Enjoying a taste of Switzerland in Jura
Justine Tyerman is a New Zealand journalist, travel writer and sub-editor. Married for 36 years, she lives in rural surroundings near Gisborne on the East Coast of New Zealand with her husband Chris. In this piece she explores the gorgeous region of Jura in Switzerland.
Our guide asked me why I was so fixated with touching all the buildings we visited in the Swiss Jura region. I kept playing with the shutters, knocking on the walls and feeling the flowers in the window boxes.
"I'm checking to make sure they are not just facades," I said to an amused Christine, an elegant Swiss French woman with a delightful sense of humour, after we had passed through a series of exquisite villages by train on the Jura Foot Line.
"They are too pretty to be real," I said.
"I suspect you are taking us to villages which are like movies sets, especially designed for tourists. Behind these postcard/chocolate box facades, there are probably ordinary dull old buildings."
Christine laughed and then as if to debunk my theory, she accidentally missed our next stop and we got off the train at an unscheduled station.
The village was impossibly picturesque with neat, perfect little chalet-style houses with shuttered windows latched open and local people, young and old, smiling and waving, tending their window boxes, preparing food or working in tiny shops selling antiques and crafts.
I picked a handful of grass in a paddock beside the road and rubbed it between my hands, expecting the intense greenness to rub off.
Our German-speaking guide Lukas grinned and said "It's artificial you know – we spray all the grass in Switzerland with special green dye."
I gave up being a sceptic after that and accepted that astounding beauty of the countryside was indeed real and that the citizens of Switzerland were unfairly blessed.
Falling in love with Switzerland made me feel slightly traitorous to my home country. I had always loudly and proudly extolled the virtues of New Zealand's mountains, lakes and rivers but the Swiss landscape seemed to outdo us in all respects.
The mountains were higher and snowier than ours, the lakes were bluer, the rivers were cleaner and bubblier, the grass was greener and lusher and the villages and towns were far more picturesque… so much so, they all looked like scenes from a tourism promo video.
Even the cows were so pretty and clean, I thought they were fake.
I was in Switzerland to explore the Jura Trois-Lacs (Three Lakes) region by public transport, courtesy of Switzerland Tourism and an unassuming slip of paper called the Swiss Travel Pass which I came to regard as magic. The Swiss Travel Pass allows you to travel on all public transport – trains, boats and buses – with no fussing about queuing for tickets or operating unmanned vending machines at deserted stations. The Pass (from three days continuous to 15 days within a month) also allows free entry to more than 490 museums and gives holders up to 50 percent off mountain railways and cableways.
There are a host of options including the Swiss Youth Pass which gives travellers under 26 discounted travel, and the Swiss Family Card which entitles children under 16 accompanied by an adult with a Swiss Travel Pass, to travel for free.
A gentler region than its lofty cousins in the distance with their soaring peaks, the Jura is blessed with lakes, rivers, sub-alpine mountains, green meadows, vineyards, quaint towns, and is rich in the history of Swiss watch, music box and chocolate-making.
Solothurn, Switzerland’s most beautiful baroque town. Image credit: Justine Tyerman
Arriving in Zurich fresh after an overnight flight from Sydney thanks to the efficiency and comfort of Swiss Air, I flashed my Swiss Travel Pass at the train conductor who directed me to a first-class carriage (woohoo!) on the train to Solothurn, Switzerland’s most beautiful baroque town.
I spent a delightful few hours exploring the charming old town on the River Aare, before cruising down the river to Biel, again courtesy of my Swiss Travel Pass, and then catching a train to Neuchâtel on the edge of the stunning lake for which the city is named.
Staying overnight in a lovely lake-view room at the historic L’Hôtel Alpes et Lac in Neuchâtel, we dined on delicious Swiss cuisine at Café des Halles. We struck happy throngs out celebrating the annual wine harvest at the Fête des Vendanges and danced in the streets along with the revellers.
Christine took us on a walking tour of the ancient town of Neuchâtel with its many fountains, statues and steep cobbled streets and steps leading up to the 12th century chateau and church high on the hill.
We travelled by train to Noiraigue in the Val-de-Travers to visit the famous Jacot Chocolatier who have been making their exquisite confectionary for more than 50 years and send products all over the world. There I failed abysmally a test of self-discipline. After learning about the history and characteristics of chocolate from Monsieur Blaise Descombes, a chocolatier at Jacot for 30 years, I consumed all 12 pieces on my sampling tray along with the wines to match… and accepted two complimentary bars of chocolate.
As we whizzed through the countryside to Maison de l’Absinthe in Motiers, Val-de-Travers, our guide teased me about exercising more restraint with the tasting of absinthe than I had done with the chocolate.
Lukas warned if I over-indulged, I might start seeing la fée verte, the green fairy. No chance of that. A small diluted sample of the powerful anise spirit made from wormwood was quite enough for me. However, the museum dedicated to the story of the “sacred libation”, once the drink of the art nouveau set like Van Gogh, Verlaine and Raphael, was utterly fascinating. Banned in 1910 for allegedly driving people insane and causing them to commit heinous crimes, the distillation of absinthe continued in clandestine stills in the Val-de-Travers and was eventually legalised again in the valley in 2004. I’m sure several others in our party, however, saw whole hosts of green fairies flitting through the trees behind the maison.
