PHOTO STORY | Berner Oberland

13 September 2009

This day was a family affair involving a cruise on Lake Thun. Leaving my childhood friend’s place near Zürich, I took the IC2000 double decker train to Bern and a German ICE set from there to Thun, where my parents and my dad’s siblings were already waiting.

The wharf is located directly across from the station, where I had a few minutes to photograph DS ‘Blümlisalp’ berthed there. This ship is the jewel in the crown of the BLS Schifffahrt fleet. Laid up in a quarry pond for years and very nearly scrapped, she was rescued and restored by volunteers, so thank you to them!

MS ‘Berner Oberland’, the flagship of the fleet, took us criss-cross the length of Lake Thun via Oberhofen and Spiez to Neuhaus, where we disembarked to have lunch. The rest of the family returned directly, while I caught a bus to Interlaken West to board DS ‘Blümlisalp’, which was already laying in wait for the return voyage to Thun. Once again, I upgraded my SwissPass to first class, so that I could access all public areas on board.

The camera ran out of power, so there are no pictures of the return journey, which took me the ‘way around the back’ on the metals of the Emmental-Burgdorf-Thun Bahn (EBT), which had by then been amalgamated into the BLS group. Passing lush agricultural land dotted with stately farm houses and quaint villages, I arrived at last at Solothurn. The remaining few kilometres to Wiedlisbach were absolved on the Aare-Seeland Mobil (ASM) local train, colloquially known as the ‘Bipper Lisi’.