Slow Train to Switzerland

by Diccon Bewes

  —Cook’s Tourist’s Handbook to Switzerland, 1874

  The white peak of the Jungfrau has always dominated the Interlaken skyline

  Contrary to popular belief, Swiss public transport hasn’t always been the epitome of perfect organisation and immaculate timing. Back in 1863 it was very different. The railway was in its infancy, so coaches, boats or horses were the only transport methods for large parts of the country, including Interlaken. This tourist town sits astride the River Aare on a flat plain between Lakes Thun and Brienz, hence its name, although that is a recent creation – the original village was called Aarmühle but was widely known as Interlaken (variously spelt Interlacken or Interlachen) until 1891 when the name was officially changed.

  It is this position between the lakes and beneath the mountains that has always made it a must-see on any tour of Switzerland. This isn’t because the town is that attractive, but for the setting and as a jumping-off point to explore the heights of the Bernese Oberland. However, before the railway arrived in 1872, reaching Interlaken involved a tranquil steamboat ride across Lake Thun followed by a chaotic coach ride into town. The steamers were too big to sail up the Aare so they docked on the lakeshore at Neuhaus, about 4km from the town centre, and unleashed their passengers into the maelstrom of carriages waiting for fares.

  In his book Die Erste Eisenbahn des Berner Oberlandes (The First Railway of the Bernese Oberland), F.A. Volmar describes how arriving tourists were pounced on by the carriage drivers, desperate to get some of the action; those who resisted were “showered in curses”. Later, when the drivers were forbidden from leaving their carriages, they yelled to attract customers’ attention, even taking passengers for free to stop the competition earning anything. In 1870 there were 244 horse-drawn carriages (35 of them omnibuses) running the short route to Interlaken, where the only alternative was walking along the same road. That meant enduring the dust storm created by the carriages and “wading ankle-deep through the horse-shit”, as one commentator described it.

  Not that taking a carriage was much better. Volmar quotes one visitor, who complains of riding “along the narrow, dangerous route … for those not sitting in the front carriage of the long procession, it was a trip in a veritable ‘Stream of Dust’, not forgetting the plague of horseflies, as well as the band of beggars.” With thousands of tourists arriving during the summer season, there was good business to be made, even if that meant bitter fighting to win it. And it was big business. In 1863 the six steamers on Lake Thun carried over 160,000 passengers, while in the summer of 1867 a total of 24,684 tourists (a quarter of them British) stayed at least one night in Interlaken. The following year saw the first English winter guests, and by 1870 there were 73 hotels and guesthouses in the town. Today there are 31.

  The dusty, dirty bottleneck at Neuhaus might have served the carriage drivers well, but it couldn’t cope with the increasing numbers. A railway was the only answer and it wasn’t long in coming. The Bödelibahn from Lake Thun to Interlaken (Bödeli refers to the flat plain between the lakes) opened its first section in August 1872, running trains with double-decker carriages – the top deck was open – at 25km/h. The loudest opposition came from the carriage drivers, who weren’t objecting to the flood of tourists; they merely wanted to maintain their income stream. They all knew what progress entailed: as in Frutigen a generation later, the arrival of railway carriages meant the instant demise of the horse-drawn ones.

  Double-decker trains run alongside Lake Thun to Interlaken today, though without open-top decks and with many more than three carriages. The original Bödelibahn disappeared long ago, replaced by more modern tracks, but its presence can still be noticed. Despite only having a population of around 5000, Interlaken has two stations, West and Ost, at opposite ends of the long main street. They are direct descendants of two Bödelibahn stations, relics of long-forgotten planning that survived because of another oddity: a railway that crosses the River Aare twice between the two stations for no geographical reason. The line could easily run along the south bank without any hindrance, but the planners were sneaky; they could envisage a time when the Aare might be widened in order to create a navigable canal between the two lakes. That would put the steamers in direct competition with their trains, and tourists could simply sail past Interlaken altogether. So they purposefully diverted the new line across the Aare and back again, a double crossing that stopped any such canal plans in their tracks.

