Auggen & Freiburg

Auggen is a sleepy little commuter town which really only has houses, some factories and a tiny railway station (literally consisting of two bus shelters, a footbridge and a ticket machine!), but it also has a gorgeous little hotel run by a small team of staff, who pay massive attention to small details like fresh flowers on the breakfast tables. The hotel even has a small 'help yourself' bar, where they light a nice open fire every evening. Put your money in the dish and help yourself to a drink - very trusting, and it seems the system is rarely, if ever abused. Like being at home!

Here's Fred the Fiesta enjoying a little R&R in the car park with some German friends...

Another piece of attention to detail which fitted in with the huntin', shootin' and fishin' theme of the general area, was finding 2 stuffed hens sitting in a basket like they were sitting on newly laid eggs - just outside the lift on the floor where my room was...

The whole area seemed full of such oddities. On the first night, a little black and white cat that had been sitting on the stairs, decided to take a ride up to my floor in the lift with me, then got out and went back down the stairs again! Wasn't seen any more during my stay so hopefully the dear little thing isn't now stuffed and sitting on another floor of the hotel somewhere!

As mentioned in a previous post, one of only about 2 or 3 restaurants in this town was a meat restaurant (no veggies round here!) with walls covered in animal heads and stuffed small animals and birds. Animal lovers beware!

On the second morning, we went down to the little station to get the train to Freiburg. The station might be tiny but the train certainly wasn't! Many trains seem to be double decker jobs, with plenty of seats and very roomy and well appointed. We took the top deck. Here's a view looking down the train carriage...

And here's the train...

Freiburg is quite a large town, bombed flat in WWII, but rebuilt to a modern standard, taking care to reproduce some of the older buildings that had been lost. An example of this is right in the centre where there is a modern department store. You can go up to the restaurant at the top of the store, sit out on their roof terrace (for smokers ostensibly but commands nice views), and look out at the top of the cathedral...

Here's Freiburg's Gate (I'm not sure of the name) - popular with model railway enthusiasts it seems - the local model shops sold models of it and other local buildings for people to put on their layouts...

After a few hours in Freiburg, it was back to the station and back on the train. We were going to go to Tittensee, a few stops down the line, to have lunch. In the end, as it was quite a nice day we decided to stay on the train right to the end of the line - a place called Seebrugge. There actually wasn't much there, just the lake below, the station, and a cafe that turned out to be closed. Also a lot of taxis parked up. Obviously a place to go to get to other places. Pretty though.

 Here's the station...

 

So it was back on the train again and back to Tittensee for lunch. On the way back the train stopped at the delightfully named station below. I'm sure they've heard every joke imaginable!

Videos of Hasliberg Reuti Cable Car Ride & Brunig to Reuti Road

Hasliberg Reuti Cable Car

Brunig Reuti Road 

I also filmed the journey to the cable car station as it was quite twisty! Music courtesy of my friend Dean Johnson in both cases (cheap plug time: Check him out at http://www.deanjohnsonmusic.co.uk).

Interlaken

Picture postcard town which was unfortunately chock-full of Japanese tourists when we were there. Here's some pictures (of the town, I hasten to add, not the tourists!)...

Yes, this IS a UK Old Red Telephone Box, with a modern (and working, rather than vandalised!) Swisscom payphone inside!

It's not exactly the biggest place in the world but does still nevertheless have a railway station at each end: Interlaken Ost (East) & Interlaken West. 

Looking down the platform from Interlaken West towards Ost...

We walked down the main street of the little town to Interlaken West Station...

But, laden down with important supplies such as chocolate(!), we did get the train back. Looking down Interlaken West station platform, towards Interlaken Ost, just out of sight in the distance...

After this little break, it was back in the car and on to our next nightly stop (2 nights this time): Auggen, Germany.

Journey To Auggen...

I'll let the photos speak for themselves for a bit. Switzerland is a breathtakingly beautiful place in parts...

We went on this cable car too. There was another ride on a much smaller cable car from here as well, but it was very expensive and the very top of the mountain was closed due to bad weather. To pay all that money and only be able to go halfway would have been silly, so we went for the cheaper option of the big car down to the bottom of the valley instead. I have a video of this which will be uploaded and linked later...

Here's a view in the little town at the top of the valley...

And here's some shots from the bottom of the valley...

Our next stop was a few hours in Interlaken.

