Ancient Switzerland - Ballenberg - Impressions #26

Ballenberg is an "outdoor museum" where traditional buildings from all over Switzerland have been moved to. It is set up as a series of villages and farms, grouped by the different regions of the country. During the summer people volunteer to stay there, doing gardening, farming, taking care of the animals and engaging in all kinds of amazing crafts.



This is a typically serene interior. There were so many like this. Utter simplicity but nothing antiseptic or mechanical about it.



Wood, of course, is the predominant material. Ceilings are only as high as they need to be, often no more than 7'. On a cold winter day that wood interior, with the generous windows and a fire in the woodstove ...



When your farm is prospering and you start to have a little spare time on your hands you can make the effort to apply a slightly more refined finish to your interior. The paneling helps to cut the drafts in the log construction. The white paint brightens the interior, though the people who built these homes were not shy of using color. They did it boldly and brightly.



In the corner is a ceramic wood heater. With a wood fire in it the big ceramic and brick mass would heat up and radiate heat for many hours, all through the night. Notice the chair back in the lower left corner. This photo is of the same room as the photo above it but from the opposite corner.



I couldn't resist getting a photo of this roof gutter, a hollowed out log, connected to the roof framing by naturally hooked branches.



A view across the valley in the direction of Meiringen and the mountains beyond.



On my walk back "home", the B&B I was staying, I got this perfect view of the Milibach Falls, which drop gracefully free of the wooded mountainside.

My camera batteries died just about now. So I was only able to take a few photos at Ballenberg. Otherwise I'd have subjected Gentle Reader to dozens more. The place is amazing and delightful. The day I was there volunteer groups of musicians and dancers had gathered in makeshift "parties", drinking beer, doing folk dances. One man got ahold of an Alpenhorn and played the most surprisingly beautiful and lyrical melody on it. You haven't heard music in the mountains until you've heard a skillfully played Alpenhorn echo off the alpine peaks.

The most amazing waterfall of them all - Impressions #25

This lovely paddle wheel steamer plies its way around Brienzersee all day long, connecting the various villages to Interlaken, at the far end of the lake. Its first stop outside of Brienz is at the base of Giessbach Falls, a 15 minute trip. Though these falls don't have a legend attached to them, like the death of Sherlock Holmes, they are certainly more awe inspiring. The Giessbach Falls are perhaps the most dramatic and awe inspiring in the entire region.


Another view of the boat. It was built around the turn of the 1900s and is in perfect working order after a restoration in 2001.


At the other end of the lake the boat pulls up to a little dock which also serves as the boarding platform for the Giessbachbahn. This is the oldest funicular train in Switzerland, built in 1879. It's a short line, chugging its way up to a landing stage about 350 above the lake.

There is also a trail, which I chose to take instead. The trailhead and base of the Giessbach Falls are just a few dozen yards from the dock.


The first 350 or so feet of the Falls consist of a series of rugged cascades, almost like a whitewater river set at a steep slope, rather than a "falls".




The first climb ends at the terrace of the Grand Hotel Giessbach. You can see the funicular platform, the little gable roof tucked into the trees, right in the center of the photo. The trail comes up to roughly the same spot.


The terrace of the Grand Hotel Giessbach is an excellent place for a meal or tea. But I saved that for after my hike up the falls, for that first 350 foot climb was just the warm up. I was only 20 minutes into a hike of 2 hours up.

Everything about the hotel lives up to its name. It is in no way intimidated by its magnificent setting. I heartily recommend lunch at the Grand Hotel.


From the Grand Hotel this is the view up the next branch of the Falls. Look closely just above the top of the Falls and you will see a footbridge. The next photo is taken from there. If you think this is the top you are seriously mistaken.


The view up from the footbridge in the previous photo. Look closely here, just a little more than half-way up and you'll see that the trail passes behind the cascade. You can just make out the horizontal bars of the guardrail.


At this point I am approaching the point where the trail passes behind the cascade.


Looking back down towards the hotel. Starting to get a feel for the scale of this place?


If you look back at the photo "the view up from the footbridge" and find the highest point of water, that is where this photo was taken from, looking up yet again. It just keeps going and going. Eventually it ends at a glacier thousands of feet above. I never made it. But one of these days I will. From here I continued to the top of the water seen in this photo...


... and from there I took this photo looking up again. The cascade just kept climbing up into that misty light.

