O, Interlaken

The guy in this video claims Interlaken isn't all that. He may be right; I wouldn't know. I've been to Interlaken three times (in 1990 with fellow G-town classmates; in 1991 with my brother David; and sometime later by myself although I can't remember the year), but the city served only as a base for me to hike around Lake Brienz (i.e., the eastern lake: Interlaken means "between lakes"; the western lake is called Thun, pronounced a bit like "tune"), so I don't know the city itself all that well, but it's easy to see that Interlaken was and is indeed a tourist trap, and that its tourist-trappiness has only gotten worse with time.

I did leave the guy a comment, though:

When I was a uni student majoring in French and living in Fribourg/Freiburg, Switzerland back in 1989-90—the year the Berlin Wall came down & Ceasescu + wife got deleted & Tiananmen happened—a group of us students went together to Interlaken, not to visit the city, but to hike around one of the lakes: the Brienzersee (Lac Brienz). We hiked the north side on Day 1, then the south side on Day 2.

On Day 1, we went uphill a bit and found logging/utility/fire roads well above but parallel to the lake's water level. These gave us a splendid view down into the lake valley. We went down to the water at the end of the day and set up a lakeside camp a bit past the town of Brienz on a bit of bare shore (I see that that area has since become a Kampingplatz! We were ahead of our time!). No one bothered us, and we made sure to clean up after ourselves. On Day 2, we encountered the Giessbach Falls and Iseltwald, then wandered back to the Interlaken Ost train station to go back to Fribourg. I did the hike again with my brother in 1991 as part of a college-graduation gift from my parents.

It was a great, quiet hike, and even back then, the city was a bit of a tourist trap, but we avoided the noise by sticking to the trails away from town. Actually, on Day 2, we hiked along the road and on nearby trails closer to the lakeshore, and it was still fairly quiet. I'd actually like to go back and hike around the much bigger Thunersee (Lac Thun) on the other side of Interlaken. I bet that, even today, hiking in the region is a quieter option than hanging around the town.

While it seemed like a long hike back then to my young eyes (I've since become a dedicated distance walker, walking across South Korea yearly), I now see that the distance around the lake is only around 30-35 km, give or take a few km—doable in a single day, no camping needed. There's even a 37-km Lake Brienz Tour Loop Trail that one can follow, although I'd probably end up picking my own path to avoid crowds. When you're hiking in a lake valley, it's nearly impossible to get lost or turned around! Anyway, I love the Interlaken region—not so much for the city but for the lovely trails. And once you step outside of the city limits, things immediately get a lot quieter.