Interlaken – part 1

We spent a long weekend in Interlaken at the end of August. Without having consulted any official statistics, Interlaken is I think the most visited place in Switzerland. Lucern is a close second. It is situated between two mountain lakes.

The city is built for tourism. Its name was originally Aarmühle but it was changed in 1891.  Tourism started in the early 1800’s and the place never looked back.

With increasing rail and boat links, hotels developed along the route to the Jungfrau. In late 1800’s several luxury hotels were built with views of the Jungfrau and surrounding mountains.

This casino is one of the reasons why this place became popular.

The main promenade – Höheweg –  links the east and west side of town.  It is lined on one side with hotels – the grandest of which is the Victoria-Jungfrau. The street is really busy – tour buses dropping off hordes of tourists to buy souvenirs and watches, horse-drawn carriages pick up and drop off passengers.

The Victoria-Jungfrau has a very nice garden/sidewalk cafe. We were very thirsty and glad to find place to rest our feet. The cafe is across from a large open lawn known as the Höhematte.

This is taken from the other side of the Höhematte – from left to right – the Metropole, the Victoria-Jungfrau.

As if there is not enough going on in front of the hotel – the hotel provided a girl playing guitar to serenade the patrons. She was singing Bésame Mucho when we sat down.

Along Höheweg, beside hotels, there were jewelers, boutiques, and eateries, including a Hooters !  The waitress were wearing orange uniform, like in the US, and the ambiance appears to be that of a family restaurant.

Paragliding is very popular and relatively cheap compared to everything else in this town. Lots of tandem paragliding. There are cliffs just behind the town for launches. We saw 8-10 of them all up there at the same time.

Höhematte offers the perfect landing space in the middle of town. The open space even allows several to land more or less one after the other.  It is a huge lawn – you cannot miss it. We did it once in Rio de Janeiro and the paragliders there land on the open beach.

So we spent a half hour sipping ice tea under an umbrella, listening to brazilian songs, and watching the paragliders land in front of the hotel. Nice!

Interlaken is very commercial – crawling with tourists, mostly changing trains heading for the mountains. It serves as the hub for the entire region.

It has two train stations (Ost and West) – the former serving mostly trains that go to Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald – very popular villages half way up the mountain. See later posts. The West station serves the main lines and international trains (German mostly).

Our first day was not suitable to go up to Jungfrau due to cloud coverage. If you look carefully at the picture below, in the middle, you can see Jungfrau.

More to come … but here is a map to help orientation. Click to enlarge.

Thunersee cruise, part 2

Continuing with our cruise from Interlaken to Thun … after Merligen, the boat headed to the south shore.

On the south shore is the town of Spiez. Behind it are three mountains, each having a nick near the top (see photo below). They looked almost artificial ! I bet you can only see the alignment of the three gaps from the lake.  As I am writing this … an explanation came up.  Could they all be a path cut through the forest on the hiiltop (i.e., a fire lane) to prevent forest fire ?

Spiez is clearly a bigger town.

Next to Spiez on a headland are a few vineyards on a slope. Very pretty but not as pretty as Lavaux near us – a future post, promised.

Upon leaving Spiez, the cruise crossed the lake again to Gunten on the North shore.

Somewhere near the middle of the photo – you will see a grayish sloping straight line. It is the Sigriswil panoramic bridge –  a pedestrian bridge that crosses a valley. There must be quite a few sights –  both the bridge itself as well as the views.

Near the middle of the lake, a bunch of sail boats quietly slipped past us.

The rest of the stops are all on the north shore at picture perfect lakeside villages. Oberhofen is next – it has a cute little castle and what looked like a hotel by the lakefront.

Oberhofen pier.

Many of the stops are right next to hotels on the lakefront. The guests can stay there and drive/sail into Thun or Interlaken for dinner.

There is a magnificent house near the entrance of the Thun canal.

It is probably a hotel or museum as there were lots of public space, including a pier for mooring boats, and swans.

The Thun canal splits into two channels.

We took the left one.  The Thun canal is not as green as the canal on the Interlaken end. There is an industrial site for loading sand or rocks by the canal – very unsightly when it is so pristine every where. There is a park on the other bank – kind of compensating for it.

We spent about 2 hours in Thun and return by the same boat.

More photo on this boat crusie to come !

If you missed part 1, here it is again.

Thunersee cruise, part 1

We spent a long weekend in Interlaken towards the end of summer. The plan was to visit the world famous Jungfrau but for that altitude, it requires a clear and cloudless sky. Otherwise, the visibility is effectively zero. At the tourist office, they told us the weather on the first two days were not good but the last day would be fine. They recommended taking a cruise on Lake Thun on the cloudy days.

That’s the reason Interlaken is such a popular resort – even if the weather  is not cooperating, the city provides an attractive alternative.