  A fleet of horse-drawn omnibuses once plied the road between Interlaken and Lake Thun

  There was once a scheme to have one grand central station in the middle of town, on the south bank of the Aare behind the line of posh hotels – convenient for tourists, inconvenient for businesses. The inhabitants around the West station, the closer to the town centre, feared “financial ruin” for their shops if that station were to move. In the end it was the impossibility of getting ships to dock beside any new central station, thanks to those two rail bridges, that saved the day. Today’s trains continue to make that unnecessary diversion and ships still cannot navigate the Aare, although canals were built to bring the ships closer to the town centre. And the two stations carry on serving their respective lakes, West for Thun and Ost for Brienz, so passengers can transfer directly from boat to train, or vice versa.

  Geographical anomalies aside, the Bödelibahn is an interesting example of how and why many Swiss railways developed: tourism. In Britain and Germany, most lines were primarily built to link cities, factories, mines and ports, transporting coal, goods and workers; the railways were literally the engines of the industrial revolution. In Switzerland that wasn’t always the case – it had no coal and small cities. Lines such as the Bödelibahn had one main purpose, to carry tourists to the mountains more efficiently. Interlaken wasn’t an important business or population hub and without tourists the line would not have been viable, at least not in the 1870s. Tourism was the blood that gave many train lines life and kept them going. The lakes and mountains of the Bernese Oberland were a prime destination, especially for the British, who came in their thousands. In these mountain regions, away from the factories and money of the cities, tourists became the primary source of income and the main reason for development. No tourism, no trains – but also no trains, no tourism (at least not in massive numbers). It was a symbiotic relationship that suited both sides.

  Miss Jemima and her friends knew nothing of all that. They arrived nine years before the train on Platform 1, but cunningly managed to miss out on the unseemly scrum of carriages at the dock. Instead, they took the scenic route to Interlaken via the Lauterbrunnen valley a few miles to the south, although Mr William confessed to his father, “The scenery of the valley of Lauterbrunnen is very famous but we were so tired that we were dozing all the way.”

  The scenery is indeed justly famous, a deep U-shaped glacial valley that is one of the natural wonders of Switzerland and seems to have leapt straight out of a geography textbook: steep sides of near-vertical rock, green meadows perched on the cliff tops, a wide flat valley floor, a small but lively river and, most memorably, towering waterfalls shooting out into thin air. It’s one such waterfall that was the sole reason for Miss Jemima venturing up here: the Staubbach Falls, which Wordsworth called “this sky-born waterfall”. Its name literally translates as the “dust-stream-falls”, although mist would be equally apt. The Staubbach is a little brook, so there’s no raging cataract thundering over the edge of the cliff; this is one long, delicate veil of tiny particles carried by the wind as much as gravity. It’s the kind of waterfall that would grace Rivendell, where elves could wash their golden locks in the fine spray.

  With a drop of 297m, this is one of the highest free-falling waterfalls in Europe, so definitely warrants a closer look. The path from the station winds through the village, which in winter seems to be almost permanently in the shade: the sheer cliffs are so high that the sun can barely reach the valley floor, even when no fog is lingering along the river. You can see the fa
lls all the way, but can only hear them once you get near the base, so fine is the spray splashing down onto the rock. Lord Byron wrote:

  I have never seen anything like it. It looked just like a rainbow which came down for a visit, and was so near that one could just step into it.

  Now you can almost step into it, thanks to a trail that climbs up to the rock face and tunnels through it, coming out behind the veil of water. It’s dark and slippery in there, with water dripping from every nook, but worth it for the view of the valley and mountains through “the tail of a white horse streaming in the wind” (Byron again).

  What is amazing is not the view but that so few people walk up there to enjoy it. For most tourists, Lauterbrunnen is merely a place to change trains on the way up to Europe’s highest railway station at Jungfraujoch, and the Staubbach is photographed from a train window. The valley used to be famous for its lace making, with 450 lace makers (out of 650 families) in business as late as 1917. As with many traditional Swiss handicrafts, such as wood carving or embroidery, it was literally a cottage industry. In the days before mechanised factories, much of the work was outsourced to craftsmen (and women) who worked at home and were paid by the day. For example, a home-worker in the textile industry earned about 1.50 francs (or about 22 francs today) for a 12-hour day, or about half the daily wage of an experienced tailor, but neither amount went very far: a kilo of butter cost over 2 francs, as did a new shirt. In Britain the same workers earned twice as much.

