More fun than an indoor museum, and more mellow than an amusement park, Ballenberg mixes historical accuracy, engaging hands-on displays, beautiful scenery, and live demonstrations. You can enter most of the buildings, which are often fully furnished and filled with fascinating details like jam on the shelves and tools on the workbench. If you visit the farmhouse from Madiswil, make sure you look up at the ceiling where hundreds of Ballenberg's own recipe sausages hang, ready to be smoked.
The beautiful weather in mid-April made it perfect conditions for visiting the open-air museum of Ballenberg. With over 163 acres of restored historical buildings and recreated gardens of almost every canton in Switzerland, it's best to spend a day at Ballenberg when the weather is nice, and in fact it had just opened the week before on April 6.
Ballenberg's sausages, as well as cheese and bread, are available at the three restaurants as well as to take home from shops. It's a nice idea to order a platter of cheese and smoked meat for your lunch. Cheese making is actually one of the demonstrations, so you can learn about the process and then buy a hunk of cheese to take home with you. Other demonstrations include weaving, smithying, bread baking, and chocolate making.
If you're interested in learning about Switzerland, it's a good idea to buy the map, which is only 2 CHF; not only is Ballenberg large, it's organized into regions and you can only get the hang of it by checking out the color coded sections and reading the short descriptions of the buildings. Of course, you can wander however you like and the heck with trying to be organized and take in any education. Ballenberg is just plain charming and fun.
We were able to buy a combination transportation and entrance fee ticket in the Interlaken Ost train station. With our Swiss Rail half-price cards it was only 26 CHF. Ballenberg has a great website where you can find travel information, event and demonstration schedules, and very in-depth information about each building. www.ballenberg.ch
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