Last Morning in Switzerland - Mountains & Taxidermy!

Awoke in Kriens to the sight out of my bedroom window of a snow topped mountain briefly appearing out of the clouds (after this it vanished once more and wasn't seen again before we left):-

We went to breakfast just down the road. The hotel was in an industrial area and there weren't many places to go, just a small shopping centre and one little cafe, presumably for the local workers.

We plumped for the cafe, and were immediately treated to a place full of taxidermy of hunting scenes, including this rather realistic but somewhat creepy stuffed fox:-

On heading just across the border into Germany (a beautiful sleepy little place called Auggen), this appeared to be a theme of the area, as the local restaurant in the town was also full of stuffed birds, animal heads on the walls, and even a painting of a pheasant... rather dead and hanging upside down after being shot! If you're a vegetarian you won't find much to eat in this part of the world, it seems!

To Viterbo... Then Back To Switzerland

We left the Naples area after breakfast. It had rained most of the night and continued with heavy showers throughout the morning. Still hot though.

Took the road along the coast, which was lovely, although for the first part of the trip, the clouds were rather dramatic:-

It certainly looked dramatic when the clouds were so low they touched the tops of the hills, over cute little villages like this:-

The weather did start to improve though, and eventually it was like this:-

Nearing the outskirts of Rome, where better to see ramrod-straight Roman Roads... they did invent them after all! Here's a perfect example:-

We didn't go into Rome, it's a bit of a crazy place to drive in and we were heading elsewhere anyway so just went round the edge.

Hit Viterbo around teatime (late afternoon). It's a pretty, bustling little town in the hills. Our hotel was quite high up on one such hill, but we were only there for one night (last night), although it gave me time to catch the sun setting over the town from my bedroom window:-

Today it was off to Kriens in Switzerland, a journey of over 400 miles, which took all day. Left in sunshine which lasted to the Swiss border (about 300 of those 400 miles), then it turned colder. Not fun as stuck just before the Gotthard Tunnel for over two hours due to a car breaking down inside the tunnel and causing a temporary closure whilst it was recovered. 

We wandered around the (now crowded) shop at the services... which sold just about everything, including surgical masks! The traffic finally started moving again very slowly after we'd been there for a couple of hours, and it took some time more before we managed to get to the tunnel proper, when things finally got back to normal. Snow on the Alps meant the pass wasn't an option this time as it was on the way down so we just had to wait.


Am now in Kriens, in a hotel in the middle of an industrial estate (hence lack of photos), but it's just for tonight. Tomorrow we are going to visit Interlaken, which is a charming little place, and then another border crossing, into Germany, where we spend a couple of nights in a little town called Auggen, but that will be another entry...

Naples - Welcome To The High Life!

Well not quite Naples but about 20 miles outside of the city (which by all accounts is rather grim so we're better off here). 

This is a lovely hotel, extremely posh - Napoli soccer team train in the grounds so fans hang about in the car park, kept at bay by security guards. I don't know how many stars this place has but it must be at least 4. The bedroom is massive, which is just as well as we're sharing it. Even the bathroom is the size of some hotel rooms I've stayed in back in the UK... all tiled (even the floor) and very palatial. Balcony overlooking 2 of the 3 (yes 3... two at the back and one in the front!) swimming pools!

Here's the side of the hotel our room is on...

Here's the view from the balcony, looking over two of the swimming pools (these are at the back and there's one bigger deeper one at the front):-

Here's the view looking the other way from the balcony, out to sea. There is a little archipelago of islands just off the coast and we can see two of them, just in the background of this picture:-

We don't have that view today as it's raining and the islands have completely disappeared into the mist, so we are having another chillout day today before we head to the little town of Viterbo tomorrow. 

We went to the small town of Pinintamare which is just across the river from the hotel. It's nicknamed Beirut as it looks a bit like a bombsite in places, but does have a good supermarket and shopping centre that we spent the morning in. You can see where it gets its nickname from below:-

Interesting choice of TV channels here. We saw a most bizarre Italian cookery show this morning, which incorporated their version of Ready Steady Cook and then the audience would suddenly start to dance on the spot! We also have a German TV channel - their cookery shows are rather more stern and they clap a lot. Then there's the Pentagon Channel from America, which appears to be strictly for American service personnel overseas - good if you like your presenters in uniform! Ever seen Bugs Bunny in Italian? It's a bit surreal!