The apartment had a balcony that faced the mountains. This sounds like something every Interlaken listing promises, and most of them deliver. The town is so thoroughly surrounded by peaks that it is almost geometrically impossible to build something that doesn’t face at least one.
But this balcony faced the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau, the trilogy of four-thousanders that defines the Bernese Oberland skyline. On the first morning, when I walked out of the bedroom in socks holding a cup of coffee, I stood there for approximately fifteen minutes without speaking, moving or doing anything useful at all.
This is the problem with renting an apartment in Interlaken instead of booking a hotel. You stop performing tourism. You start simply being there.
Why an Apartment Changes Everything
![Balcony of the apartment overlooking other houses in the same estate. Photo by [Author's Name]](https://www.goworldtravel.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Wooden-Cottages-and-Mountain-View.jpg)
Photo by Nishika Vadodaria
Most visitors to Interlaken come quickly and leave quickly, either spending the morning there on a quick stopover from Zurich or Bern, or spending the night to go to the Jungfraujoch, ticking off one destination between Lucerne and Geneva.
This town sees millions of tourists a year and has structured itself accordingly: gift shops lining the Höheweg, adrenaline junkies near the train stations and tour buses at the station car park by midmorning.
But none of this is what Interlaken really is.
In reality, Interlaken is a small Swiss town of less than 6,000 inhabitants that happens to be located between two lakes created by glaciers, Thun to the west, and Brienz to the east. It sits on a wide alluvial plain that overlooks the townscape, framed by the towering mountains long before the village was even thought about.
There is a market here and a bakery known as Matten, which is often used to give directions. Trains run perfectly on time at their two train stations (as they should in Switzerland) and the historical section of town, Unterseen, is right over the Aare River.
Feeling Like a Local
Choosing to reside in an apartment instead of a hotel lets you live in this miniature version of a town. Having a kitchen means going to the Coop or Migros in the morning with your basket, reading product labels, and paying for cheese in the specific Swiss way.
Living in an apartment means having neighbors you get to know within days, seeing the woman from the second floor leaving each morning at 7:15 and the elderly man from the top floor feeding his bird on the balcony at six. None of this would happen in a hotel.
By the fourth day I had my routine down. I’d start by ordering coffee at the nearby cafe. Then I walked across the Interlaken Ost bridge over the Aare River and along its banks with their icy, impossible-to-believe green color. I was joined by dog walkers, cyclists and a fisherman who had likely fished in the same spot long before tourism appeared.
The Aare River
Image by shphys36 from Getty Images via Canva
The Aare flows calmly through Interlaken with an air of being more important than everything that has been built up around it.
Fed by glaciers, the river always seems cold enough that immersing oneself into its waters seems like a bit of bravado. It’s a shade of green that appears processed, until one realizes that this is what melted glacial water looks like before it loses its minerals.
On my second morning in Interlaken, I took a stroll along the banks of the river. The mountains, bathed in early morning light, seemed imbued with this quality unique to the Alpine region, as if they were somehow more alive before dawn.
Mist still hung heavily in the valleys, with hardly any tourists visible. There was a lone cyclist heading to work, a woman who was out for a walk with her spaniel and a heron standing patiently near the waters, content with the world.
Unterseen, Which Tourists Miss
Image by kavalenkavadesign via Canva
Just five minutes from the center of Interlaken, over the Aare River on foot, lies the municipality of Unterseen. It’s an older community than Interlaken, featuring an ancient church tower, an almost empty central square and half-timbered houses in the Swiss village style.
On my second day, I accidentally stumbled upon Unterseen while going along the river for a long walk. On the third and fourth days, I came back purposefully.
This municipality gives the impression of a community that witnessed tourism develop in the neighboring community across the river and chose not to follow the same path.
Sights include the 13th-century St. Beatus Church and the interesting regional tourism museum. The museum takes visitors through the development of the Jungfrau area from the 1800s, when British mountaineers arrived and basically founded Alpine tourism, to the present day.
The church’s central square hosted the local market while I was there. I wandered through the displays of vegetables, honey and homemade jams and chatted with a vendor about her sister’s adventures in India.
This is the texture of Interlaken that a five-day apartment stay finds, and a two-night hotel stay does not.
Eating Well
Here is a short, forthright list of my meals over five days in Interlaken. The rösti is, in my opinion, the finest contribution that the Swiss have made to the international conception of how fried potatoes should taste.
Obviously, fondue is a must, but I opted for a local restaurant in Unterseen rather than the tourist traps on the Höheweg with their laminated menus in multiple languages. Then there were the pastries from the Steininger bakery in Matten, which I visited every morning for the quiche with cheese and caramelized onions.
Of course, I also indulged in enough Swiss chocolate to feel I had made a personal commitment to the cause.
The Funky Chocolate Club on the main drag gives chocolate classes. I took one course there, feeling slightly self-conscious as an adult walking into something meant for children. But I walked out with a handful of homemade chocolate bars and more information about tempering chocolate than I would have dreamed of knowing on a Tuesday afternoon.
Switzerland is expensive. This is known; it is accurate, and renting an apartment with a kitchen is the most practical mitigation available. Shopping at the local supermarket and cooking half your meals changes the financial calculation considerably. It also has the secondary benefit of making you feel, for a brief moment, like someone who actually lives there. Both are simple ways to practice sustainable travel while also saving money.
What Interlaken Is For
Interlaken has become known for its adrenaline activities: paragliding over the valley, canyon jumping, and skydiving over the Jungfrau. They are real adventures, and the activities are amazing. However, I have never done them.
What I did there was slow-paced and much less impressive, more difficult to explain and justify when returning home. I admired the colors of the mountains at sunrise from my apartment balcony and took a walk by the river before anyone else showed up.
I discovered a village no one mentioned to me, ate plenty of cheese and chocolate, and went down the mountain alone, walking through the forest and feeling very special when I reached the bottom.
None of those things takes five days. However, five days is enough to forget the status of a tourist in Interlaken and become someone who stays in this place like a local, even for a short time.
I returned home with those mountains still fresh in my head and an unshakable idea of where to purchase my quiche in Matten.
This is what Interlaken does, if you allow it.
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Author Bio: I’m just a student who likes to travel independently, so tag along and keep me company!
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