We drove from Lucerne via Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen and wasn’t exactly expecting this:
Immediately, I’m wondering if we needed snow tires!
Insert random American Christmas music here!
Ok, enough snow photos (pick the Queenslander who hasn’t seen snow in forever. No, wait… I lie, not since last November in Japan). Anyway, we arrived in Interlaken and while we seemed to be just below the snow line, it was still bloody freezing and just for fun, raining.
We had diverged off the highway on the way into town to get a better look at the lake, and found us a swan, not of the ‘Threatened’ variety.
Interlaken is a resort town in central Switzerland in the Bernese Oberland mountain region. It is often a jumping off point for people who come to the area for winter sports if they’re looking for more amenities than the smaller villages might provide. It is built in a narrow stretch of valley between two lakes – Lake Thun and Lake Brienz – hence, Interlaken. Lots of traditionally Swiss timber houses, alpine forests and skiing areas.
I love the colour of glacial rivers… you see them in Iceland, Canada, New Zealand, Chile. It’s just such a beautiful teal/grey colour that looks inviting, but is so dangerously not!
Having skipped breakfast we were looking for lunch and again turned to the Google, ‘Restaurants Near Me’ function to find somewhere to eat… it’s got me wondering, I use this feature *every* time I travel because if I am going to spend money of a restaurant meal, I don’t want to end up with with a really ordinary experience. But I’m wondering – who actually gets on Google and leaves these reviews? There must be loads of people who do, but I don’t think I’ve ever left a Google review for a restaurant…?
Anyway, we ended up at a restaurant called, ‘Gleis 3’, (which had a 4.6 on the Googles), and an indecipherable Swiss German menu. Mr K ordered a traditional Swiss meal consisting of a potato roesti with ham, cheese and egg, and I had a chicken Cordon Bleu. The foood was beautifully presented and really good.
And because we were planning on skipping dinner, we split an apple strudel as well.
Interlaken is a pretty town, even in the rain.
Tulips!
Lauterbrunnen and more snow! Lauterbrunnen is a village of around 2500 people nestled in a valley surrounded by high rocky cliffs. It has a cable car that runs up to nearby Shilthorn Mountain and the town subsists mostly on tourism, so it is full of lovely quaint little hotels with neat little restaurants.
We chose to stay in the village at the Hotel Silberhorn. I chose a room with a view in case ‘we get crap weather and end up spending a lot of time working in the hotel’. And I think in doing so, I’ve kinda put the mockers on us! Last week, this area was in the low 20°Cs every day and sunny/party cloudy… this week: fucking cold and snow or rain all day every day.
The hotel has had a recent make over apparently – the room smelled like freshly milled timber and has beautiful views down the valley (when the clouds aren’t in, that is).
Old habits came back quickly… popped the beers and bubbles out on the balcony because it’s more efficient than a fridge!
In every direction the mountains looked gorgeous – this is literally the view from the bathroom!
We had some work to get onto, so got stuck into it, while watching the snow falling in large flurries outside and enjoying a nice cup of port.
The next morning, the entire village was covered in a thick blanket of snow! It was still snowing so much you couldn’t see the mountain – behind that tree is a small waterfall somewhere!
We did head out to try and visit Trummelbach falls, which are supposed to be open, only to discover they have had to close the walkways this week due to the excessive amount of rain and snow that they’ve had making entering the falls dangerous. Bummer. I came here back in 1995 an was looking forward to going to see these waterfalls again – the Trummbelback falls have an enormous volume of water coming through them, as they crash down through a crevice *in* the mountain – not tumbling over the side of a cliff like you usually expect. My most vivid memory of them was they were soooo loud and you got quite wet walking around the various levels of the winding pathway that goes through/into the mountain to see them.
So we had a little tootle around the village instead, and went back to the hotel to do some work.
The snow burned off relatively quickly – not because the sun came out, but things warmed up just a couple of degrees and most of it melted away.
As the weather cleared, the view from our room improved – there is the mountain and the waterfall I knew was out there somewhere.
The 300m high Staubbach Falls which is just outside the village. Lauterbrunnen is only about 800m above sea level I think.
