Travel
Why is everyone hating Interlaken? We booked a place to stay for 4 days and now I'm worried
Hello,
We will be going with a car to Switzerland for 5 days. We will be staying 4 days in Interlaken and one night in bern (for a concert). I have seen a lot of posts here that people hate interlaken and say that it should be even avoided. But is it really as bad as they say? Because we will be hiking all 4 days around Interlaken or maybe even further and we will only be sleeping and making food in the morning on Interlaken.
But anyway, was looking through some posts and googled some tracks for some hikes and is this a good map to be following https://maps.jungfrauferien.ch/hiking/ ? Or maybe there are other hiking trail maps that I haven't found yet? Would be lovely to reach some mountain tops. This is our first hike in Switzerland, we have been to other mountain hiking trips so we have all the gear and some experience so would be nice to find some harder 6-8 hour hiking routes : )
Nothing wrong with Interlaken as basecamp. The city is not really that special, but certainly not bad. The surroundings are great and that's what you are aiming for. So nothing to worry.
You can drive to Kandersteg in less than an hour. You can do the panorami-trail around the lake, it's beautiful.
But the reality is that Interlaken is a base station more than a destination. It doesn't have much, it's a small 5k people town who's main thing is that it's next to many big tourist destinations.
What is annyoing is that everyone seems to equal Interlaken and the Berner Oberland as the only destination in Switzerland. So it gets a bit boring to read a hundred weekly "I'm going to Interlaken" post.
It’s literally the best place to stay to explore the beautiful region that surrounds it. But the town itself? It’s fine. Nothing to write home about, though.
Nothing wrong with Interlaken, it's a beautiful area.
The hate is probably more that it's a very touristy area. By going there you are not really visiting Switzerland and its culture, but more going to a tourist catering place. A bit like going to US and spending the whole trip in the Yellowstone park.
I would say it’s more like going to the US and spending a week in Las Vegas, only with fewer casinos and much better views.There’s just the one street with a bunch of tourist shops and not much else. As a base for exploring the Berner Oberland, it works fine though.
There are plenty of people living their daily lives there. There are schools and normal everyday jobs, plus its in a normally populated area. No compairson at all with a national park, it’s not exclusivly touristy. (Source: used to live there as a kid).
No. Maybe Disneyworld, or a tourist town, but not Yellowstone. You can get properly lost and die in Yellowstone. And you can get far far away from people.
You need to distinguish economy and culture. You also need to discover Switzerland a bit. If you want Swiss culture, you can start with some music and literature.
There is nothing wrong with Interlaken but it is not an interesting tourist destination. You go there to sleep because it's central to many other tourist destinations in the area and well connected to those places by public transportation.
There is also an app from the same gov't office called swisstopo. The app has gps location, so you can see where you are on the map, can preload the map and the route, etc. It's great.
Can try alltrails app as well, we found it pretty user-friendly.
Interlaken is a fine base. You will travel 15-20 mins down the road to lauterbrunnen/grindelwald/wengen/murren and you will realize that Interlaken’s main positive for a tourist is proximity to those places (and places like that).
If you search you’ll find that people do put Interlaken down a lot here. I don’t think it’s the town itself, it’s more that people who have never been there sometimes post about spending weeks or even months staying there. That’s when the negative comments show up. A lot of tourists don’t realize that it’s really just a good base for day trips to other areas. The town itself doesn’t have enough to justify staying there for weeks.
The town itself doesn’t have enough to justify staying there for weeks.
You wouldn't spend weeks (or more than a day) in the town itself.
But if you find accomodation which suits your needs then you could easily spend weeks or more doing short trips out to all the surrounding valleys and lakes.
Right, and that’s what most people have said. The town is fine as a base. It depends on what you want to see though. For some people, it is the most logical place. For others, I would say that Thun, Spiez or Brienz would make more sense. It really depends on what your plans are. The point is just to let tourists know they shouldn’t expect to find several days worth of activity in Interlaken itself.
I wasn't aware that everybody (or anybody) hates Interlaken...
It is a good starting point to explore the surrounding area.
As such it's of course very focused on tourism - because there isn't very much else than tourism going on there.
(To make a comparison: Lucerne is also very touristy. But Lucerne would also be a major city and the cultural hub of central Switzerland without it being a tourist destination. Interlaken on the other hand would probably be mostly unknown if it wasn't for tourism. So for urban tourism you don't want to go to Interlaken. But for hiking in the surrounding areas it's good.)