At this point I threw in the towel, headed back down to the Grand Hotel and had a really delicious late lunch.

Remember, you can click on any of these photos and see much larger versions.

Sculpted by Glaciers - Impressions #24

After visiting Reichenbach Falls and taking the funicular back down to the valley floor, I was walking back towards the village of Meiringen when I saw a sign pointing in the direction of the little tower in the distance by the river. It said "Aareschlucht".

Earlier that morning my landlady had said something to me in Swiss German, over breakfast. It was basically incomprehensible but I caught the gist of it, which was that there was some place called Aareschlucht that was interesting. So off I went down the path.

Just beyond the little tower you'll see an area of deeper shade. This is where the Aareschlucht begins. It is a crevasse, in the mountain, at least 400 feet deep. The path leads right into the heart of it. At times it is narrow enough that you can touch both sides. At its widest point it's barely 100 feet. The whole length of it is a little less than a mile long.

Apparently this whole valley of Meiringen was carved by a glacier. Somehow or other it split this mountain in two and the river ended up flowing through the crack. I guess if you're a glacier you can do that sort of thing.





If you suffer from vertigo or claustrophobia I suggest you skip this part of the trip. But if you can handle it, then I highly suggest checking this place out. It is really an amazing feeling to walk inside that mountain, with water dripping down the cliff faces on both sides, glimmers of sunlight filtering down, little clumps of grass and wildflowers clinging to the cracks in the rocks.












Inside the mountain


















Emerging at the eastern end, late afternoon sunlight filtering through the pale green.



















Reaching the other end of the crevasse, the view opens out over the village of Innertkirchen. It being rather late in the day I decided it was time to turn back. But instead of going back through the crevasse I thought I'd follow the hiking path back up over the mountain.





Right near the entrance to the crevasse on the Innertkirchen side was this adorable chalet. We don't seem to have the guts, these days, to cover our houses with curlicues and carved edelweiss flower decorations. But back in 1902 apparently it was still alright.

Part of the pleasure of traveling through this part of Switzerland is stumbling upon these unabashedly picturesque spots.



Back up over the mountain and down the other side, on the outskirts of Meiringen, the local cows check me out.














An ancient apple tree calmly goes about producing her bounty.










The Romanesque tower of the main church in Meiringen rises up above the rooftops, like one of the spikes or pinnacles of the distant mountain peaks.

The tower is actually freestanding and separate from the church itself.





The church is a simple stone rectangle, plastered and white-washed, giving no hint of its interior.









Inside it offers a soothing light, warmed by the natural colors of the wood. The columns of whole tree trunks make a satisfying change from the typical stone interiors of most European churches, emphasizing the importance of the local environment in the daily lives of the people.





Across the street from the church is this simple and elegant example of traditional architecture. This part of Switzerland, the Bernese Oberland, straddles the mountain range that leads, in the south-east direction, to the Italian Alps. On the Italian side you will find the same rooflines that reflect the slopes of the mountains. But the walls are built of stone. On the Swiss side you find the log cabin type walls. At Meiringen we are in the zone of overlap.

The Notorious Reichenbach Falls - Impressions #23

From Brienz, a short train ride of 20 minutes took me to the small town of Meiringen, just a bit large than Brienz, with 3 churches instead of one. It lays right in the center of a long, narrow valley through which flows a stream that eventually flows into Brienzersee. Several waterfalls cascading down the valley walls feed into this stream. The most dramatic and notorious is the Reichenbach Falls. I took part of the day to walk from Meiringen to the base of the Falls, and then hike and climb up the mountainside, to the top of the Falls.

At one point the path splits and a short spur heads off to the right about 100 yards, where it comes to an abrupt end, dropping into the abyss of the falls. It used to extend about another 150 feet. But it has gradually eroded away. One hundred and twenty years ago Arthur Conan Doyle stood on the spot roughly 150 feet ahead of me and this is what he saw.



"It was on the third of May that we reached the little village of Meiringen, where we put up at the Englischer Hof. then kept by Peter Steiler the elder. Our landlord was an intelligent man and spoke excellent English, having served for three years as waiter at the Grosvenor Hotel in London. At his advice, on the afternoon of the fourth we set off together, with the intention of crossing the hills and spending the night at the hamlet of Rosenlaui. We had strict injunctions, however, on no account to pass the falls of Reichenbach, which are about halfway up the hills, without making a small detour to see them.