There are far more hideous views to work with for the day… 🙂
At the end of the day we treated ourselves to a nice bottle of champagne that we had picked up on the way into town and had dinner in the hotel restaurant.
These last two photos were taken at 10pm – it was pitch black, but my iPhone did a brilliant job with the low light conditions. The waterfall is lit up in the evenings; we couldn’t see it at all last night the weather was so snowy and cloudy… but tonight, it looks lovely.
It was a simply gorgeous drive… seriously this was the colours of the water and the sky – I haven’t touched these at all. The water we are told is also very cold year round, which is why we didn’t see anyone swimming in it even where there are obviously points where holiday makers could access the water.
Our drive also took us past the most unusual roadside services I have ever seen! This chef is cooking lamb on a rotisseries powered by water wheels! They must get super busy because he had about 9 full lambs on the turn at once while we were there. The meat is only lightly seasoned and cooked for hour – and then they serve it all super fancy-like by cutting open a fresh white bread roll and slapping some meat on it. No butter, no gravy, no sauce, no nothing… it looked like way too much bread for me, but I tried some of Angus’ and it was delicious! Made a mental note to do a lamb roast when I get home before the weather starts to heat up to much! 
This is the gorgeous Holly, from Wangaratta who is travelling with us – you can see the size of the bread rolls they plonk the lamb onto, which is why I passed. 
On the way int Mostar we saw many old buildings that were bombed and shot up during the war, Many of them have never been repaired – sometimes because the owners just never had the money and of course the longer you leave it, the harder and more expensive that proposition becomes, but also because many people fled the city and became refugees in other parts of Europe never to return – so it is difficult to prove who owns many of these buildings now. 
Mostar is a windy little medieval market town – unfortunately full of tourist dross now, though I imagine it would have been a thriving little centre of produce and fresh food etc back in the day. 
Ah, the famous Stari Most (Old Bridge); a reconstructed medieval arched bridge which straddles the middle of the town and connects the winding alleys of the market with a staircase which leads tot he Koski Mehmet-Pasha Mosque.
Inside the mosque:
It’s probably one of the smallest mosques I’ve seen, and while Mostar is home to about 100,000 people, most of them do not live in the Old Town area.
Angus loving the travelling life.
So there is a weird tradition where visitors can come here and jump off this bridge into the really cold water below – tit seems like a stupid thing to do and it really it! The bridge is 24m above the river and the river just here is 5m deep, the reason it’s really stupid is that it’s often about 38-40°C+ in Mostar, and the water is 5-6°C, which can cause people to go into shock, and there’s that whole, jumping off high places can lead to broken bones and death thing as well. 
Reassuringly they’ve only lost 4 people in the last 10 years… :{ and honestly there is absolutely no reason to do this except it kinda comes with bragging rights – no one, and I mean NO ONE will be surprised to hear that of the visitors log that shows some 3800 people that have jumped off the bridge, 80% of them are fucking Aussies. Brain dead the lot of us! Oh well, the other ‘fun’ to be had from standing around the bridge is watching and waiting to see locals jump. Many of these guys must have been doing this for years… they prime up the crowd, get people chanting, hand around a hat for people to throw their money into to encourage the guys to jump. They then climb outside the fence line and make a show that they are going to jump, and then get people cheering some more before one of them eventually dowses himself in cold water… so as to soften the shock a bit. If you don’t see them throwing water over themselves, they’re not jumping any time soon apparently. Seems to be one local goes in every half hour or so… and there’s no need to be standing up on the hot bridge to see them – I found a nice spot in a cafe with some ciders and saw two guys jumping. Mad as cut snakes.
After Mostar we went to Kitivice Waterfalls, which I thought was going to be a National Park or something – but fuck was I wrong! The whole place is like a waterpark without any water slides. Loads and Loads of people all swimming at this massive man made waterhole at the bottom of these gorgeous waterfalls. The water temperature of the falls was quite cold apparently, but the pool below was relatively warm once you got in. 
I just can’t imagine a place of natural Australian beauty being treated like this – complete with huge decked beer gardens, food stands and kids playground right beside it. It’s impossible to get a nice photo of just the falls. 
After this stop, we drove onto Trebinje where we will stop for two nights and everyone is very excited about this because it means we can maybe get some bloody laundry done! Lol. 🙂