Visiting the Aareschlucht, Switzerland

'What else to do on a day off than acting like a tourist in your own country. After all, aren't the mountains and the lakes the reason why you moved to Switzerland?'

Sometimes I need a reminder for this after a couple of days when I have only been working, and the other times that I was off when it was pouring rain and there was not even a mountain to be seen. Well, I kicked myself under the butt and was looking for a destination to visit during a day where the sun was still lacking, and the soil was still too moisty to hike on. I was looking for a touristy thing to do.

Options of stuff you have enough to do in Switzerland, but not everything is just as convenient as you would like. Like for instance I was looking to visit the Rheinfallen in Schaffhausen as our buddy @detlev did earlier in the week, but realistically this is still a 2 hour drive away from me, which seemed like a bit of an overkill. So I ended up going to the Aareschlucht in Meiringen, central Switzerland. A beautiful gorge or canyon of about a kilometer long where you can walk through.

With an entrance fee of about $9 bucks for Swiss behalf, this is a cheap option to do. Conveniently located this park has a trainstation North and South of the canyon and because of this, you can choose yourself where you want to start your journey and you only have to walk one way. Ofcourse you can walk back and forth if you would want to, but atleast the option is there. I choose to go on a weekday, and there was hardly any foot traffic going on, which was actually perfect.

So what is this canyon actually? Well because of erosion over the centuries the river Aare has grinded its way through the corroded landscape leaving this big canyon inside. I would say it is quite spectacular, because the most mountains of Switzerland are very solid rock and do not have these kinds of caves in there. Also usually the water of the rivers is very crystal clear blue, but because of the sediment that releases (and it was super rainy in the days before) you can see that a lot of debris is travelling with the water causing this milky color. Kilometers further on this sediment falls to the bottom of the rivier gives the Aare its clear color back again.

At its deepest point the mountains are 280 meters higher than where you are walking, which is quite a cool view. Also this tunnel through the bedrock was made already in late 1880s which is astonishing to me that this kind of work was already capable of being done. It even has a small room inside there which connects to the railway and was used to sleep in by soldiers in the second world war. Talk about craftmanship right? But craftmanship doesn't take away the beauty of nature, and this was a fantastic place to visit.

I don't find all touristy attractions always worth it, but the Aareschlucht is definitely worth visiting!