InsideEurope: Of Murren and beyond!

Murren

29 May 2011

The Alpine village of Murren

Our last day in Switzerland! We wanted to have a nice and quiet day, spent in walking leisurely and taking our own time to look at everything. Murren seemed perfect for it! We'd been in Murren the previous day, just to change to a different cable car on our way up to Schilthorn, but what we saw of Murren from the car was enough to entice us!

Murren is a small mountain village in the Bernese Oberland region of Switzerland. Located at a height of 1650 metres, it is a very famous tourist spot and remains so through out the year, sun or snow. This is very evident from the fact that even though Murren has a population of only about 500, it has hotel beds numbering upwards of 2000! The Murren - Schilthorn area is the highest altitude playground of the Bernese Oberland. It features snow boarding, skiing, sledging among many other snow sports, from the 'gentle' ones to ones bordering on the extreme!. Murren in fact hosts the largest amateur skiing races in the world, the Inferno races. So, yes it is pretty 'cool' in the winter, but we were in Murren smack in the middle of summer! Was it just as interesting?

I'd say it was even better!

A view from the Funicular to Murren

Today we used a different route to get to Murren. The Lauterbrunnen BLM station, where BLM stands for Bergbahn Lauterbrunnen Murren, is just opposite the main train station, the BOB or Bernese Oberland Bahn station. From the BLM station, a cable car took us to the Grutschalp station located just above Lauterbrunnen. It is nothing but a station where the passengers from the aerial cable way from Lauterbrunnen get connected to the Funicular ride to Murren. A funicular is a train which uses cables to support itself on mountain climbs. Our funicular was spaciously built, with extra wide windows, giving us a superb view of the Lauterbrunnen valley and the peaks opposite. We reached the Murren BLM station which happens to be a stone's throw from the Murren LSMS station. LSMS stands for Luftseilbahn Stechelberg Murren Schilthorn, the aerial cable way we used the previous day to get to Schilthorn. I am stressing this part because we were really confused about the terms LSMS, BLM, etc, and we had to ask around a lot (a real lot!) before we got on the right track. The otherwise perfect Swiss railway seems to fail a tiny bit on this one issue, but no harm done, now you know!

Built in 1861! The other years are those in which it was
renovated only on the inside

It was a sunny day and the roads were deserted, Murren has no cars. Most of the houses here were more than a century old, traditional Swiss architecture. Earthen flower pots hung outside and the houses were built with strong Alpine wood which now looked weather beaten. But the houses had no plans of giving up in the near future! The houses dated back to the 19th century, as can be seen in the pictures, and over this period, we were told that the outside was not altered at all! We were looking at the houses as they would have been in the 19th century! That would have taken some really good planning on the part of the builders and architects as Murren gets it share of bad weather every year.

Not a professional picture but this one is my favourite! I love the web!
(That's my 'wall' in the background)

In Murren, you look down at the vast Lauterbrunnen valley and also have astounding views of Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau. I had been fascinated with the huge, steep and blank rocky 'walls' of the Lauterbrunnen valley since yesterday. I now rediscovered my love for them! Staring blankly at Murren, towering over it, stood a gigantic brown wall. I liked nothing better than to look at it and wonder and wonder! What was I wondering about? I don't know! But I did find out that I love heights very much and I was planning on skydiving the next time I got a chance! Murren is a splendid location, one where you can walk into the past, admire the views or just 'chill' in the small cafés by the road. I urge those travelling to Switzerland to pay a visit to this amazing mountain village.

The road to nowhere. My favourite road!

After we toured the entire village, I found us a small mountain road leading to an unknown place. This road, I felt, was enough to tempt the laziest of the couch potatoes to come out and take a walk! Marvellous views, the Alpine wilderness surrounding us and the sun shining down patiently, there was no better way to get close to nature! We trekked for quite some distance on this road before walking back.

Unbearably glorious!

We made our way back to Interlaken slowly and packed our bags. We did some day shopping and explored what little was left of Interlaken. Our return trip to Eindhoven was a bit longish and involved many transfers because we had booked our tickets quite late. We had to change trains at Basel, Mannheim and at Dusseldorf. At the next station Viersen, Germany, everyone got off the train, we found out that we had to get to Venlo, The Netherlands by bus. It was 24 kilometres away, a 25 minute journey. From Venlo, we had a direct train to Eindhoven. Back home!

Our trip might have ended but this post hasn't! In the next section, I have included all the tips and ideas we've picked up about travelling smart in Switzerland. You can read ahead if you need them, be sure to take a look at the photos in the end!

The best thing we could have done about our trip was the purchase of a Swiss pass. It cut our travel expenditure by a large amount and also saved us a lot of time. The Swiss travel system offers different passes among which we can choose, depending on our family, the number of days of stay and the places we want to visit. It offers discounts at tourist spots and you get to pay half the usual amount there. So I strongly urge anyone travelling to Switzerland to look up this great tool.

Regarding transport, Switzerland is on the clock, trains follow schedules perfectly, buses are accurate to the minute and such. But when on a tour, there's no saying when or where you will be delayed. Train transfers, many times are a tight squeeze, sometimes with less than three minutes between transfers. So you would be at a loss if somehow you miss even a single train! Then at each station you have to search for the next train to the next place and so on, and the end of the journey the delays would have costed you a lot. We do not want that to happen on a perfect holiday, do we?

To avoid this, we took printouts of our schedule and subsequent timings of alternate trains. Its actually very easy! For example look up this timetable. You are given four alternate timings at each stop in case you miss one train. Now this, is going to be your saviour at a time of need! Believe me, we've experienced it and you will thank SBB with all your heart for making your trip!

The next best thing we did would be us finding out about the Myswissalps website. As I had mentioned in my Switzerland Part-1 post, it has a forum which is monitored by many experienced mediators and fellow travellers. You can ask for help and ideas from anything regarding Switzerland, be it food, accommodation or travel. This would be the best way to start your preparation as advice is just a question away!

Collect brochures! We found out that collecting brochures of places is an useful thing to do! It is not very hard, as every train station or tourist spot in Switzerland has plenty of brochures about tourist spots and cities. The phone numbers, the maps, info about public transit and other such thoughtful info included in these would be very helpful to you while you travel. Also when return and decide to blog about your experience, they help to jog your memory, to recollect forgotten details and tongue twisting names!

Don't hesitate to inquire! Problems, however small they may seem, have an uncanny knack of ballooning up! So whatever question you have about anything at all, just ask at numerous help desks available at any train station or tourist spot.

Carry your passport. Even though it is not necessary to carry your passport with you, it is strongly advised to. We were told that we didn't need to take our passports on our trip, yet we were asked for it on the train! Luckily, we'd packed it in a last minute hunch. So passports are a big yes!

Book early. Be it trains or hotels or cruises, book early, because the prices increase if you book late and your train journeys will involve lots of transfers and cost more!

So ended our trip to Switzerland, a perfect trip in an amazing country, one which has given me a lot of memories to cherish.