Canton of Bern: Day 1

I am allowed to take two days off for every month I work at the delegation, and since it has been more than a month already, I am cashing in on half of my allowance. I decided to go to the Canton of Bern this long weekend, beginning with a Friday on the shores of Lake Thun.

Johnny and I managed to leave Geneva a full half an hour before we had expected. The train ride was very pretty, overlooking Lake Geneva and the mountains above it until after Lausanne. On the left, meanwhile, we passed by lovely vineyards, quaint towns, and the occasional castle. When we arrived on rail 5 in Bern, I was chuffed to find that our next train stood right across the platform on rail 6. What truly made my day, however, was hearing the default language of communications gradually switch to German, in which I feel much more comfortable than in French.

Thun turned out to be a much prettier town than I had expected. I knew it had a rather picturesque castle and an imposing whitewashed church, but I did not imagine these to rise so gracefully above the flower-decked covered bridges that cross the clear waters of Lake Thun and the River Aare. On my request, Johnny and I walked a little further down the lake to take in the views of the town from farther away, after which we boarded the bus for our next destination: Oberhofen.

Although Oberhofen is known mainly for its elegant castle, I also found it worthwhile staring at the lavish wooden roofs around town. We entered the castle without much preliminary wandering. As several packed cruisers demonstrated, the best view of Oberhofen Castle is from the water, but perhaps the second-best view is from the garden, which overlooks the castle’s slender turret. We determined that this turret was only a later addition, since several old paintings at the castle museum do not feature it at all. Instead, it seems the turret was built purely for the pleasure of the nineteenth-century family that converted the castle into a residence. With a table at its centre and windows facing all sides, it must have offered its visitors great views from the comfort of their own house.

Beside the turret, I think the castle’s second-most remarkable feature is its tobacco room. Located at the top of the tower, it was designed in a garish pastiche of Middle Eastern styles. Some other rooms worth visiting are the library and the dining halls, all of which offer lovely views of the lake. After leaving the castle, we sat down on a nearby bench and ate our packed lunch of bread, cheese, and two bananas. I assumed all these articles would spoil if I left them at home, so we spent the day lugging around our little food bag.

From Oberhofen, we took the bus back to Thun again, this time stopping in the town centre. We explored the old centre with its quaint town hall and burgher houses, after which we ascended the stairs to Thun Castle and the Town Church. We did not visit the castle but stopped by the church, which in true reformed style is bare and luminous – and not much else. Finally, we walked back to the train station and took the next train to Spiez.

Another settlement on the shores of Lake Thun, Spiez is known for – surprise, surprise – its castle and church. These are the most difficult to reach of all three castles we visited, as the bus is infrequent and the path down the hill is rather confusing (after this experience, the path up the hill is relatively simple but much more demanding). We bought tickets to the castle museum with the sole intention of climbing the tower, which overlooks the vineyards on one side, and the church, lake, and mountains on the other. The museum itself is exactly what one would expect to find in Switzerland: an excursion into the Middle Ages with a painfully sharp focus on the fate of the family that owned the castle.

Having climbed back up to the train station again, we boarded our ride to Interlaken, where we ate dinner and rested for the night.