By Vivien Horler
Brienz, Switzerland - A brown bear – quite a small brown bear – is climbing up the side of the building, reaching for a honeycomb.
You look again, and it’s not a bear at all, just an extraordinarily lifelike wooden carving on the outside of the Swiss Wood Carving Museum, the Cantonal Woodcarving School and related Jobin workshop in the lakeside village of Brienz.
Switzerland today is such a stable, plumply prosperous country that it is hard to imagine many of its people living in grinding poverty only a couple of centuries ago. Yet the attractions that draw thousands of tourists every year are what made for the poverty – disabling winters, narrow valleys all but obliterated by deep snow, towering mountains and not much in the way of arable land.
Tourism and a man called Christian Fischer rescued Brienz. Fischer was a local woodturner who started carving small wooden trinkets for sale to visitors – napkin rings, bowls, eggcups and needlecases, and teaching his skills to his neighbours. By the mid-1800s, British tourists had discovered the Bernese Oberland, and took their souvenir purchases home. Woodcarvings went on display at international fairs in London in 1851 and 1859, putting Brienz on the map.
A hotel reached by the world’s first cableway was built up the mountain on the far side of Lake Brienz and locals would row the visitors over the limpid teal waters.
Today Brienz is gorgeous, perched on the edge of the lake and surrounded by soaring, snowy mountains. There are wooden chalets, a lakeside path with occasional carved figures between the trees, and vistas of water, snow and drifting boats.
But it’s not just known for its physical beauty – Brienz is still home to woodcarving, and students come from all over the country to learn their skills at the Cantonal Woodcarving School. Six students a year are taken on for the four-year course, and judging from some of the work at the museum, they take their education very seriously.
Cabinetmaker Flavius Jobin is the fifth generation of his family to be part of the family firm, and he took us around the school and museum. They accept commissions for life-sized carvings of people – a Swiss politician stood in the workshop, complete with spectacles – but they also make infinitely desirable musical boxes and clocks complete with their mechanical movements from woods including linden and walnut.
Prices have gone up since Christian Fischer was working, though: a music box and Nativity set will set you back thousands of rand.
In the museum when we were there was an exhibition of carved bears, ranging from life-sized to tiny, small enough to fit into your hand. Evidently hallstands in the form of bears were popular. In the foyer is a bench with a bear at one end.
The lake of Brienz, 260m deep, is one of the two lakes between which you find the tourist city of Interlaken (what happens between the sheets at Interlaken, someone wanted to know).
The other lake is Lake Thun, also known as the Thunersee, and we took a two-hour cruise, complete with lunch, from Interlaken to the town of Thun. The water curled greenly away from the bow of our cruise ship, the Schilthorn, as we zig-zagged across the lake from landing stage to landing stage, watched over by snow-dusted mountains. The captain was appropriately grizzle-bearded, but the crew who tossed lines and tied up at each landing stage were two pretty women.
Thun is a biggish city, but you can easily stroll around the old town in a few hours. The river Aar, which rises in the great Aar Glaciers of the Bernese Alps, flows down into Brienz Lake, through the plateau on which Interlaken is found, and then on through the Thunersee into Thun. The river absorbs vast quantities of snowmelt in spring, and a couple of centuries ago, weirs below covered wooden bridges were built to control the river’s flow and prevent flooding.
Thun has a fort perched on a hill and glorious views down over the town and river. It’s clear why the entire region, including Interlaken, has attracted tourists for the past 200 years.
Napoleon III and his mother, the French queen Hortense, stayed in Thun in 1834 to 1835.
The works of landscape artists such as Franz Niklaus König first drew visitors to the Interlaken district, and they were struck by the Alpine views and the crisp mountain air. Hotels opened and steam ships began plying Lake Thun and Lake Brienz.
One of the visitors was the British poet Lord Byron, famously described by one of his lovers as “mad, bad and dangerous to know”. He had the spacious room with a balcony opposite mine in the Hotel Interlaken, with views up to the mountains. My room, which also had impressive mountain views, was much smaller and overlooked the main road.
Today Interlaken is still a tourist town. You can sit at a pavement cafe in the snowy main street, warmed by overhead gas heaters and rugs, and watch the visitors, many of them today from Asia, as they call at shops selling watches, Swiss Army knives and chocolate.
Meanwhile, you sit and sip coffee or hot chocolate or chilled wine, watch the Jungfrau as it coyly appears and disappears among the clouds, and plan your visit up into the crisp mountains. Just hope any bears you meet are wooden ones.
l Horler was a guest of Edelweiss Air and Switzerland Tourism.
- Weekend Argus