Interlaken – a village between two lakes in Switzerland

Interlaken, a small town in the Bernese Oberland. It is located between the Lake Thun and the Lake Brienz. It has its name because of the fact that it’s located between two lakes: Inter – Laken. But its name wasn’t always Interlaken. First, it was called Aarmühle, because of the mill on the Aare river built in or before 1365. In 1838, Aarmühle used the name Interlaken for its post office and train station. In 1891, Aarmühle changed its name officially in Interlaken. Even if it’s a small village, it’s a touristic place, especially for the mountains of the Jungfrau region, like the Jungfrau (4158 m/ 13642ft), the Mönch (4107m/ 14474 ft) and the Eiger (3970m /13020 ft).

We stayed also at a hostel named Backpackers Villa Sonnenhof. I can highly recommend this hostel and I’d return anytime. It is a modern hostel with a very nice and helpful staff. You have wifi access in all the rooms, and the breakfast is also good organized. And you can reach the city center by foot in only 2 minutes.

Basically, our stay in Interlaken started with bad news.

Before our trip to Switzerland, we booked on the internet a canyoning tour. As a description, I can say that canyoning is the fact to walk, jump, hike, swim, abseil etc. through a canyon. It’s an outdoor activity, where you have to be fit. Here is the link to the internet site where we booked our canyoning trip (http://outdoor-interlaken.trecksoft.com/en/tours/49/canyoning-interlaken). But, exactly that day, it was raining like hell. It hasn’t rained for the four days that we stayed in Switzerland. But as we were waiting in our hostel that someone would come and pick us up, the receptionist came to us and told us that they cancelled our trip, because it would be too dangerous to go into the water, because with all the rain, the creek has turned into a torrent. So we were really sad. But the organization refunded us all the money that we paid, and I think this is really fair.

So we had to decide what to do now. First we ordered a pizza, then we decided to go and visit the center of Interlaken and we wanted to try their local baths that also had an open air pool. Because as we were finished with eating, the rain stopped and the weather turned into a beautiful day – it was like someone doesn’t wanted us to do the canyoning trip.

Their open air pool is really cool, you have the view on the Mount Jungfrau, which I think is really amazing. You swim with a view full of mountains around you.

Interlaken is a really beautiful place to stay, even though I’ve never seen so much Asians as there. They even have a shop in Interlaken where all the staff is Asian, to help the Asian tourist with the language and all. This was something where I recognized that the European and Asian culture and behavior is different.

Did you do already a canyoning trip? I’m sure that I will do it someday, if I get the chance to do it.