April 9, 2005. Today we said goodbye to Zeev and Rosalind Gluek. They were wonderful hosts and we are looking forward to hosting them in our new home in Brampton, ON Canada next year. Our driver picked us up at 10:30 and we set off on the next phase of our “Around the World Adventure” which would take us to the Bernese Oberland which is one of the greatest tourist attractions in the world and takes in a portion of the Alps. From Biel we drove 25 miles to Bern and then continued 70 miles south to Interlaken. Driving between the two lakes that surround Interlaken we proceeded another 19miles to Lauterbrunnen.

Lauterbrunnen is one of the jumping off spots to get into the high mountains of the Bernese Oberland. From the station at Lauterbrunnen we took a cable train straight up the mountain to a plateau. Here you change to a cog wheel train which takes you along the plateau to Murren. The Swiss are famous for their service and we noticed that when we got to the cable car. We put our bags on a flatbed car at the back of the cable train and we saw them again in our room at the hotel. The railway and hotel staff handled the transfers faultlessly.

The village of Murren is in a stunning location, high above the Lauterbrunnen Valley. At 5,414 feet, Murren is the highest year-round inhabited village in the Bernese Oberland. It is the birthplace of modern alpine racing. It is not accessible to vehicles so you wander down the village streets without having to worry about cars.

We arrived in Murren in the middle of a snow storm which dropped almost 8 inches of snow on the plateau. We checked into our hotel (The Anfi Palace) and we could see nothing from our rooms but fog and snow. The Anfi Palace is a Four Star older hotel just above the train station that it has been totally renovated in the last five years. We have a spacious corner room overlooking the valley. Dinner was a five star event that took just over two hours and both Nancy and I enjoyed the Swiss beef along with a great bottle of French wine.

Stay tuned for Day 7 in my “Around the World in 30 Days” saga.

Alan Salmon
eClub One