  “This sky-born waterfall” was Wordsworth’s description of the Staubbach Falls, Lauterbrunnen

  Sometimes lace making was the main source of income, but often it supplemented what the villagers could earn from farming, particularly in the winter months. Industrialisation made much of this uneconomic, so production shifted to factories, although traditional handicrafts lived on in the shape of souvenirs. Miss Jemima noted:

  “The road from the Fall to the inn was populated with carved wood stores, and juvenile mendicants [beggars] offering a flower or pebble for sale.”

  And where that didn’t provide enough income, the locals replaced working at home with working in hotels, or as tour guides or porters. They had been used to having more than one job, so all that changed was the nature of the second one.

  Lauterbrunnnen still has about 20 lace makers, but it’s now much better known for something far more thrilling than a doily. In an attempt to get people to stay longer than seven minutes when changing trains, the village has reinvented itself as a centre for adventure, attracting white-water rafters, climbers and those crazy enough to jump off the cliff tops. They aren’t just paragliders but base jumpers, who leap off fixed objects (like a cliff) and fall at up to 190km/h, with only a few seconds to open a small parachute. The resort of Mürren, on top of a cliff 800m above Lauterbrunnen, is a popular jumping-off point. Near the centre of the village is what looks like a metal diving board sticking out over the cliff edge into thin air. It’s a nerve-wracking experience to watch someone stand on that platform, take two steps and then jump off with arms and legs in a starburst position. All being well, ten seconds later he (and it is usually a he) will land down on the ground, but sadly all is not always well. Almost every year someone dies, and the Swiss Base Association website has a page called The Dark Side, listing all those who have died in this valley for their sport. Fun can be fatal.

  There are 71 other waterfalls in the Lauterbrunnen Valley, although if you come in late summer, when streams are reduced to a steady drip, you’d be hard pushed to count that many. My favourite isn’t actually the perpendicular Staubbach but the corkscrew Trümmelbach, a series of ten falls that cascade down inside a mountain and are accessible by a lift inside the rock. The melt-waters of the glaciers high above come crashing down at a rate of 20,000 litres per second, filling the caves with a thunderous roar and soaking onlookers brave enough to go to the edge. It’s not Niagara, but you emerge into the glaring sunlight wet, deaf and ready to do it all again, especially when it’s 35 °C outside. Who needs air-conditioning when you can stand beside an underground waterfall?

  Interlaken has no such obvious natural tourist attractions; this place is all about location. While the West station is a tiny two-platform affair, Ost is the Clapham Junction of Canton Bern. The long intercity trains, some from as far away as Hamburg, all end here, as do the normal-gauge tracks. If you want to go into the mountains or over the hills to Lucerne, you must change here to a narrower-gauge railway. That makes for some fairly busy platforms in summer and winter peak seasons; with Swiss timetables so finely tuned, you only have a couple of minutes to find your next train through the crowds. It’s not as chaotic as the Neuhaus carriages (with no shouting or begging), but more than a few tourists lose their way among the waves of passengers streaming up and down between the platforms.

  Having access to all those trains makes Interlaken a convenient base for a holiday, and as transport hubs go there can be few more scenically placed, with the ever-white Jungfrau visible from almost everywhere. The resort has changed in the past 150 years, but that fact remains the same. As Murray said:

  Interlaken has few sights or lions for the tourist or passing traveller, who need not stop here, unless he require to rest himself. Its beautiful position, however, on a little plain between the lakes, in full view of the Jungfrau, whose snowy summit is seen through a gap in the minor chain of Alps, its vicinity to numerous interesting sites, and some of the most pleasing excursions in Switzerland … have converted it into a sort of watering-place, thronged with English, German, American and other foreign visitors.