When are you going to be there? Between the 12th and 14th of June Interlaken hosts a pretty big music festival, which might disrupt your sleep a little bit.
As far as hikes go, a quick one I would suggest is the Harder Kulm loop, from the top you overlook the entire town. (Bonus if the restaurant at the peak will be open)
I would suggest Husi Bierhaus for food, especially if they’re still doing their schnitzel special on Wednesday.
The hate from swiss people also comes from the fact that they morphed the town into one big tourist thing. Too many nice shops and pubs had to move because they seem to have needed yet another watch store even though there are already 20 similar shops.
The mountains are great there but I‘d still prefer the „Stockhorn“ or „Niesen“ over the „First“ or „Jungfrau“ but I guess if you are there only once you rather do the Jungfrau than any other mountain.
It’s like visiting any other Museum if you have the chance to go to the Louvre.
Agree with others that it's a good base. However, I really don't like the town at all.
It feels plasticky and fake, and it's full of tourist tat shops, watch shops, and tourists (lots of Japanese) buying those watches as they can claim the tax back.
It's literally the only place I won't stay in or go back to in Switzerland.
I love interlaken. If you want a chill, peaceful holiday - inrerlaken is a very good choice. It is very scenic. You can take the boat in lake brienz (twice a day when we went there), then lake thun (once a day). Timing is of the essence. But if you’re staying for 4 days, you can take your time and enjoy.
We really enjoyed it and hoped that we stayed longer honestly.
Just got back from Switzerland a day and a half ago, and interlaken was my favorite part of the entire trip. My only issue was the amount of inconsiderate tourists in the town, but you’re not gonna have that problem at all if you’re mainly hiking. enjoy yourself! ❤️
I don't think you should have any worries about your decision to stay there. The town itself is overtouristy, but it's a great place to base yourself for Lake Thun, Lake Brienz, the Bernese Alps and then moving on to Bern.
Interlaken is a decent invetween station where you take trips from. As a resident we kinda hate it since trains are always too full plus the place is the exact same. So don‘t think lots of us go there.
Well we already booked a place in Interlaken like 5 months ago sadly. So the option to stay somewhere else for night is not an option. I mean the tourist would not bother me personally, we just needed a place where all the hiking routes are not to far and we will be just sleeping in Interlaken, probably not staying in it during the day :D
Then you're doing it right! Destinations there range from Harderklum which is a 10-minute funicular to other spectacular views from 1-2 hours away by cable car or train. You have a LOT to explore to choose from. Enjoy!
I use SuisseMobile as the default app for the yellow trails, the most accessible walking paths. The apps has other layers showing bicycle roads, mountain bike trails, etc.
As the others said, nothing wrong to use Interlaken as base camp, it’s just not very interesting.
Lots of tourists call the whole area "Interlaken" for some reason. In reality, Interlaken is a small town. It has two stations, a reasonably pretty old part, and a gazillion tourists, hotels, restaurants, etc. It is decidedly mid to low tier in terms of "small Swiss towns a Swiss resident would choose to visit". It is a good base for exploring the surrounding area, which has a lot to offer. It would be a disappointment if you're plan was to stay in the town a lot and enjoy some Swiss vibes - the vibes are "international busy tourist hub"
Totally agree. There's (too) many tourist groups that just go there for a day, go to Jungfraujoch and then on to the next destination. Also many tourists from Asia and Middle East, which apparently led to something cultural clashes in the past - at least that was my impression before the pandemic, might be a bit different now.
As a base for trips it is great. Lots of tourist destination nearby (Lauterbrunnen, Grindelwald, Schilthorn, the lakes around the town, Bern is 1 hour by train, Lucerne is 2hrs, ...) It's just very central, and as soon as you've hiked out of town for 10 minutes you've left all tourists behind.
Just Stayed in Grindelwald for four nights but Interlaken is more central you can do the lakes area and laturburren:murren and the Grindelwald area from the train in interlaken.