Our sortie later that day deep inside a former asphalt mine in Travers brought us all back to reality - it was a little unnerving but gave an excellent understanding of the life and work of a miner in days gone by. The mine operated from 1712 to 1986.
Back on the train to Le Sentier in the Vallée de Joux, we visited Espace Horloger, the cradle of “grande complication” watchmaking in Switzerland. It's an astonishing state-of-the art interactive museum with smart technology, a workshop, 3D theatre and shop dedicated to Switzerland's watchmaking genius. Entry is free, thanks to your magical Swiss Pass.
We were lucky enough to meet the most famous watchmaker in entire the valley, Philippe Dufour, aged 66. He looked just as a quintessential Swiss watchmaker should and even had one of those eye glass things in his pocket… and a $US100,000 hand-crafted watch on his wrist, custom-made for him by none other than Philippe Dufour.
A neat little house with pretty shutters in Noiraigue. Image credit: Justine Tyerman
Dinner that evening at the Grand Hotel des Bains in Yverdon-les-Bains was as grand as the name suggests. Superb cuisine and luscious local wines.
The Swiss brain is wired quite differently from the average grey matter because they obviously excel at intricate, precision skills. On par with watch-making for minute, fiddly mechanics, is music box-making, another Swiss forté. The CIMA Museum, the Museum of the Music Boxes in Sainte Croix, is a must-see… and more good exercise for your Swiss Travel Pass. I arrived thinking in terms of little wind-up jewellery boxes with ballerinas twirling around on a mirror. I had to wash my mind out with absinthe at the sacrilege I had committed. The music boxes we saw went from exquisite tiny chirping birds to huge elaborate stage-like creations that used to entertain passengers at train stations until about 15 years ago, when vandalism became a problem.
The craft began in 1796 when Geneva clockmaker Antoine Favre-Salomon invented a musical pocket watch. The farmers needed an occupation during the long snow-bound winter months in the valley so music box-making began. Far from dying out, it has been actively promoted in the villages by the government, much like watch making. Sainte-Croix has since become the world capital of mechanical music and music automatons are still produced there.
The hearty traditional Swiss lunch we had at the Restaurant du Mond-de-Baulmes in the mountains of Sainte Croix set us up well for our caving adventure in the afternoon. The beignets au fromage (fried cheese fritters) were naughty but divine.
The Vallorbe Caves. Image credit: Justine Tyerman
The Vallorbe Caves, the biggest cave system in Switzerland, were unforgettable. We trekked 1km into the 6km network of caves, the source of the subterranean River Orbe, discovered by a diver in 1961. The cascades, caverns, lakes, stalactites, stalagmites, pillars and rock formations, some resembling giant jellyfish, others tubular and hollow like long spindly macaroni and one in the shape of a bison head, were so enchanting I forgot my collywobbles about being deep underground . . . again. The Le Trésor des Fées, the Fairies’ Treasure exhibition of minerals from all around the world at the end of the tour was dazzling in colour, shape and variety.
The day wrapped up with fine wine and food. Benjamin Morel, the owner of the Château de Valeyres in Valeyres-sous-Rances, whose family have owned the 500-year-old château for three generations, was heavily committed because the grape harvest was in full swing so we were placed in the capable hands of his winemaker, Miguel Hernandez.
With the boss otherwise engaged, the charming Miguel from Mexico treated us to five wines served in the château’s cave along with platters of delectable hors d’oeuvres. From the elegant Baron Blanc with subtle aromas of flowers to the rich, heady Gamay Confidential with intense colour and aromatic spices, the wines were exceptional. In the evening, we dined in style at nearby La Vieille Auberge on tasty pavé de boeuf with truffle butter and quite a lot more of Château de Valeyres’ finest pinot noir.
Before leaving the Jura, we walked around the old town of Yverdon-les-Bains in the Region du Leman with guide Jeanine who took us not only to the grand old theatres, fountains, statues and churches of the town but, thanks to her local contacts, also snuck us into a beautiful private walled garden, a bizarre Superman, Batman and Comics exhibition and the La Ferme, an indoor farmers’ market. At La Ferme we met Gerard Roy who proudly plied us with trays of local delicacies like Monk’s Head cheese washed down with a very drinkable Cuvée Terra Nobilis. Mixing with the jovial multilingual locals at the market, we were filled with a sense of joie de vivre or lebensfreude, a fitting end to a week in the gentle Jura.
It was all so easy thanks to the Swiss Travel Pass, the superbly efficient Swiss Transport System and the friendliness of the people we met. And it was all real, even the cows.
What an incredible trip! Have you ever been to Switzerland?
*Justine Tyerman travelled courtesy of Switzerland Tourism.
To learn more about Switzerland, visit www.myswitzerland.com. To book the Swiss Travel Pass, go to www.myswitzerland.com/rail.Flights are available with Swiss International Air Lines on www.swiss.com. To stay at L’Hôtel Alpes et Lac in Neuchâtel, go to www.alpesetlac.ch
Related links:
20 things that surprise people visiting Europe
Things about Europe that come as a rude shock
A chocoholic’s dream in Switzerland