Ballenberg (6/10)

Off I went to Ballenberg this morning, after reluctantly checking out of my lovely little room with the great view. I caught a bus at the train station, which took me through a neighborhood – almost a “subdivision” – of chalets (I don’t think of chalets as being in subdivisions, but that’s what this looked like.) on its way to Ballenberg. This is billed as a “living history museum” – and that’s an accurate description.  It is a huge plot of land – I don’t have a way to describe how big it is, but it’s big – maybe Disneyland size. But don’t get the idea of neon and rides and selling things – not at all.  This is a natural environment where great care has been taken to maintain the trees and do farming and plant “typical” vegetables and fruits in gardens on the property. Houses and other buildings from all over Switzerland have been moved to Ballenberg and re-constructed. They are arranged in regions to represent the regions of Switzerland. A great effort has been made to furnish the houses with furniture that represents the era in. which they were built or the era they are portraying. The oldest house there was built in 1400! I found that amazing – and it’s the oldest house of its type still standing in Switzerland. There are a lot of chalets, a lot of house-barn combinations, a lot of barns, sheds and granaries. Many crafts are demonstrated there – cheese-making and chocolate-making, of course, as well as wood carving, weaving (!), rope-making, preparing hemp, silk-making, butter churning, wine making, and more. (I know I’m leaving some out.) One house displayed models in Swiss national costumes, and had a lot of information on music – plus common instruments that were played, and “poor people’s” instruments: pots with wooden spoons, a ceramic bowl and a coin, etc.. The furnishings in houses included embroidery hoops on stands, nitty-noddies, balls of yarn with knitting needles, spinning wheels, tools for lace making, etc.. I was delighted to come across the OLD loom and a woman weaving with linen and cotton (one warp, the other weft). Close to Zurich, silk making was a cottage industry, and those tools were displayed, as well as tools for making silk bands. I forgot to mention hat making.  A woman was putting together straw hats. The surroundings looked like Wayne Wichern’s studio (he’s a millenary instructor at Cañada). The hat maker was sewing together strips of braided straw.  I asked her where she got the strips, and they are still woven by hand in Italy, although some that come from Germany are not of the same quality. She told me that in one area of Switzerland – the area where most of the wheat is grown, women used to braid straw for hats (i.e. to make these strips from which hats are made) to earn extra money. Various things she said – this, as well as her explanation for the thatched roof houses I also asked her about – indicated that the economy was not always so good in Switzerland – and she began to describe the area where people built their houses out of stone. (I remember traveling from the Matterhorn and Aletsch Glacier area east, and seeing the houses change from wood to stone – and then, eventually, masonry as I moved toward the Italian part of Switzerland and Italy.) Her point was, people used whatever they could find in the place they were to build their houses.

There were a lot of animals being raised there – cows, pigs, goats, sheep, chickens, horses, one donkey, rabbits, and probably more.

I have Barbara O’Connor from my weaving guild to thank for sending me here. The place had only a minor mention in my tour guide, and it was a real highlight of the trip. Barb – who also sent me to the Tumaini School in Tanzania – had read about it, and mentioned it when I started planning my trip.

I could have stayed at Ballenberg for several more hours, but the place closes at 5:00 PM. They don’t chase people out, though, so I got to the gate, where the bus stop is, late. I had to wait for nearly an hour for a bus to the train station, and then go back to my hotel to pick up my luggage and figure out how to get to Interlaken, where I had a reservation for tonight.  It was tempting to stay another night in Brienz – and it sure would have been easier, but my time here is getting short.  I had made a reservation in Interlaken because I have always wanted to see where the Olympics were held YEARS ago, and I want to go to Bern before heading back to Frankfurt to catch my plane. So . . . the receptionist at the hotel told me about the 7 PM train to Interlaken, and arranged for a car to take me and my luggage the short distance to the train station. I rode to Interlake along the shore of Lake Brienz, that gorgeous, teal lake.  Just as I got off the train in Interlaken, it started to rain.  An information person at the train station helped me find the bus to get me to the OTHER train station in Interlaken, which is closer to the hotel I’d booked. Then there was enough juice left on my phone for Google maps to get me to the road UP to the hotel where I am now. UP because the road does just that.  I began walking up with my suitcase, and a young woman driving the same road stopped and asked if I wanted a ride.  I readily accepted. How kind!  After a day on my feet at Ballenberg, that offer was really welcome!

Once again, I have a room with a view – of snowy mountains, although no lake this time. (Remember?  This is INTERlaken – between the lakes, which are Brienz and Thun.) I think I am staying in a place above my usual budget that has lowered its rates during the off season. Fine with me.  There is a tea kettle with COFFEE in the room, so for the first time in 7 weeks, I’m HOPING to have coffee in the morning while still in my PJs! I had a very nice, 3-course dinner in the hotel just before its restaurant closed – and the price was way below what I’d usually pay in Switzerland for an entrée. Whatever!  I’ll enjoy it.

By the way, today is Sunday, and Brienz was closed up tight when I left. But Interlaken had quite a few places open – not shops like clothing stores, but certainly grocery stores, more restaurants, and some souvenir shops. It looked, too, as if Interlaken is more diverse than the rest of Switzerland.  (Note: in the cities, there are people from all over the world who have made their home in Switzerland, and from what I’ve seen, which is very little with respect to this issue, it appears to be a tolerant society. But Interlaken, at least on the surface, appears to be markedly more ethnically and racially diverse.  I wonder why.) Anyway, I’m looking forward to exploring around Interlaken a bit before heading on to Bern.