Erland’s Ranting

We only spent seven days in Switzerland, but the awe-inspiring landscape – combined with some amazing weather – was enough to produce 97 shots I’d like to share with you. Below is a selection of 53, but you can view the full slide-show here.

We came into Switzerland on the train from Munich, and were immediately impressed with the clean, efficient (are you really surprised?) and low-emissions transport. Mind you, Deutsche Bahn, the German train system, is pretty much just as good and possibly a bit cheaper.

I don’t think I can remember once looking out the window of the train and seeing a view that wasn’t incredible. The good weather didn’t actually start at once – it was raining on the train trip, but sometimes that can make for an even more interesting scene.

Our first stop was Luzern, where we spent two days. Remember the good weather I was talking about? We set our tent up in a drizzle that degenerated into a downpour overnight. Gotta love waterproof panniers. Before that I had an opportunity to be a sheep. By that I mean photograph what is reportedly one of the most photographed structures in Switzerland, the medieval wooden footbridge of Luzern (well, actually, the water tower on the left is the star attraction – I don’t know why, I reckon the bridge is far more interesting).

Of course, when the weather really cleared the next morning, it also brought out the Italian spear-fishers with boogie-boards. Don’t ask, I have no idea, it was still bloody cold though.

Spent most of the day just wandering around town, so here’s a taste.

Here’s that beautiful weather coming through:

This is actually one of my favourite shots. I think that when I really like a photograph there’s something more to it than the sum of it’s elements. It’s a subjective thing, so you’ll probably just think I’m crazy.

Climbing to the top of the tower you can see above gave an excellent view of a solar-powered llama shelter. Who ever said this wasn’t Alice’s wonderland?

There’s two more in this series just outside the old town wall that I like – I think one of the reasons is that there is so little modern infrastructure present that you can imagine you really are seeing things as they might have been in medieval times.

Just near the point where we turned back into the town through the wall, there was a small field with highland cows! Do they have another breed of cow that looks like a heeland coo but developed in the Swiss Alps, or is the poor lass just imported?

Above the town sits a grandiose castle/hotel outfit which affords stunning views over the town,

…but unfortunately I can’t show you a decent shot of the building as there was a wedding happening there when we hiked up the hill. There’s also some great forest behind this hotel which appears to be protected and we actually spotted a deer, or possibly one of the local variations, on the stroll back into town.

War monuments aren’t usually my thing. This one, however, tucked away in the back streets of Luzern,  is probably worth sharing. What a stunning piece of sculpture.

On the morning we left Luzern to climb higher into the Alps, the landscape and weather once again came together to make a magic view. It was a tough call between the photo below and this one.

The rest of our time in Switzerland was spent in the stunning (I’m running out of superlative adjectives here, help me out) Lauterbrunnen Valley.

The train ride up there was the steepest of my life – in Australia I don’t think they really build trains that go up mountain-sides. Anyway, this was the view out the window on the way up.

The valley had some stunning features to it, as you can see. If this is the end of Summer, I can hardly imagine the volume of water during the Spring melt.

We settled into our new home for four days, a camp ground on the edge of town.

This was our cosy little corner, perched on a tiny plateau above the main section of the camp-ground and facing the upper end of the valley.

Just wandering around the valley was the most enjoyable experience, revealing it’s little secrets, like a babbling brook,

…or a beautiful Swiss Chalet with a grass roof – a very sustainable design choice, apart from being über-cool.

Our most strenuous sojourn in the Lauterbrunnen Valley was walking up to the town of Wengen.

Initially, we tried to ride, but pushing the bikes up a 30% gradient didn’t seem like the best fun, so we leaned them against a paddock fence and continued up the path, through the forest, stopping occasionally for a rest

and on past cottages dotted on the hillside, always looking up at the looming valley wall that is Wengen’s backdrop,

until we came out onto a lane out of nowhere and into town. Here’s an example of the perfectionism applied to wood-gathering for the Winter.

