Day 8 – A Walking Tour Of Interlaken

Interlaken is a short and very scenic twelve mile train or lake steamer ride from our home base in Brienz. Fans of the Latin language will probably figure out that the town’s name is derived from inter lacus, which literally means “between the lakes” – in this case between Lake Thun (the Thunersee, stretching northwest to the town of Thun) and Lake Brienz (the Brienzersee, stretching northeast to Brienz).

Interlaken has been a popular tourist destination for over 200 years thanks to both the idyllic lake setting and a very convenient location near the base of the world-famous Jungfrau, Monch, and Eiger mountains. Popular area activities (aside from souvenir shopping, anyway) include hiking, skydiving, hang gliding, boating, fishing, and skiing. All of this, unfortunately, combines to make Interlaken an easy target for tour buses and trains filled with day trippers, especially in the summer.

The potential revenue from these tourists apparently enticed the Interlaken city planners to introduce some glaring anomalies into the town’s otherwise staid and orderly Swiss environment. The most visible and notable among these being the first Hooters to be opened in Switzerland (built in 2001) and the inexplicable Jungfrau Park (built in 2003), an amusement park of sorts that features the Mystery World pavilion – a destination purpose-built for the tinfoil hat crowd.

The good news is that if you get a block or two away from the Höheweg (the main avenue traversing Interlaken) you’ll escape most of the chaos and get to see what is otherwise a fairly normal Swiss town that just happens to be in an incredible location. We had considered Interlaken as our home base for this trip but chose Brienz instead – in retrospect this was a great decision and we highly recommend the same for anyone planning a trip to this area. We were able to take advantage of Interlaken’s excellent transport connections (mostly via the Interlaken Ost bahnhof) without having to dodge throngs of people wandering aimlessly with Rick Steves guidebooks …

We had fairly steady rain all morning but this showed signs of letting up after lunch. It wasn’t going to let up enough for us to risk a wet, slippery mountain trail but the conditions would be fine for us to stay on the valley floor and have another good look around Interlaken.

We took the 12:38 InterRegional train to Interlaken Ost and were on the trail by 1:00 PM. It was still raining lightly but not so bad that we needed anything more than rain hats and rain coats in conjunction with our typical uniform of a long-sleeve t-shirt, a button-down fishing shirt, zip-off hiking pants, and GoreTex boots.

We walked a nice paved promenade along the Aare River to Interlaken West and then followed the wanderweg (curiously named the Tschingeleystrasse even though it wasn’t actually a street) to just short of where the Aare River meets the Thunersee. We crossed the river on a nicely-built pedestrian bridge and walked back along the other side of the Aare on the Weissenaustrasse. This took us into Unterseen and then Interlaken proper right at the Interlaken West Bahnhof and lake steamer dock.

From Interlaken West we followed the Bahnhofstrasse and the Höheweg back to Interlaken Ost. This route took us past landmarks like the Hotel Central Intercontinental, the Grand Hotel Victoria Jungfrau, the Grand Hotel Beau Rivage, and Hooters (of course). We weren’t in the mood for wings so we stopped and did some grocery shopping at the large high-end Coop store across from the Interlaken Ost bahnhof. We were quite certain that few if any customers had ever graced this store with reusable shopping bags from Harris Teeter!

While waiting for the train in Interlaken a historic steam locomotive pulled through the station pulling several restored passenger cars from the same era. The train was a special charter to and from the Ballenberg museum (Day 7) and put on quite a show – see the photos and video for today.

Fully stocked up for dinner and ready to relax, we boarded the 16:04 InterRegional and were back in the chalet by 4:30 PM for a quiet evening at home. We had a big day planned for Sunday and wanted to be fresh for what promised to be an epic hike.

Map

Photos

Weather

Meals