Sunday 2 June 2013

Swiss but not Cheesy.... Ree POV

OK this post is a bit on the "well after the event" side but will relay what I remember and perhaps those will be the best bits anyway..

BALLENBURG

Ballenberg is a massive - and I mean massive - open air museum just out of Brienz (which is in turn just out of Interlaken). En route to Bern, our next stop after Lauterbrunnen, we took a detour to go see what it was about - yet again we jagged the most amazing weather with the grey clouds giving way to glorious blue skies and faint wiffy clouds.

 

 

 

Swiss Strolling

 

 

 

The place is set up like a working walk back through time and gives a snapshot of life in various regions of Switzerland and various times in history - 13 regions in all based over 135 acres - over 100 historic homes farms, official buildings, artisans studios etc all saved from their original location. This is about all we knew before we arrived and the jury was out on whether it was going to be cheesy or not.... but it just wasn't at all.

 

Can you believe this place? Zoe fetching water.

 

 

I'll try to explain better. For example in the Berner Oberland section there were 12 separate buildings - and although I cannot read Swiss German at all - I can tell you that one was built originally in 1570 and then some buildings were from the 1600s and 1700s up to the latest from 1896. A farm building for example will be set up inside as if actually a working farm with the fire going and a pot boiling perhaps or the farmer actually pumping water up from the ground or out in the field where they are growing corn or vegetables. One building had demonstrations of lace making (not cheesy - stay with me). So there is a lady sitting and producing styles of lace typical of that region dressed in typical clothing of that time and place and sure you might not want to stop and watch that for very long, but, you know... she just carries on as if going about her daily life and its all quite peaceful really. You can ask her questions and she might look up and greet you when you arrive but for the most part it is as if you are just a spectator. Another region had a baker, another had a porcelain painter. There was pottery, weaving and people making hats, cheese, shoes and shingles (not combined) and wheat-grinding too but our favourite by far was the chocolate making. This ended up being at the other end of the very long museum but we were not to be deterred.

We all love chocolate!

 

We got all clued up on "conching" - a process developed by Ridolphe Lindt (yes Lindt) who figured out that if you agitate and mix the right amount of cocoa butter and chocolate together for 72 hours you get awesome eating chocolate. I didn't even know what a cacao bean looked like before this place. Turns out the Swiss were not the first to have a go at producing chocolate (after the Spanish "borrowed" it from the Aztecs and introduced it as a tasty warm beverage to Europe in the 16th Century.) The Dutch, the English, the Belgians and the Italians all had a go at producing an edible form - but it was Lindt who produced the first chocolate that would "melt in your mouth". Bless him. And his conching machine.

 

 

Cacao bean - in the raw. Like a massive shrivelled avocado

 

 

 

 

 

 

As an aside the word chocolate comes almost directly from the Aztec word used which was xocolātl (where the "x" sounds like "ch") - loosely translated this means "bitter water". ok.

Cacao beans must be fermented to reduce the bitter flavour and we actually watched a cool video in the chocolate place explaining all of this in Swiss German until the nice man asked us if we wanted to watch in English so we sat through the whole thing again - but it made a lot more sense the second time.

Naturally they also sell the chocolate that they make and we felt it would have been very rude to sit through 2 videos and not buy at least some of what they had on offer.

 

They also sold traditional Swiss music on CD but we felt we were able to decline that:

 

 

 

That's a lot of francs!

 

 

 

 

Back to Ballenberg...

OK so the regions of Ballenberg are linked by small forests and walking trails and lakes and pastures, so it is literally like travelling out of one region and into another. They even grow different trees around the different regions to try and reflect the area you are entering. There were not so many people there on our day either so we could really imagine that we had actually stepped back in time and into somewhere else entirely.

 

 

Pick the Australian tree...

 

 

There are pigs and goats and chickens and ducks - and of course big jangling Swiss cows!

 

Swiss cows cannot sneak up on you

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

attennnn.....shun

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Drew enthralled

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We found a chap carving wood who had Drew absolutely transfixed for a good 20 minutes. Drew pulled up a chair and sat at least 50cm away from him while he carved out a camel with his gorgeous old tools all laid out.

 

There was a mini aqueduct pushing water passed a turbine that was then powering a wood saw - all circa 1850 and looked after by a chap who might have been born then.

 

Luckily they have nice little Swiss restaurants placed around the museum for tired and hungry spectators where they serve such traditional Swiss delicacies such as french fries and french onion soup.

We made our way past all kinds of fascinating things - including a get together of some show-jumping bunny rabbits. This is a whole world of its own and I encourage you to google it. Unfortuately didn't get any shots.

The best bit for the kids probably was "Hands on House" where they could dress a scare-crow, whittle wood sticks, nail massive hand made nails into planks, pull them out again and saw wood. There was a forge nearby too that we wanted to go see but he was closed by the time we dragged our weary walked-all-over-Switzerland feet there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We bought some Swiss dried apple chips at the exit and made our way into the 21st Century to wait 30 minutes for a bus. The clouds had come over by then and there was a stiff breeze and a definite chill in the air. Preferred the past myself.

 

 

 

 

Ooh and here's some edelweiss - you know of "every morning you greet me" fame. I'd never seen it before and we were lucky to catch some growing at this altitude - normally much higher up. Lorry would have put in a nice link to the Sound of Music here but I'm a bit more lazy than him!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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