Lauterbrunnen Valley, Switzerland (2023)

As part of our trip to Europe to do a Rhine River cruise with my extended family, D and I also planned an extra week where we could do some exploring on our own. We flew into Basel and spent a couple days there getting over jet lag, which you can read about in my last post. We spent the following four days in Interlaken, our home base for exploring the Bernese Alps.

The train ride from Basel to Interlaken West

If you're traveling from Basel, you'll most likely be taking the same train as we did, the IC 61. It's the most direct train, with only four stops until you reach Interlaken West. We took the morning train so we'd arrive in Interlaken around 11AM and still have time to travel to Lauterbrunnen Valley. The whole trip was about two hours.

I wish we had done more math before buying our round-trip tickets to Interlaken and back, because we could have saved more money buying the Swiss Travel Pass earlier or the Half Fare Card. When I was doing research for transit options, it seemed like most of our travel would be covered by the local transit passes our accommodations would provide (such as an Interlaken Guest Pass), so I didn't think it was worth getting the Swiss Travel Pass for the whole trip. However, cable cars in Switzerland are insanely expensive and the costs quickly added up by the first day.

We decided to buy a 3-day Swiss Travel Pass to cover the rest of our time in Switzerland, and we not only broke even, but we also ended up saving a few dozen dollars as well (excluding tickets to the Jungfraujoch). If you're spending a decent amount of time in the Jungfrau and Bernese Oberland region, but otherwise not traveling to too many other cities, I'd get the Swiss Half Fare Card. You get a 50% discount on everything, including tickets up to the Jungfraujoch. The Swiss Travel Pass offers unlimited free travel on train, bus, boat...etc. and discounted fares on cable cars, but only a 25% discount on the Jungfrau -- and honestly, that will be the most expensive thing you do.

All discussion of transit passes aside, the ride itself was really pleasant. The train never got too crowded; in fact, most people got off after Bern. We passed a lot of small towns and fields for the first hour. The second hour is when you start to catch your first glimpse of the Swiss Alps, and they are a beauty to behold. We were assigned seats on the side of the train that wasn't facing the mountains, so I could only creep over people's heads or walk up and down the aisle to get a bit of a view.

Adventure Hostel Interlaken

After the train pulled in, we hopped off in time to see that the bus heading in the direction of our hostel was parked at the platform. Our Google Maps wasn't loading as fast as we needed to make a decision about getting on the bus before it left, so we decided to just hop on it. We would've had to wait half an hour otherwise. Our other option was to walk 12-15 minutes to the hostel, but it was rainy and we didn't want to roll our suitcases the whole way.

We asked the driver if the bus was headed to Unterseen, to which he just shrugged and wave us forward to pay. We took that as a yes. I knew that we only had three stops, so it was strange that the third stop was not called "Unterseen, Fussweg Spital". I realized that we had taken the bus in the complete opposite direction. The driver gave us a confused look when we hit the stop button and hopped off, and that only made me more confused about where we were.

We were stuck three extra stops further from our hostel than we needed to be. The rain started to come down harder. We jogged as fast as we could to the previous stop, suitcases in tow, and to the stop before that before finding a bit of shelter. We were hoping to find a cafe or something to duck into, but surprisingly, nothing was really open at 11AM on a Monday morning. Small town life, I guess.

The generous 256kbps T-mobile gives me on my international data plan wasn't allowing any bus updates to load, so we had to decide if we wanted to wait for the next bus, which could be anywhere from five minutes to an hour, or walk back to the train station. Walking back to Interlaken West would take 20-25 minutes, but the rain had lightened to a drizzle and we didn't want to feel like sitting ducks.

Once we were back at Interlaken West, our Google Maps finally loaded and the next bus to Unterseen was due in 10 minutes. D and I went back and forth about whether we should just walk or wait for the bus, and we ultimately decided we were tired of walking and dragging our suitcases in the rain. So we waited. The bus pulls in, and it's literally the same bus and driver who picked us up at the train station an hour ago. I guess there was only one bus running the whole line, which is wild. The driver looked at us like we were dumb tourists, which we are. We sheepishly said "danke schön" and hopped back on the bus, rode it three stops, and finally arrived at our hostel over an hour after we got off the train at Interlaken. We had hoped to save eight minutes of walking with the four minute bus ride, so it was comical how long it took us to get to the hostel.

The hostel was so much nicer than what I expected, and I was very wary of staying in a hostel; I only booked it because it was the cheapest option available. It was my first hostel experience since high school, when I traveled with my German class to Germany and Austria during senior winter break, and those were not nice. I can still recall showering and pooping in the dark because the only lights that worked were three, sad, fluorescent bulbs over the sink, the disappointingly tepid water after a day trudging through wet snow, and sleeping on a pad so thin you could feel the metal bed frame pushing through.