We considered going further up to the plateau, but had really left it too late – wandering slowly brings it’s own comforts and attractions so I wasn’t bothered. The views from in and around Wengen, if it’s possible, were even more spectacular than from the valley floor.

Up on this mountain range are some of the last glaciers in Europe, rapidly disappearing as a result of accelerating global warming.

Looking back above Wengen, you can see evidence of one of the most serious impacts of climate change for the local people – the horizontal bands on the hills in this shot are rows of stakes dug into the ground to help prevent avalanches. Avalanches have become more frequent in Switzerland in the past few decades as the altitude of the permafrost has dropped.

And on the way back down, the sun was beginning to set, opening an eye onto another world.

Looking down through the conifers from the path on to Lauterbrunnen town. Or another view with the waterfall (well I can’t include every shot).

Back on the valley floor, I was reminded that photography is painting with light.

See if you can spot the Swiss flag in the one above. If I’m right in assuming that quantity of flags is a good measure of nationalism in a country, Switzerland is sick with it.

Being in the Alps, it seemed logical to go somewhere really high one day. The advice was that the most popular destination in the area, the highest train station in Europe called Jungfrau or the ‘Top of Europe’ – was really expensive and not as impressive as the Schilthorn, so we scheduled in a trip to the latter. Any high-altitude trip of course requires a high-nutrition preparatory meal, and who are better equipped to provide this than the Swiss.

Ugh.

We cycled up to the far end of the valley where the cable-car left from, also home to tree-topped avalanche shelters.

And once up in the car, were rewarded with a new perspective.

It turned out that the cable-car ride was several cable-car rides. Here’s a taste of what we saw on the way up.

This looked like the ruins of a hill-fort to me. More on that when I finish writing my blog about Wales & Scotland.

High altitude living:

This is looking across in the direction of Jungfrau – one of the reasons taking the Schilthorn is better is so that one can look at the mountain rather than out from it.

Here’s those anti-avalanche stakes again, next to some very interesting rock formations.

General beauty:

Looking down at the drop and being thankful there are Swiss mechanics regularly servicing the cable-car.

Last stop before the top.

There are too many landscapes from up here and most really speak for themselves, so please look at the slide-show. Here’s one taken right at the top showing a meagre patch of snow that survived the whole Summer at just below 3000 metres.

The concrete block you can see in the corner above is part of the foundations for an incredibly ugly building that I’m not going to share with you called the ‘Piz Gloria’ – a revolving restaurant and gift-shop – whose name and sole marketing point seems to derive from being the set for a Bond movie decades ago. Incidentally, there was another film shoot happening when got there – it appeared to be a Bollywood production, but who knows…

Skipping past the bit where I forgot my jumper and started to freeze up there, followed rapidly by the scene with the over-priced, watery, but-at-least-warm hot chocolate and right on to the trip back down from our 2970m excursion, here’s yet another shot taken from the cable-car, with a line curving all the way down to the car-free village of Mürren.

And the light just kept getting better.

Mürren was gorgeous, and I’ve got the shack to prove it.

Now here’s a funny story though. As we wandered through town in search of mini-golf, which I’d spotted from the cable-car, we found a church. The funny thing about this church was it’s lack of a cross. It’s one of those things that is more conspicuous by it’s absence, I guess. We had a look around too, not just a cursory glance – confirming that indeed it was a christian church but definitely didn’t have a cross. I like it.

More of the ornamental quirks of Mürren.

And finally, a nice spot for a vege garden.

Late in the day, we made the final descent back to the valley floor.

That was our last day in Lauterbrunnen. The next morning we had a slow start, packed up our tent and rolled out of town and all the way down to Interlaken, passing the world’s cutest train station on the way.

That’s it. We took the train from Interlaken to Basel, then cycled across the river and boarded a different train from the German Basel station bound for Freiburg… our last destination of the Summer tour.

I’m sorry the commentary is lacking a bit in this post, but there are so many photos here from just a few days – really not a huge amount happened, there was just so much to see – and hopefully many of the shots speak for themselves.