail leads straight to the foot of the Jungfrau. From the cable car one can appreciate the steepness of the glacial valley, cleft between 3000-plus-metre peaks and concealed in shadows except for the midday.


Known as the Männlichen-Kleine Scheidegg trail, this 7 km route packs a dizzying punch of Switzerland's most famous landscapes into a well-maintained trail navigable for rugged baby strollers in good weather. Along with the Lavaux vineyard hike above Lake Geneva and the Panoramaweg near St. Moritz, this was one of our three favourite beginner hikes in Switzerland.


Starting from the Männlichen cable car station and passing a children’s playground featuring a ginormous cow-shaped slide, the trail swerves slowly around the eastern slopes of the Tschuggen peak towards the alpine transport hub of Kleine Scheidegg. The inclines were apparently gentle enough for some young ladies in high heels, making it a comfortable 2 hour stroll for these two 9-to-5 workers of average fitness.


One key attraction of the Männlichen-Kleine Scheidegg trail is its near constant and unobstructed view of the Jungfrau’s magnificent north face which, along with her neighbouring peaks of Mönch and Eiger, forms the core of continental Europe’s watershed at 4158 metres above sea level.


An easterly panorama overlooks the Grindelwald valley and its pair of popular resort towns, normally served by the Wengernalpbahn cog rail which did not serve Grindelwald at the time of our visit. That was partially the reason behind us choosing the village of Lauterbrunnen as our home base in the Berner Oberland.


For families requiring more frequent rest stops, a picnic area at the halfway point provides a weather shelter and a few barbecue pits. And if you aren’t the sort to haul your own wine bottles on hikes, the Grindelwaldblick restaurant beckons near the end of the trail with its offerings of hard apple ciders and beers.


Aside from its tempting offerings of beer and wurst, the Grindelwaldblick also features one of the best viewpoints along the route with an elevated pavilion built next to the restaurant, providing the pictured front row view of Kleine Scheidegg beneath the Jungfrau. We started our hike just past 10:00 and arrived at 12:00, in time for lunch before embarking on our most expensive afternoon outing.


Now here’s my next tip for budget travelers. If you’re going to blow your budget on train tickets like we did, you might want to skip the overpriced restaurants by staging your own Swiss picnic on Kleine Scheidegg’s limited number of benches. A shrimp appetizer, a green salad, landjäger jerky, bread and cheese, and a small bottle of sparkling cava, all available from the Coop supermarkets at Wengen for about CHF 10 per person in total.


We needed every franc we could save to pay for the most expensive excursion of our 16-day journey across Switzerland, CHF 110 (CAD$154) per person in tickets to take the cog rail from Kleine Scheidegg to Jungfraujoch and back to Wengen later this afternoon. And this was AFTER the 25% discount offered to Swiss Travel Pass holders.


Sticker shock aside, Swiss rail engineering was marvellous to behold as our cogwheel train tunnelled up the mountain’s base and made an intermediate stop at the underground station of Eismeer, boasting an aquarium-like viewing window burrowed out of the Jungfrau’s southeastern face to provide visitors with an up-close view of the Ischmeer Glacier.


The panorama became even more impressive at the terminus station of Jungfraujoch, the highest train station in Europe at 3454 m and straddling the continental divide at the heart of the UNESCO protection zone. Jungfrau’s steep north face would eventually drain into the Rhine towards the North Sea, while the southern glaciers would follow the Rhone into the Mediterranean.


The southern slopes overlook the Aletsch Glacier amid the largest contiguous glaciated area in Europe, 22 km long and an incredible 900 metres deep at the far end. From this vantage point one could pick out the occasional snowshoe track from mountaineers or perhaps resident scientists studying the glacier as a barometer for climate change.


Beneath the ice lies a large underground tourism complex with restaurants and cafés, a snow park, museum, theatre and souvenir shops all interlinked by a series of tunnels, complete with a Lindt shop that seemed to carry limited quantity treats that we had never seen elsewhere.


My favourite spot for memorable photos was the ice palace, ideally with a good enough camera for capturing the translucent walls without flash. We visited a similar palace the previous week at the Matterhorn Glacier Express above Zermatt, but here the lighting turned out much better for photos.


A quick elevator ride to the Sphinx Observatory afforded a bird’s eye view of the snow park below. Renting a snowboard -- or a snow tube for those who would rather sit -- turned out affordable enough that I would have rented my own pair of skis if we had a full afternoon on these slopes. With our limited time I had to settle for a few golf swings of hitting snowballs down the glacier, still enjoyable though less exhilarating.


And I didn’t know at the time that it was possible to spend a night up here!

Not at the train station, but at the Mönchsjoch alpine hut 45 minutes from the station, accessible only via a snowshoe hike. Simple meals and warm beds await, as well as possibly the most spectacular sunrise in the Alps. Too bad we had to return to Lauterbrunnen on the second last train of the day.


On the way back we stopped by Wengen, famous for its car-free status as well as one of the most impressive Skiing World Cup events held annually at the Lauberhorn slopes above town. The spectacular setting come at a cost of higher apartment prices and one more train transfer from Interlaken, which led to us picking Lauterbrunnen as our homebase at the end.

Swiss Grand Circle - 12. Schilthorn and the Swiss Skyline

It was the grandest panorama of our 16-day journey across 10 cantons in Switzerland, a front row seat to the Jungfrau’s legendary north face rising vertically three kilometres from the shadowy depths of a barren limestone gorge. And we almost skipped this spectacular gondola ride until we realized that it was completely free to Swiss Travel Pass holders in our period of visit.


