Bern - SWITZERLAND
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After another late morning we found ourselves packing the car and on our way towards the Jungfrau for an attempt to ski in hip deep powder snow. Instead of taking the motorway west to Interlaken we took the scenic mountain route towards the Jaunpass. The curiosity of Fribourg's centre ate at us and before long we found ourselves strolling its streets. The winter festival warding off evil ghouls had just taken place over the weekend and the streets were filled with wet confetti. Fribourg had a medieval charm similar to Bern's. A river wound its arms around the city, where small stones bridges dotted the scene and towering cliffs full of sharp pinnacles of ice clawed at its steep face. After visiting the cathedral narrow cobbled streets took us down to the river and past houses decorated with Tyrolian frescoes and city symbols. For such a large city it certainly had a lot of ambience. The afternoon sunlight took us towards the mountains where a sign advised us that the Jaunpass was closed. This caused us to take a longer route to the south and through Chateau d'Oex where we'd taken Peter only a week ago. This is the beautiful Swiss valley from where summer balloon races take off with more scenery reminiscent of chocolate boxes. We took it easy travelling across snowy roads, watching the sunset bleed across the mountains and the amazing Swiss railways that wound their way along unforgiving pinnacles and over snowy tracks. We arrived at the campsite at Lauterbrunnen late as usual to find that its serene atmosphere had completely changed. This was no longer home to the sounds of silence, faint church bells ringing and clumps of ice falling from the waterfall. German school holidays had taken over and literally every man, woman, child and dog had transformed the serenity into a scene somewhere from the depths of your most evillest nightmare. Children swept across the icy road outside reception, the pizza joint was jumping and an outdoor bar (in -15) was opened where 20-somethings guzzled loads of lager in a scene reminiscent of a Contiki tour. I began to wonder how we were ever going to get a chance to use the warm showers. Like last time we waiting in freezing temperatures in the unheated car for the proprietor to come along and connect us to electricity. We began to wonder if we'd done the right thing by coming back and hoped that the large numbers of people would not cause lift queues. Anyway the huge snowfalls will make us forget about the crowds. |