  And that was before the railway arrived, before the real mass invasions started in earnest. The town itself is pleasant enough, though nothing to write home about. What was once Aarmühle is still there at the West end, with a few little gems of architectural glory amid the modern mediocrity. But many tourists don’t ever venture beyond the one long main street stretching all the way to Ost station and lined for the most part with cafés, bars, hotels, souvenir shops and all the usual trappings of a resort, albeit one with a genteel air; this is no Magaluf. However, it certainly has changed since the 1860s, when the Murray Handbook said: “The village itself, a collection of white-washed lodging houses, with trim green blinds, has nothing Swiss in its character.” It still isn’t that Swiss, though there are a few nods to local style (excluding Hooters bar, that is), but it is no longer a village of white-washed houses; it is a town of hotels. Some are grand, others are faded, such as the forlorn empty Schweizerhof right in the middle of town; some have that faded-grandeur look going on; some have treasured their heritage, others have massacred it. At first glance, the Splendid is anything but, thanks to “the stylistically unfortunate redesign of the ground and first floors”, as the tourist office’s historical notice on the wall diplomatically puts it. An ugly great wart on an otherwise tasteful façade of Victorian gables and towers would be a better description.

  By 1863 Interlaken already had some grand hotels, but the grandest were yet to come

  The queen of Interlaken’s hotels is undoubtedly the Victoria-Jungfrau, one of the grandest Grand Hotels in Switzerland. When Miss Jemima was here, this was still two separate small establishments, the Victoria and the Jungfrau, but they were soon transformed by owner Eduard Ruchti and French architect Horace Edouard Davinet into the epitome of luxury on a vast scale: hundreds of bedrooms, stuccoed reading rooms, gilded ballrooms and shady terraces. The hotel had electric lighting eight years before the town’s streets, the first lift in Interlaken and Switzerland’s largest internal telephone switchboard. The crowning glory was the stylish domed tower, added in 1899 and the town’s dominant landmark until it was overshadowed by what would be the runaway winner of Switzerland’s Ugliest Hotel award, if that existed. Not only is the concrete tower of the Metropole a hideous building in its own right, it gets extra Brownie points for replacing a grand old hotel, the Ritschard, and destroying an otherwise pleasant urban skyline. Worst of all, it towers
over the graceful lines and elegant curves of the Victoria-Jungfrau, a giant bully threatening an old lady. Shame on whoever gave planning permission for that to happen.

  Contrast that with an exemplary piece of civic far-sightedness: the large open space that sits in the centre of town opposite the Victoria-Jungfrau. Known as the Höhematte, this was once on the edge of the village and had belonged to Canton Bern since the Reformation, but in 1863–64 the state was selling off its property. With Interlaken expanding, the plan was to parcel it up and sell it to developers cashing in on the hotel boom. That would have meant an end to the unspoilt views of the Jungfrau and made Interlaken a much more urban place, possibly ruining the very reason it was so popular. Luckily, that never happened. Not everyone saw development as the answer and, after much wrangling, the Bernese parliament eventually approved Plan B: the Höhematte was bought by a group of shareholders who vowed never to build on it. And they never have. It remains a green and pleasant patch of land, where it’s not unusual to see a farmer out harvesting his hay.

  It was the presence of the grand hotels that possibly led Hans Christian Andersen, a frequent guest in Interlaken, to christen the town “the Paris of the Alps”. That’s a slight overstatement, but then again he was a writer of extraordinary fairytales. Thomas Cook was more prosaic: after his visit to Interlaken in the summer of 1863, he called it “the metropolis of Swiss Tours” and “that Brighton or Scarborough of Switzerland”, clearly trying to convey the idea that it was a holiday resort of some note. Nevertheless, the Guide to Cook’s Tours decided that was a false analogy, given that the sea is 300km away and the lakes cannot even be seen from the centre of town. Two years later, it described Interlaken as the “Leamington or Cheltenham of Switzerland”. There is still the slight problem of neither being anywhere near 4000m mountains, but you could put it down to poetic licence. Travel brochures have never been any good at telling the whole truth.