die Schweiz: Part III

Switzerland is a great country.  I may be over idealizing it, but I absolutely love it every time I go back, so I don't think so.  This was my third time in the alpine nation, and, as with the other time, I visited the Hersberger family in Aarau.  This was a very low-key visit with no particular plan in mind.  Aside from some general hanging out with the family, we made three stops: Freilichtmuseum Ballenberg (an open-air Swiss museum), Aareschluch (Aar Gorge), and the Vindonissa Legionärspfad (legionnaires field) and amphitheater.

Freilichtmuseum Ballenberg

This open-air museum in the Canton of Bern is a cool place in the mountains filled with old buildings from all over the country.  Different sections of this 'village' correspond with different regions of Switzerland.  All of the buildings are from the the 1700-1800's.  How they carted whole buildings into this faux mountain community, I don't know.  Some of the museum even had, umm, I guess actors?  They weren't really pretending to be the people of the period, but they were doing old-timey stuff.  (Note: That link is to a whole episode of South Park, which is not appropriate to or wanted by some viewers.  I included it because there's a scene where some bank robbers are at a pioneer village in South Park, and the pioneers won't acknowledge anything they do as they don't want to break character, even after the bank robbers start killing them.  That's dedication)  Anyway, here are pictures and stuff...

This woman was weaving using some absurdly complicated machine.  It really confused me.

This guy was making cheese.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of him taking the cheese out of the water,
which was a pretty cool process.

Lizard!  Not part of the actually scenery.  He's a pretty cool lizard, so he gets a full-sized picture.

This picture comes with a story.  Once my sister asked my Oma to help her learn the German alphabet. However, when
she went through it, my sister noticed she had not included J. When she asked about this, my Oma thought about it and
eplied, "I guess we just never learned it." Apparently, this is true. Back in the day, they did not learn J as part of the
alphabet. How they spelled words with a J, I'm not sure. Perhaps with an I?

Swiss cow!

Heinz trying on his period garb.

Not only was the village itself pretty cool, but it was also in a really pretty area.

Aareschluch (Aar Gorge)

Laziness has driven me to shameless quote Wikipedia for a description:

The Aar Gorge is a section of the river Aar that carves through a limestone ridge near the town of Meiringen. The gorge is an indirect product of glaciation; 10,000 years ago, just as the Ice Age was coming to an end, torrential runoff water from melting glaciers eroded a deep, narrow chasm through the limestone barrier. Although barely one mile long, this passage is bordered by sheer cliffs up to 165 feet (50 m) high on either side. At the bottom of this steep drop the river is only a few metres wide.

The gorge has been opened to the public since 1889, by building walking paths along the Gorge. Before then, the only way was to go through the dangerous river torrent, which provided fables by travellers, who claimed to see large snakes and monsters. Since then, the gorge is a popular tourist attraction for many visitors who like natural beauty and are attracted by the Reichenbach Falls, which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle selected as the proper set for Sherlock Holmes' murder by Professor Moriarty.
It was a really cool place.  It was so cool, that I decided to make this relatively crummy video for you guys to get a lackluster idea of how great it is!  You're welcome. ☺

For those of you wondering what I said, it was superaffenmegaturbogeil, which, no matter what anyone tells you, is standard German slang.  Trust me.

Here's a picture for those of you who got sick from my shaky camera skillz.

The beaches of Switzerland!

Hey!  How did this hairy cow get into the Aar Gorge section?  Silly Scottish Highland cow...

Vindonissa Legionärspfad and Amphitheater

The last stop in Switzerland was at some Roman ruins.  To date, I've seen Roman stuff in seven countries: Rome, Greece, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Israel, and England.  Man, those guys were busy.  At one point, Vindonissa was a bustling fort at the northern frontier of the Roman Empire.  However, once the boundaries were pushed north, Vindonissa lost its purpose and it eventually fell into obscurity, remaining little more than a village to this day (and was a great village it is, in case any citizens from there are reading this).

The Legionärspfad (legionnaire path) was pretty cool; it is where the Roman soldiers live while stationed at Vindonissa.  There's a large arch erected where the southern gate of the fort used to be.  Apparently, the remains of the southern gate are beneath the modern arch.  Every time they are excavated, they are covered up again when the archaeologists are done.

There is also an amphitheater, which was obviously not covered up.  Did you know the Romans once crowned a kiwi bird emperor?

A special thanks to the Hersberger family, who have welcomed me into their home three times now, I'm sure against their better judgement.  Vielen dank!

As always, more photos are posted on Facebook.  (For those of you without a Facebook, you can still see the photos.  That is a public link that everyone should be able to see.  The same goes for every other post I've made.  Let me know if that's not the case.)  As my time here in Germany winds down, I'm going to try to post in this blog more often, reflecting on what I've learned and experienced both in Germany and Europe as a whole.  That was the original purpose of this blog, so here's hoping I can squeeze out a few good posts between now and August 2.  Until next week!