Lauterbrunnen and Murren

Even though Saturday was mostly cloudy, we decided to take a trip up to one of the mountain villages. We caught the train to Lauterbrunnen, a valley town. The town is long and narrow, and as we walked down the main street, we saw the waterfall coming down from the cliff above. This was Stabbach Falls.

We made our way to the base of the falls, and there was a little path up a small hill to what looked like a good vantage point for seeing the falls. But it was blocked by two gates. Hmm. A sign nearby informed us that the path had to be closed because some dumb American (we’re just guessing about the nationality) got hit by a falling rock on the path and decided to sue the town. (The sign mentioned that locals were aware that icy conditions and falling rocks were possibilities in mountain areas, but that visitors were not so careful.) It would have been more tempting to ignore the gates if the path did not, in fact, look very icy.

We met a couple of other Americans on the same road. They were doing a “water ways” hike to the next town, and there were two or three other waterfalls on their path. (Sounds like something that would be good to do in summer!)

After an apple strudel, we continued on to Murren. Murren is a cliff-side town reachable only by cable car (like a ski gondola). The trip is short, but takes you straight up the mountain to a station where you switch to a small train.

When we first arrived, conditions were not great – it was quite snowy and there wasn’t much visibility at all. But as we walked around, we did get a few patches of clearer skies. We then took a funicular up to a higher point. (The operator looked at us a bit strangely when we said we wanted a round trip ticket; most people go up on the funicular and either ski or sled down. The sledding looked like a lot of fun, but we didn’t have our waterproof gear with us, so it seemed like it would have made the rest of the afternoon rather unpleasant – walking around in the cold with wet pants.)

We ended our day back in Interlaken, with a fondue dinner. Yum!