Trip 51

September 23, 2025

We’ve had more than our share of travel disruptions on this trip between a flat tire on a plane (causing a complete rerouting at the beginning), two canceled connecting flights and now, a tree.

Leaving Luzern for Interlaken, a route we’ve taken many times, the train is diverted to an interim city because there’s a tree down on the tracks that means no electricity for the train. But, we’re all assured, there will be buses to take us from there to Interlaken. There were four buses that eventually arrived at Giswil for a train full of passengers. Not all of us got seats. The Postbus wound its way up and down the mountain terrain, slowly making its way thru some sharp S curves in the road.

Dropping us off at Merigingen, there is a train to Interlaken, which as you can imagine, is also now crowded with the influx of passengers from a diverted route.

On the way, we’ll pass by several alpine lakes (Thunersee and Brienzersee)

At Interlaken, we walked over to the large Co-Op store to buy things for lunch and then back to the station for the Berner Oberland (where Swiss Rail changes to private rail) to Lauterbrunnen and Wengen. We haven’t stayed in Wengen for years, preferring Lauterbrunnen , until it became so overwhelmingly crowded that we moved up valley.

We were last in Lauterbrunnen in 2023 (“running of the cows”), but visited nearby Grindelwald the prior year.

We walked thru “downtown “ Wengen, did a little sightseeing and shopping (have to carry things back, Switzerland no longer ships to the US because of “he who must not be named”), while waiting to check into our apartment.

This year we have a 2 bedroom apartment in Wengen with a bath, small kitchen, seating area and an amazing view.

As evening comes, the clouds descend further into the valley.