This hostel was simply lovely. Our room had windows, plural! Views of the mountains. A good, firm mattress and cozy comforters. All the lights worked in the bathroom. Hot water, too. The dining room and common areas were lined with large, sunny windows from which you could see the Jungfrau and its snow-capped siblings. It completely changed my opinion on hostels.

Lauterbrunnen, Mürren, and Gimmelwald

It was too early to check-in still, so we left our bags in the storage room and headed out on our first trek into the Bernese Oberland.

The Bernese Oberland is the highest and southernmost part of the canton of Bern and includes the upper valley of the Aare and many of the highest peaks in the northern Bernese Alps, e.g. Finsteraarhorn (4,274m (14,022ft)), Jungfrau (41,156m (13,642ft)), and Mönch (4,110m (13,480ft)), among others.

Because it was the shoulder season, buses into the valleys and between the mountain villages weren't running frequently, or at all. (Kind of like how there was only one bus running the whole Unterseen-Gsteigweiler line, that took us to our hostel). I knew this going in, but it was still a headache navigating the timetables and finding out that the information online wasn't always 100% accurate.

Lauterbrunnen Valley

We took the IC train to Interlaken Ost and transferred to the 311 bus to Lauterbrunnen. The buses were fully packed in spite of it being the "low" season, and we actually had to wait 15-20 minutes extra for a second one before we could squeeze on. I can't begin to imagine how insane the lines and crowds must be in the summer.

If you get motion sickness easily like I do, I recommend taking dramamine before hopping on the bus. There are a decent number of curves and switchbacks on the climb from Interlaken into Lauterbrunnen Valley, and you definitely feel each swing if you have to stand for the ~40-min bus ride like we did.

The first step off the bus and into full view of the valley blew my mind. A crack of deep blue sky split the clouds, we felt the warmth of a full sun on our faces for the first time since landing in Switzerland.

Rolling green hills with the first tendrils of spring grass were peppered with red-roofed barns and salted with fluffy, white sheep; a thick ribbon of spruce forest covered the upper hillsides; the snowcapped, granite peaks of the Bernese Alps crowned of the valley. And of course, the waterfalls Lauterbrunnen valley is so famous for! Lauterbrunnen is often called the valley of 72 waterfalls; I wasn't counting, but I think it lives up to its name.

Mürren to Gimmelwald

To get to Mürren, we had to first take a cable car up to Grütschalp and transfer onto the train heading to Mürren BLM station. There is only one train and cable car getting there, so it was pretty straightforward. We tried to grab a seat on the left side, which faces Lauterbrunnen Valley instead of the cliff walls, but it was a lot more competitive getting one than we anticipated! We only bought one-way tickets because our plan was to come down via the Mürren-Gimmelwald-Stechelberg cable cars on the other side of Mürren village, and walk or bike from Stechelberg station back to Lauterbrunnen.

There is the option to hike from Lauterbrunnen to Mürren, which takes 4 miles and 2900ft of elevation gain, and we did attempt this. It was so fucking hard. The first 0.1mi goes from 10-28% grade and then it jumped to 30-37% grade over the next 0.1mi. We were basically hiking on our toes and my calf muscles and achilles felt like they were about to snap. We reached a warning sign for slippery and icy conditions further up, and since there was 2.5 hours left of this stairmaster nightmare, we decided to turn back and get on the cable car.

When we got off the train, we were hoping to grab a coffee or a light snack at a cute cafe, but absolutely nothing was open. Everyone in the village was on vacation! All the little businesses had signs posted in the windows saying they wouldn't be returning until late May, a whole month after our visit. We did come across a few fridges selling fresh cheese, eggs, and milk though -- all operating on the honor system. You pick out what you want from the fridge and drop the money into a piggy bank. Pretty cute.

Finding out how much we'd be able to do in the Alps was a gamble from the start. It was nevertheless disappointing that literally nothing was open, including the visitor centers. I was hoping we'd be able to go up to Allmendhubel, which has incredible views of the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau peaks and a flower trail in late spring/early summer, but both the funicular and the trails up to it were closed due to the season and deep snow.

With so few things accessible, we decided to head down early. We hit another snag: the cable car from Mürren to Gimmelwald and Stechelberg was not only under maintenance that afternoon, but some departures were canceled due to low foot traffic. We missed the previous cable car by about 15 minutes, and the next one wasn't leaving for another three hours. Guh.

