Road Trip to Switzerland – Interlaken and Lauterbrunnen

Switzerland’s beauty has been spoken a lot about in India, especially because a lot of Bollywood iconic cinemas have shot their songs over there. Living in the Netherlands, it has become a wee bit easier for me to visit multiple European countries. Honestly, Switzerland was not my dream destination to visit in Europe until I had my recent trip. We had four days in hand and we started driving from Eindhoven, Netherlands at 11am in the morning. The best part about  road trip is we can always change plans dynamically, and that’s what we did.

Day 1:

Instead of driving straight to Interlaken, which is around 8 hours from Eindhoven; we went via Black Forest in Germany. Drive through the black forest was picturesque and it is worth the extra hours of journey. We made a pit stop in between black forest, walked around and inhaled the beautiful scent of greenery. Even though I wanted to spend more hours just walking around in those woods, we started our journey towards Interlaken. Looking out of the window I mumbled “It’s the journey not the destination that matters”.

It was late in the night when we reached Interlaken, so we just checked into the hostel and went straight to bed.

Day 2:

Wow! its a Snow world, I screamed and woke my fellow roommates in the hostel. It was like a fairy-tale right in front of my eyes in Interlaken. A lake in front and a mountain on to the right, I was overwhelmed by the natural beauty and felt magical. After a quick breakfast, we drove to Lauterbrunnen, it is a valley featuring rocky cliffs and the roaring, 300m-­high Staubbach Falls.

Lauterbrunnen is your quintessential Swiss alpine village, dotted with chalet-style houses and surrounded by snow-capped mountains. On arriving in the village, one of the first things you will notice are the huge rock mountains surrounding the town.  Nestled in a valley, the village sits surrounded by these huge cliff faces from which many waterfalls spill over. Since we visited during April 1^st week, there was still a lot of snowfall and we couldn’t reach to the waterfalls. In summer I’m guessing each morning you will wake to the soothing sounds of water rushing over the rocks.

The region’s three most well-known mountains are the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau. We had gone near to the Jungfrau but did not go to the top due to bad weather. If weather is good, one must take those cable cars and go on top of Jungfrau. After a stroll in the crisp mountain air, there’s nothing better than rewarding yourself with a typical Swiss meal or a coffee at a cafe looking out at the massive mountain peaks.

Day 3:

Interlaken is situated on a narrow strip of land between two lakes, Lake Thun and Lake Brienz and is just too beautiful to your eyes. There are a lot of adventure sports one can indulge in or just relax and enjoy the natural beauty like we did. We went to the central Interlaken, where you can see a lot of shopping outlets, restaurants, and some tourist attractions. You can take this city tour in Bodeli-bahn tourist train or Bodeli-Tram, a horse drawn tram carriage. After strolling through these streets we had a good meal at a Ino-Pak restaurant.

From here, we drove to The Aare Gorge, located near Innertkirchen. It is the result of a limestone rocks, the “Kirchet”, which hindered the flow of the Aare river from the Grimsel region. Over the course of millenia, the water has eroded various paths – today’s Aare Ravine is the most recent of those paths. The walk through the gorge is a very special way to experience nature with multiple water walls along the walls of these rocks. You can spend an hour or two in this place and have some snacks or coffee at the entrance after the hike.

We also drove to Dam in Switzerland alps, however it was closed due to snow. The journey on this road was mesmerizing, see the below video for a glimpse of it.

We had checked out from Interlaken hostel, so we drove to Zurich in the evening and relaxed there.

Day 4:

Walked a bit around streets of Zurich before we could start our journey back to Netherlands. While driving back to Netherlands, I realized how my perspective of Switzerland had changed drastically. It wasn’t just a cliché Bollywood romantic getaway anymore. It was beautiful, soul soothing and magical one must experience in their life.

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