A ferry service has been operating since 1835. We were on one of their larger and newer ship – MS Bernese Oberland – see pictures of their fleet here. The cruise runs back and forth between Interlaken and Thun.

We embarked the ship at Interlaken port – right next to the Interlaken West railway station (an international train station – we saw many German trains). A ship canal connects the port to the lake.

Thunersee (in native Swiss German) takes its name from the town of Thun on its Northern shore. Thunersee was a part of Brienzersee (Lake Brienz) until the deposited silt piled up so much that split the lake into two.

The cruise made 10 stops on both sides of the lake, before reaching Thun. The first stop was Neuhaus.

There are sheer cliffs on the north side of the lake near Interlaken. See the road that is really a “bridge” built onto the side of the cliff.

At a few spots, the winding road becomes a short tunnel.

There are lots to do (hiking, water-sports) along the rim of the lake, But it is definitely wilder on the Interlaken end of the lake. This stop – Beatenbucht – next to the station of a funicular – Beatenberg – Niederhorn – takes one from the lake shore to the start of many hiking trails at around 2000 m.

It was windy in the afternoon – perfect for this water sport.

Merligen

After stopping at Merligen which is half way on the North shore, the cruise crossed the lake and stopped at Faulensee on the South shore. Looking back at Merligen, one can see the steep meadows just behind the town and the mountains on both sides. It might be too small to see it on the photo – next to the clouds, there is a communication tower at the peak of the mountain on the right.

To be continued …

Random photos #6 – #10

These are the photos I (Chris) took and posted on Facebook. The series was started in March of 2013. There is no theme – just something random and visually interesting. We gave each a title and noted where it was taken (to the extent we could remember the city).

#6 – “we are the robots” – Freiburg im Breisgau

#7 – sprigs – Edgewater

#8 – Polke behind glass – Munich

#9 – angry bird 3D – Hong Kong

#10 – one dark night – Yverdon-les-bains

Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, Furtwangen – part 2

Continuing with the Deutsches Uhrenmuseum at Furtwangen … from ancient time keeping devices to clocks and watches …

This museum is not to be confused with the Deutsches Uhrenmuseum Glashütte  which was opened in 2008 at Glashütte near Dresden.

Glashütte is the watchmaking capital of the former East Germany while Furtwangen is in the traditional clockmaking area of Germany.The well-known brand A. Lange & Söhne is located in Glashütte, started by Aldolf Lang in 1845 initially making pocket watches. See engravings below.

Some of the early pocket watches had really plain exteriors, due not because of the lack of skills, after all they were very expensive and worn by the rich and noble, but because protestant cities in the 17th century enforced strict moral standards and banned ornamentation.

So the jewels and decorations were on the inside. In the 1700’s many goldsmiths became watchmakers.

In the 18th century, pocket watches were no longer made by a solo watchmaker – instead, the parts were made by specialists and increasingly by machines in different regions, notably Geneva and the Jura region on the border of France and Switzerland.  This division of labor made inexpensive pocket watches possible.

In Switzerland, the watchmaking industry is centered around La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle which is only about 30 minutes drive from my office. We blogged about La-Chaux-des Fonds here.

But of course times changed … no ornamentation? How about the graphical display of carnal pleasures …”C’est inci q’on passe le temps”.

The photos shown here are mostly pocket watches but they do have a wristwatch collection. Apparently, the collection including many famous brands had been stolen once before. So they are protected by burglar-proof glass (so it says on a little card on display).

The pocket watch shown below is by DuBois et fils. The company was founded in 1785 and one of the DuBois’s sons or someone who licensed the name raised new money to continue the business. It announced a 1.5 million swiss franc investment to kick start the brand on its website :

We are happy to report that in January 2013, after five months of raising, the successful DuBois et fils Crowd Funding came to an end. More than 587 persons from 20 different countries subscribed to shares of DuBois et fils and are now partial owners of the oldest Swiss watch factory. …  Thus the Crowd Funding project of DuBois et fils, which raised CHF 1.5 Mio to produce the new watch collection, is pure pioneer work. …

Some of the parts for the pocket watches (the escapements shown here) are so delicate.

The Deutsches Uhrenmuseum at Furtwangen does have a collection of wristwatches. Interestingly, according to a publication from the museum, wristwatches were originally worn only by women in the 19th century. Only until around 1930, the production of wristwatch overtook that of the pocket watch and watch repair became part of a clock-maker’s training.

Up to that time, the exterior of watches had to be adapted to their interior movements, but technology has advanced to the point that the movement could fit the shape of the watch and as a result, many different shapes emerged. In the 40’s the round shape became popular again because it is easier to make a round movement flat and waterproof. The second world war made the wristwatch a professional tool for many soldiers.

