A Wild Trip to the Bernese Alps (Part 1)

Life in Bern was eating us up and it was time for some change. One weekend, we decided to leave the city behind hitchhiking to the Bernese Alps.

Getting a ride out of Bern isn't always an easy thing. I remember just a few weeks earlier we tried to go to Lausanne and it was not successful. It was raining, no car stopped for us for like two hours. At the end we had to cancel our plans and go home, wet and really frustrated. So accordingly nervous this time, we took a tram outside the city and stood close to the highway ramp, waving our sign — at least it wasn't raining this time. After 15 minutes we got picked up by a guy with an expensive looking suit and a shimmering gray Mercedes limousine. He was a broker from Zürich going home to see his kids over the weekend. We were chatting a bit while the suburbs of Bern flew by. He told us stories about his hitchhiking trip through the Baltic states when he was a teenager. We shared some laughs and stories before he dropped us off close to Thun with a beautiful view of the Thunersee.

It took us a couple of more rides where we get lifts from a professional climber, a single mother with her young son, and an old french man who doesn't speak English at all! (we even had to improvise and communicate through body language and google translate). However, we finally reached the small village Innertkirchen, a municipality in the Interlaken-Oberhasli administrative district in the canton of Bern. It is already late afternoon when we crawl out of the small Renault Twingo driven by a young employee of a nearby hotel. We discover for the first time the impressive mountains surrounding us. The sun on this fairly warm autumn day was setting and gleaming the white mountain tops in a bright pink shine. We couldn't enjoy the view for too long since we have to reach the home of our couchsurfing host which is a bit further up the hill. The last bus was about to leave but we made it just in time.

The bus snaked along the winding road and finally dropped us off at a small path leading into the woods. We walked into the darkness: no streetlights and no orientation. We simply following the sparse description our host gave us. Finally, a few ray of light broke through the thicket and a large property with a huge old farm house and some trailers came to sight. Chicken and dogs were running around, a campfire was burning and some kids were jumping on a trampoline. It looks like the perfect place for every childhood dreams. We found the owner of this place and our couchsurfing host, Chibru, in his workshop. Chibru inherited the farmhouse from his grandparents and renovated it completely by himself. Now he is running a social project for teenagers, owning a construction company for special operations in the mountains, working as a tour guide, and organizing parties and concerts. Beside his family, there are also his coworkers, clients, trainees or just people (like us), who visited him and simply stayed for a while on the property. At night everybody gathers at the big table in the farmhouse for dinner. We immediately felt the strong community cohesion and enjoyed the taste of an alternative way of living.

After the dinner and some very interesting conversations, Chibru showed us our place to sleep. It was one of the trailer outside that he and his people build up themselves. Another business that he is running. Quite a versatile guy! The trailer was brand new with electricity and running water. It was a bit cold at first, but we brought the small log to heat up the space and soon it started to be really cozy and comfortable. The bed was right under the roof with big window above, where we could slowly fell asleep under the star, surrounded by the mountain. A rather unusual but quite unique and beautiful to slumber, in between all these stony, snow sprinkled giants.

The second part is online already: A Wild Trip to the Bernese Alps (Part 2)

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