We rejoin this project of re-discovering lost slides taken by my relatives in Switzerland. This holiday must have been over a few weeks as they managed to see a lot of sites and go to a lot of different areas!
Here are some photographs of some amazing buildings dating back 100's of years in the Ballenburg open air museum! Apparently old buildings, since the 1970's, are no longer knocked down, instead they are dismantled brick by brick and re-built here in the museum! I have not heard of anything like this before! The effort that must go in to taking down these amazing buildings and moving all the bricks and then re-building them! It is an amazing thing to do but it must be a very time consuming process! There are at the moment over 100 buildings, ranging from old farmhouses, bakehouses and barns. It is located near the town of Brienz and is a huge tourist attraction, even today. This photograph below shows an old wine growers house dating back to 1780.
The museum allows visitors to walk around most of the houses and either watch or join in on the skills and activities that would have been going on at that time. Some of the activities on offer were basket-weaving, forging, braiding, spinning, weaving and carving - all of which sound amazing! Below is a old bakehouse!
These houses are so picturesque! They look like they must have just been built into the landscape not moved and then placed here afterwards! They fit so well into the background of the mountains and beautiful green fields! Just how I imagined Switzerland.
This photograph below shows a mountain peasant home dating back to 1698, now I can't say I have seen any peasant homes but this one actually doesn't look too bad! Nestled into the foliage and trees it looks like a cosy cabin although I am sure that's not what the peasants thought at the time.
Here are a few more examples of 17th century farmhouses!
Below is my favourite one! The Farmhouse from Ostermundigen, Berne, 1797 which is a great example of the bernese midlands style of housing which apparently extended from the Lake of Thun to Wynau and from Laupen to the Emmen valley on the border to Lucerne. This was clearly a wealthy family farmhouse and I just loved all the detail on the windows! After a tragic fire burnt this house down the owners came back stronger and built it bigger and better! The front of the building was taking influence from France. The grey colour was used from floor to ceiling to deceive people in thinking it was made of stone, even the top tier of windows were painted on!
Making cheese still goes on in this cheese dairy farm (below), and has been since 1361. Visitors can now watch as the process is made to make cheese! The cheese makers in Ballenburg use the simplest of methods possible and keep all the instruments traditional. Reading into all of this and seeing the photographs is almost like I am there!
As the unofficial animal of Switzerland, Cows play a big part in day to day life in the mountains. These Graubunden grey cattle have been bred since the last century. As working animals they are easy to keep and used for their milk and meat. I love the grey tones to their coat, I'm never a big fan of cows but these look lovely!
And below is an amazing horse and carriage!
After an amazing trip round the open air museum they got a coach ride to Brunig along the Brunig Pass. The pass has an altitude of 1008 and by these photos has incredible views!
This looks like it was a view of the road from below before they got on the coach, amazing how it goes into the mountain like that!
Views from the coach of an overhanging rock, not sure how the coach made it round this!!
Some of my favourites are below, the coach must have stopped to get some photos of this amazing scene, the lake looked so beautiful and with the lovely swiss houses in the background I can see why they wanted to stop!
I believe that the coach was heading to Spiez as in the series of photographs these are the ones that are next! Spiez is on the shore of Lake Thun and dates back really far, there are signs of a bronze and iron age settlements which is incredible! The first photo is of Spiez church and castle. The castle is of national significance and a Swiss heritage site. The castle was supposedly built in 933 by the King of Burgandy, and holds a lot of history!
Here is a shot of the church at the castle!
The grounds of the castle looked like they have beautiful gardens!
Here is an amazing photograph of the vineyard at the castle! The building looks so ornate!
Now I am not sure where these views were taken from but they are of Spiez, possibly from the castle? It overlooks Lake Thun which would make sense with the views!
These pretty roses running along the stone wall looks so amazing with the lake in the background! Great composition once again!
Here they took a view photos of Lake Thun. Roughly 2,500km squared its rather a large lake and is responsible for a lot flooring after heavy rainfall!
Here are some great shots they took waiting for the steem boat ride around the Lake!
When I came across these photographs of this waterfall I got so excited! We love finding waterfalls ourselves and this one looks like one of the most beautiful I have seen! The way it just cascades over this high cliff is just breathtaking! It is located just above the town of Lauterbrunnen and drops 297 meters, as it is so high the waterfall is almost lost in spray by the time it hit the valley!
These photographs were all taken in 1988 so the quality is not amazing but considering the age I am still very impressed!
That's all for now!! I hope you have enjoyed Part 2 of my project. I still can't imagine these photographs never being seen so I really hope that they would be proud and happy to know that they are now being shown to the world instead of being thrown away! I look forward to scanning more slides and seeing what else I discover!
- Verity x
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