Long before Swatch, the French company – Lip – already tried plastic, witty design but it was not commercially successful. Lip is still around and it had quite a bit of history worthy of a whole book – go online and look …

Staiger quartz clocks from Germany (above) and some fun alarm clocks (below).

In the museum, we saw a lot of alarm clocks, an appliance which we hate but cannot live without … this is what they looked like in the beginning.

Fascinating history. Part 1 of this post is here.

Random photos #1 – #5

These are the photos I (Chris) took and posted on Facebook. The postings started in March of 2013. There is no theme – just something random and visually interesting. We gave each a title and noted where it was taken (to the extent we could remember the city).

#1 – the history of cool – Munich

#2 – “I dare you to cross” – Madeira

#3 – camouflage – Barcelona

#4 – untitled – Neuchatel

#5 – GW bridge – Edgewater

Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, Furtwangen – part 1

During Easter, we drove up to the Black Forest area of Germany. We visited the German Clock Museum (Deutsches Uhrenmuseum) on our way back from Baden-Baden. The museum is in Furtwangen, a small town just off the Black Forest high road (Schwarzwaldhochstraße, see our post here).

The museum is housed in a very humble-looking modern building. It is located in a residential part of town (the town is so small that I don’t know if there is a non-residential part). Honestly, on the outside, I thought it looked like the library of a local high school.

This region of Germany has a long history of making clocks – it claims to be the birth place of the cuckoo clocks.  See Wikipedia – cuckoo clock.

There is an extensive display of the many styles of cuckoo clocks made over time and ample documentation about the history of its development. The clocks shown below are of the Bahnhäusle style, designed by Furtwangen clockmakers in the mid-1800’s.

The museum traces the historical development of time-keeping from simple mechanical devices to clocks as most of us would recognize, to atomic clocks with a digital LED output.

More wall-hanging clocks …

The collection includes many made in the last century.

According to the atomic clock, we were there at 5:34 pm, Monday, April 1, 2013, 91 days or 14 weeks into the year.

Apparently, many of the old mechanical clocks also produce music. We were treated to a demonstration of its function which was rather entertaining except the museum guide spoke German to the visitors who were mostly Germans.

The museum did provide us with English guides which were helpful.

There were many grandfather clocks and some very fancy decorated clocks.

As many pieces were displayed behind glass, it was difficult to take pictures due to the reflection (in this case, two layers).

I particularly like this clock (photo below) which shows the mechanism behind a minimal white enamel dial and gold filigree hands, all encased in an engraved glass dome (engravings hard to see in photo). Wouldn’t mind having this on the mantlepiece.

In part two, we will look at watches.

Les Grands Magasins, Paris

Les Grands Magasins (“the big/grand department stores”) of Paris really deserve a post.  They are retailers who want to sell luxury but cannot ignore the mass-market, and they want to be chic and at the same time appeal to tourists.

Two of the “grand department stores”  Magasin du Printemps and Galeries Lafayette stand right next to each other on Boulevard Haussmann. They are the flagship stores of the groups that have numerous branches throughout France.

Competing for the hard-earned cash of discerning customers in the capital requires a spectacle.

Founded in 1895, Galeries Lafayette grew rapidly and now occupies several buildings. It has a 4-storey, circular belle-epoch atrium which was constructed in the 1910-20’s with a glass and steel dome.

A Galeries Lafayette branch opened in Trump Tower in New York City in September 1991. It was not quite successful, and closed after three years. If I remember correctly, it occupied what is now a part of Nike Town.

Wandering next door to Printemps, I found the main restaurant, Brasserie Printemps, under a beautiful cupola built in 1923. There, I rested my tired tourist’s feet and had an afternoon coffee and sweet snack.

The space was surprisingly tranquil despite every floor of the store was packed with shoppers.  I believe Printemps beat Galeries Lafayette with this vast beautiful space for drinks and snacks. Apparently, the cupola was dismantled during World War II for fear of damage by bombs and it was re-assembled in the 1970’s.

Founded in 1865 by an employee of Le Bon Marche, Le Printemps has recently been acquired by a Qatari company much to the dismay of the French labor unions.

MW and IT (our travel companion) were more interested in Le Bon Marché on the left bank.  Founded in 1838 as a small store, it is one of the earliest department store in the world. Now it is owned by the LVMH group.

The claim to fame of the Bon Marche building is the architect who built it – Gustave Eiffel, who also designed the Eiffel Tower. Does it look like the metal used on the Eiffel Tower which has the same old gold (or greyish yellow) color seen here on the elevators and the ceiling? It is probably not a coincidence that the color scheme (old gold + pale light green) was also used in many of the Louis Vuitton stores in the 2000’s.

Le Bon Marche, judging by its merchandise, feels like the Saks on Fifth in NYC.

Well,  I bet they all stock more or less the same brands. But it is that small percentage of exclusives and the store ambiance which make shopping fun.