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                     Europe 2010                        

Monday 26th.July 2010 (Temperature mid 20's˚C)
We left the hotel in Lucerne at about 9:00am and drove along the Emmental Valley towards Bern. We passed numerous farm houses whose walls were made up of tiny wooden shingles.
 

We arrived in Bern at lunchtime and after seeing the original bear pit we saw a male, female and two brown bear cubs feeding in their new enclosures beside the River Aare. I think Bern derives its name from the old German word for "bears."
 

A town with a bear on its crest must be good! We did a short walking tour of the old centre of town, watched the glockenspiel perform at 4 minutes to mid day and took some photos.
 

After lunch we continued in the bus to Interlaken and checked into the hotel. Interlaken comes from the Latin meaning "between two lakes" and lies between Lake Thun and Lake Brienz.
 

We are hoping for fine weather tomorrow for our journey to the Jungfrau, but as I type this it is raining outside.

Tuesday 27th.July 2010
The bus left the city hotel Oberland at about 9:30am and took us to Grund. Here we caught the first of two "cog" railways. The first of which took us up the mountains to Kleine Scheidegg. The views of the valley below and the mountains above were spectacular, although the clouds always presented a problem. The second "cog" train took us up the inside of the Eiger through a long narrow tunnel. We had two stops of 5 minutes each on the way (mainly to let trains coming down pass us), unfortunately the views from the observation windows were obscured by fog.
 

We finally arrived at Jungfraujoch, the top of Europe, after about an hour of climbing. This is the highest railway station in Europe at an altitude of 3,454m (11,333 feet) above sea level. The clouds closed in moments after we arrived and apart from a brief 2-3 minute window of opportunity to take photos just before we were due to catch the train down again. I thank Rosemary and Hilary for the use of their photos, as I didn't take any photos as I missed the opportunity when I rushed to a better vantage point.
 

We arrived back down in Grund at about 3:30pm and the bus took us into Interlaken at about 4:00pm. The rest of the afternoon was for shopping and having dinner.
 

After dinner we wandered around window shopping and watching the parasailers drifting down into the town from a nearby mountain. While we watched, we were amazed at the number of Muslim women waalking around Interlaken dressed in their black burqas and black gloves, their wandering dark eyes peering through narrow slits in the head dress being the only evidence that there might be a human in there some where.

... and this is how the Eiger and the Jungfrau look in the post cards.