It is, indeed, a fearful place. The torrent, swollen by the melting snow, plunges into a tremendous abyss, from which the spray rolls up like the smoke from a burning house. The shaft into which the river hurls itself is an immense chasm, lined by glistening coal-black rock, and narrowing into a creaming, boiling pit of incalculable depth, which brims over and shoots the stream onward over its jagged lip. The long sweep of green water roaring forever down, and the thick flickering curtain of spray hissing forever upward, turn a man giddy with their constant whirl and clamour. We stood near the edge peering down at the gleam of the breaking water far below us against the black rocks, and listening to the half-human shout which came booming up with the spray out of the abyss." - The Final Problem -



In fact, in the story, Conan Doyle created a kind of composite. He describes the path and the view of the waterfall accurately. But the view he describes is a much closer match to what you see several hundred feet above this point. So, after sitting on a rock by the side of that plaque for a few minutes and absorbing the gravity of the moment, I turned back and rejoined the main path towards the top of the Falls. I soon reached a point where I found the view he described, the water "hurling itself ... into the boiling pit of incalculable depth".

This upper part of the falls consists of a series of pools. Some can be seen, but others are deep inside the mountain and all there is to be seen is the water disappearing over a lip of rock, falling into blackness. Here and there a trickle of sunlight slips between a crack in the rocks and reflects off of the hidden pools, making a glimmer of light emerge from the dark.



- the pools stepping back up the hillside -

"In a tingle of fear I was already running down the village street, and making for the path which I had so lately descended. It had taken me an hour to come down. For all my efforts two more had passed betore I found myself at the fall of Reichenbach once more. There was Holmes's Alpine-stock still leaning against the rock by which I had left him. But there was no sign of him, and it was in vain that I shouted. My only answer was my own voice reverberating in a rolling echo from the cliffs around me.

It was the sight of that Alpine-stock which turned me cold and sick. He had not gone to Rosenlaui, then. He had remained on that three-foot path, with sheer wall on one side and sheer drop on the other, until his enemy had overtaken him. The young Swiss had gone too. He had probably been in the pay of Moriarty and had left the two men together. And then what had happened? Who was to tell us what had happened then?" - The Final Problem

"The blackish soil is kept forever soft by the incessant drift of spray, and a bird would leave its tread upon it. Two lines of footmarks were clearly marked along the farther end of the path, both leading away from me. There were none returning. A few yards from the end the soil was all ploughed up into a patch of mud, and the brambles and ferns which fringed the chasm were torn and bedraggled. I lay upon my face and peered over with the spray spouting up all around me. It had darkened since I left, and now I could only see here and there the glistening of moisture upon the black walls, and far away down at the end of the shaft the gleam of the broken water. I shouted; but only that same half-human cry of the fall was borne back to my ears." -The Final Problem



"A few words may suffice to tell the little that remains. An examination by experts leaves little doubt that a personal contest between the two men ended, as it could hardly fail to end in such a situation, in their reeling over, locked in each other's arms. Any attempt at recovering the bodies was absolutely hopeless, and there, deep down in that dreadful cauldron of swirling water and seething foam, will lie for all time the most dangerous criminal and the foremost champion of the law of their generation." - The Final Problem

Look closely at the photo above. You will see a chalet at the top. This marks the point where the road to Rosenlaui passes above the top of the falls and heads into the mountains. This being Switzerland, of course, once you've made the difficult and exhausting hike up the mountainside, and faced the drama and tragedy of the Reichenbach Falls, you are greeted by a chalet where you can order a lunch of perfectly prepared spaetzle with emmentaler cheese and tomato slices on the side, followed by a dessert of hot chocolate and a pastry, while sitting on a terrace and enjoying the view below.



Looking ahead to another long walk in the afternoon, along the Aareschlucht (see next post), I decided to take the easy way back down and hopped on the funicular railway, which got me back down to Meiringen in about 20 minutes. Incidentally, Meiringen became such a tourist attraction to the English, after the 1891 publication of "The Final Problem", that an Anglican priest moved to the town and started a church. That church is now a Sherlock Holmes museum, a sort of a church to the patron saint of scientific rationality. In 1991, on the 100th anniversary of Holmes' death, on the occasion of the church becoming a museum, Conan Doyle's daughter attended the event and cut the ribbon.