In retrospect though, a trip up the Schilthorn would still be worthwhile even at the usual half-price offered to pass holders. We also considered the First-Bachalpsee round-trip hike as an alternative, but the lure of that famous panorama, followed by an idyllic stroll from Mürren to Gimmelwald and finishing with a subterranean passage into the bowels of the roaring Trümmelbach Falls, proved irresistible.


Settling into our apartment at Lauterbrunnen on the valley floor, we took three day-trips in the Bernese Oberland starting with the Schilthorn. The next day we would take the magnificent hike from Männlichen to Kleine Scheidegg then the cogwheel train to Jungfraujoch, and on the final day a boat cruise on Lake Brienz followed by a visit to the Ballenberg Open-Air Museum.


The trip itself was a fascinating ride across various modes of Swiss mountain transport. Passengers arriving by train at Lauterbrunnen would first transfer to a cable car -- which used to be a funicular -- up 700m to the mountain hamlet of Grütschalp, then hop onto a 1960s narrow guage train for the charming town of Mürren, before ascending another 1300m on a modern gondola to the very top.


At Mürren travelers get their last chance of picking up picnic supplies at a distinguished Coop supermarket, famous for having all its goods shipped in every morning by cable car. Even in the 21st century the town remains largely inaccessible by road, and the only vehicles in town are electric golf carts chauffeuring hotel guests from the station.


Mürren’s extraordinary setting is best appreciated with a bird's eye view from the gondola, where the town can be seen perched at the cliff edge with a near-vertical, 800m drop to the Lauterbrunnen Valley below.


Cervelats and landjägers -- Swiss sausages that require no cooking -- were becoming our lunch staples along with the usual cheese, salad and our indispensable tube of Tomy mayo, all learned from watching Swiss hikers along the way.


Part of the Schilthorn’s attraction is the Thrill Walk at the intermediate gondola station of Birg, featuring a steel walkway cantilevered into the rockface and overlooking a sheer drop of 800m below. No matter how secure the safety net is, this tightrope simply isn’t for the faint of heart.


There are those who haven’t yet learned to fear, and those who put their trust in the robust Swiss engineering that went into this mesh tunnel overhanging a most epic drop.


The Ogre, the Monk and the Young Maiden, all part of the local legend that I learned from a Swiss-born friend who called the Jungfrau the biggest and ugliest of the three. This was the Swiss skyline that we came for.


Across the valley stood Gspaltenhorn, Breithorn and their neighbouring 3000+ metre peaks stretching across the Jungfrau range. Mount Titlis and Mont Blanc are also said to be among more than a hundred summits visible from the observatory platform here at Schilthorn.


The slopes below also host the longest downhill ski race in the world, the infamous Inferno boasting two kilometres of nerve-wracking speeds that would take a gruelling 15 minutes even for professional racers. Intermediate skiers like myself would likely take three times as long to finish, providing that I get through the annual draw for entries in the first place to this exclusive event alongside the world’s social elites.


The alpine lake of Thunersee, two and a half kilometres of vertical below us, glimmered from beyond the Lauterbrunnen Valley. After a couple hours at the Thrill Walk and the revolving observatory, we took the gondola back to Mürren for a 2 km downhill stroll towards Gimmelwald.


Even after being made famous by Rick Steves, the alpine hamlet of Gimmelwald remains sleepy and serene due largely to its inaccessibility: no cars, no trains, just a cable car that runs every 15 minutes and shuts down after 17:30. This tranquility would have been killed by the proposed development of a ski resort, thwarted at the end by the ingenuity of the villagers who declared the village an avalanche zone, now evidenced by the prevalence of triangular avalanche-breakers set up around the village.


We once considered renting an apartment in the village, but our desire to explore other parts of the Berner Oberland demanded the convenience of transport that steered us to renting at Lauterbrunnen instead. We did stop at a self-serve ice-cream stand -- really just a fridge full of single-serve ice-cream cups and an unattended wooden box to collect payment -- before taking the cable car down to Stechelberg for our next destination.


One of the few means of transport in Switzerland that offer absolutely no discount for Swiss Travel Pass holders, the 100-year-old underground funicular at Trümmelbach Falls takes passengers deep underneath the skirt of the Young Maiden where the largest subterranean waterfall in Europe awaits.


A dimly lit path leads into various viewing chambers, slippery from the misty air and made more so by the footsteps of the hundred thousand annual visitors from around the world who find their ways here despite its out-of-the-way location.


Unlike the snow melt on the Schilthorn side of the valley which gives rise to the impressive Staubbach Falls over Lauterbrunnen, the melting glaciers of Jungfrau burrows underneath the mountain and culminates in this subterranean monster at Trümmelbach, a cascading series of ten waterfalls to the delight of visitors.


Every year 20,000 tons of rocks and debris tumble down these falls and travel in the direction of Lake Brienz, contributing to its famous turquoise glow under sunlight. We finished our hour-long tour just before the waterfall closed at 17:00, in time for a short bus ride back to Lauterbrunnen Station to complete our round-trip for the day.


Arriving at Lauterbrunnen for the night, we're glad we took up the offer from Swiss Travel Pass for the complimentary -- and time limited -- day-trip to the Schilthorn. Just a few months after our visit, the rules changed again and the price of the Schilthorn gondola went from completely free for pass holders to now half-fare. It would have been worthwhile still, but I would have a harder time choosing between Schilthorn versus Bachalpsee. I really needed a fourth night at Lauterbrunnen.