Ballenberg is like a retirement village for old buildings in Switzerland where the whole park of about 60 hectares contains farm buildings from all over the country that were to be demolished.
We left Interlaken at 8:52am and then caught the Lady of Jungfrau Ferry across Lake Brienz to the town of Brienz.
One great part of the Swiss transport system is how well connected it is, when the trains arrive at the stations the buses are waiting.
We caught the bus to the Ballenberg west entrance and this took less than ten minutes. The park was really good and made us finally feel we were in Switzerland, as up until now we had not totally felt we were.
Walking around the park we dropped into many buildings all being over 100 years old and some being up to 600. They had been relocated from all over Switzerland and have been grouped into the regions where they have come from. For us it was a great way to see the many types of architectural design in one place. There is such a difference in the design of the buildings between the regions.
There are also many animals on the site, Katie finally got up close to a cow with a bell, something she had been wanting to do for a while. She did get much closer, but I just don't have a photo.
We left Interlaken at 8:52am and then caught the Lady of Jungfrau Ferry across Lake Brienz to the town of Brienz.
We caught the bus to the Ballenberg west entrance and this took less than ten minutes. The park was really good and made us finally feel we were in Switzerland, as up until now we had not totally felt we were.
Walking around the park we dropped into many buildings all being over 100 years old and some being up to 600. They had been relocated from all over Switzerland and have been grouped into the regions where they have come from. For us it was a great way to see the many types of architectural design in one place. There is such a difference in the design of the buildings between the regions.
There are also many animals on the site, Katie finally got up close to a cow with a bell, something she had been wanting to do for a while. She did get much closer, but I just don't have a photo.
The main concept of the park was great but we were a little disappointed with the lack of Ballenberg staff demonstrating things in the buildings. The impression given was that we would see people making Swiss crafts and also Swiss foods. The main item we saw was the sausage smoking house, this was a two story house that the bottom floor was full of smoke, we walked inside and looked to the ceiling to see hundreds of sausages/salami's hanging all being smoked. Katie had never been under so many sausages before.
We also saw watch making equipment, apparently farmers would supplement their income by making and fixing watches after working on the farm. I doubt modern day farmers would be able to do this!
and we saw some Swiss Ass. (or should that be donkey)
And of course how could we walk around a Swiss park without some hills.
Ballenberg is a great place and we would recommend this outing to anyone who is in the area.
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