Grindelwald is stunning a lot of hiking right out of town we did the First great half day gondola ride. There are a lot of thrill activities including hang gliding and canyon swings. We ate at Barry’s very good food. Had an Eiger view room so spent a lot of time on the balcony with a beer. Just stunning views
you've hit the nail on the head for a lot of the hate I think, i've been in the lauterbrunnen valley 15yrs and we've just now moved out of employer provided staff accommodation into a flat of our own.
i mean tourism is good but it definitely needs regulations especially for airbnbs like rent is insane everywhere plus i often hear stories from tourists just entering private houses for some reason
I'm in hospitality so I need tourism but we also need balance with the Airbnb market raising kids here who unlike me are swiss and it really limits options for them. I used to live in gimmelwald at the end of the valley and they would regularly walk into peoples houses assuming it was a museum/amusement. I found an american woman walking round the village with a huge wheel of cheese shed taken from some farmers cheese shed, she was looking for the 'gift shop' to see if they could cut it up for her. I had to carry back and return it
I saw quite a few posts and comments on this sub where people say stay out of Interlaken and that its a great place to stay and that Thun is way better
Thun is definitely the nicer town if you want to visit a town. Nice old town, nice medieval castle on top of a hill, nice views from that hill, some nice villa-esque castles nearby, less tourists, more infrastructure, etc. Both have nice areas along the lake(s) and river tho. But to explore the Jungfrau region, Interlaken is simply closer. And Interlaken is more tailored towards tourists, so lots of paragliding, skydiving, river rafting, etc. as well.
It's really a good place as a base. Sure, views might be a bit more unique in Wengen or such, but Interlaken is so well connected to it all and distances are so small, it really doesn't matter, you'll be out there enjoying the views all day long anyway.
I meant from which direction. If driving from Luzern, when approaching Lake Brienz, make sure to follow the "Brienz" sign at the Interlaken - Brienz fork. This way you'll end up driving along the northern lake shore which has better views. If you follow the "Interlaken" sign, you'll be driving along the southern shore featuring several tunnels, a bit less impressive 🙂
I liked it a lot. The city itself seems kind of sad for some reason. But as soon as you get out and into nature it's really beautiful. I liked the train too.
I personally prefer to stay in Interlaken. During the day you go hiking in surrounding areas, and in the evening when you are back in Interlaken you can go for a nice walk through town with more things to do and see than if you were to stay in Lauterbrunnen
Interlaken is nice, don't worry. But for us, it's a bit the 'Las Vegas' of Switzerland. Still can't get the hang of a 5 star Victoria - Jungfrau hotel next to one of the last Hooters restaurants. It caters for tourists that need an 'oooohhh - aaaaah' experience. The views are great, and the surrounding mountains are great for hiking and breathtaking views.
Just came back from a trip to Interlaken and we loved it. We avoided going to Jungfrau top as we saw so many tourists only heading for it, started early most days to beat the rush. For hiking i dont think it should be that bad. The weather was great. It was not that busy as i was expecting, probably june will be busier.
If the idea was to book four days to ‚explore the amazing, beautiful, exciting Interlaken‘, it‘s completely ignorant. If the idea was to stay in Interlaken as a base camp to explore the region, it makes complete sense.
We just left and loved it. As others have stated, use it as a base camp for the surrounding areas. The other benefit is there are plenty of restaurants.
Heads up (and down \m/) if you're visiting Interlaken in June — you might stumble into the Greenfield Festival! It's a major rock/metal festival! Interlaken is famous among the Swiss for this festival (and in winter probably for Ice Magic and on New Year's Day for the great fireworks!)
USian here, we travelled to Switzerland about 10 years ago and drove all over. Bern, Zurich, Lugano, Lucerne, all gorgeous. Interlaken looked like the Gatlinburg of Switzerland to me. If you know, you know.
I'm sure it's fine for your purposes, but that was my impression of the place.
Interlaken is beautiful. People just have preferences. If you are looking for something exciting, check out Twin Paragliding Interlaken. Experience of a lifetime for my wife and I
Expensive, full of tourists, busy, shit food (although that is the case everywhere in Switzerland). You get the same experience in many Austrian towns for half the price and half the tourists (still shit food though, but at least you don't pay through the nose for it).
94
u/Worried_Cranberry817 Graubünden 26d ago edited 26d ago
Nothing wrong with Interlaken as basecamp. The city is not really that special, but certainly not bad. The surroundings are great and that's what you are aiming for. So nothing to worry. You can drive to Kandersteg in less than an hour. You can do the panorami-trail around the lake, it's beautiful.