I'd been itching to hike since we landed, and I guess in some ways, I got what I wished for because our only option was to hike down to Stechelberg. We didn't have any trail maps ready, so we just went off the little "wanderweg" (meaning "hiking trail") POI icons and dotted lines marked on Google Maps to find our way down. The estimate to reach Stechelberg was three hours. Great.

I looked up our path on AllTrails when we were back on WiFi, and it was 3.8 miles and 2,900ft of elevation gain. My quads and knees felt every tenth of that steep grade, because my upper body was constantly bent about 45-degrees from my knees. I personally don't recommend the hike at all if you can take the cable cars.

The hike between Mürren and Gimmelwald was thankfully very pretty, so it made the quad and knee torture feel worthwhile. Sort of. There were also some cute kitties and sheep on the way down!

Gimmelwald to Stechelberg and Lauterbrunnen

There's not much in the village of Gimmelwald, besides some mountain chalets and a bunch of farms. It is a good jumping off point for some pretty amazing-looking trails up to Rotstockhütte or even the Schilthorn, but again, inaccessible due to snow.

We stopped at the cable car station to see if maybe there was one we could hop on, but we were still too early for the next one. The last half of the trek from Gimmelwald to Stechelberg is a lot less scenic. You lose all the views as you descend into the forest, so all you can think about the way down is how much your knees hurt and how much cartilage you'll have left at the end of this. There are a couple of small waterfalls you pass along the way down, so that was cool.

It started getting dark into the last hour or so of the trail. The sun was just above the ridge line, and we weren't quite sure what the bus situation was once we got down, so we decided to jog down the switchbacks to the further detriment of our knees. I can't fully express what a fucking relief it was to be on flat ground when we finally got off the trail.

We passed a guy in full lederhosen, carrying a whole-ass Alphorn (fully assembled) on him and watched him casually start ascending the trail in the direction of Gimmelwald: didn't miss a breath, no water, and no headlamp visible on him even the whole forest was dark already. People living in the Alps are built different I think. Once the trail ends, you're suddenly standing on a paved road. We weren't quite sure where to walk from here and we just followed Google Maps to the nearest restroom because I'd been holding it in since we left Mürren.

I think we managed to catch the last or penultimate bus out of Stechelberg, since most of the buses in the Jungfrau region stop running after dusk. Very fortuitous since the "bus" was just a 9-seater van, and it would've taken us 2 hours to walk from Stechelberg to Lauterbrunnen station, at which point it would be completely dark and 8pm in the evening.

It was a shame we didn't have time to visit the UNESCO World Heritage site, Trümmelbach Falls. Trümmelbachfälle, as it is called in German, is a series of ten glacial waterfalls that drop a total of over 1300ft. It drains the northerly glacier defiles (a geographic term meaning "a narrow pass or gorge between mountains or hills") of the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau. The falls are Europe's largest subterranean waterfalls and the only underground falls easily accessible to the public. It is, however, privately-owned, so there is an entry fee to see the falls and access to it closes at 5pm daily.

After transferring buses at Lauterbrunnen, we headed all the way back to Interlaken. The bus was surprisingly crowded for how late it was; I was curious how everyone else spent their day with so many activities and sites closed.

An evening at Adventure Hostel Interlaken

Once we were back in Interlaken, we stopped by the large Migros Supermarkt (Supermarket) by the Interlaken West station before heading back to the hostel. We bought fruit, eggs, fresh veggies, bread, and pasta.

It was nice to finally be able to check-in to our room and take a hot shower in our private bathroom (yes we got fancy and paid a little extra to have our own bathroom, and it was 100% worth it). After we were both cleaned up, we went down to the common area to cook our very fancy dinner of steamed broccoli, Shin ramen, and poached eggs.

There didn't seem to be many people staying at the hostel, since we were the only ones in the kitchen at 7pm. It was pretty quiet and peaceful, actually. We found a nice table where we got to watch the Jungfrau at blue hour, which is the period of twilight when the sun is below the horizon. The crisp, white outline of the snow-capped, craggy Jungfrau peak and the Jungfraujoch (its saddle), with the faintest lines of peach blush left on the granite by the sinking sun, was stark against the gradient of fading cyan to deep azure sky. The image is still imprinted in my memory. I was too lazy to get my camera because I figured we had 3 more days to go, and I deeply regret it. Little did I know it would be the last clear day we had!

If you'd like to follow the rest of our adventures in our 20-day trip through the Rhine River region of Europe, you can find the whole collection of posts in 20 days on the Rhine River (2023).