Pearls summer

Make your boyhood dreams come true as an apprentice fireman on the legendary Brienz–Rothorn mountain railway! Besides learning all about the line and the vintage 1892 locomotives, you can take a look inside the steam engine, be present when the brakes are tested and help stoke the furnace on the way up to the top. Plus you return home with a personalized fireman’s certificate.

A bit of Ticino to take home with you! At the Gottardo dairy in Airolo, guests can use the wonderful milk produced by cows in the San Gottardo region to make their own cheese. An experienced cheese maker tells them what to do and after each freshly made cheese has aged sufficiently to produce a fine mature cheese, it is sent back home to the one who made it as a reminder of an unforgettable holiday in Ticino.

Not everyone has a garden, but everyone can have an apple tree – by sponsoring a tree in the apple-growing village of Altnau, for example, or by planting a new one, in which case you can choose the variety and location yourself. Every sponsored tree has a sign with the name of the sponsor, who naturally gets to harvest the apples as well, either whole or in the form of freshly pressed apple juice.

A visit to Augusta Raurica, the famous Roman settlement on the Rhine, promises more than just a fascinating insight into one of the most interesting chapters of human history; it's sure to be lots of fun too!

A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! Visitors to the bell foundry in Berger in Bärau can now cast their own bells. The first job is to decorate the sand moulds, after which guests are taken on a tour of the foundry while the metal is being heated up to 1100 degrees. Once it is molten, the bells are cast and just a short time later can be admired as unique works of craftsmanship.

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The past is alive and well in Basel’s old paper mill. Here in the mill’s medieval-style workshops, paper is still made using traditional methods. The history of writing is brought back to life by the machines for casting and setting lead type, while the historical printing presses in the museum's own printing shop show how books used to be produced. Visitors are welcome to make their own coloured paper in the museum’s interactive studio.

Those who sign up for a tour of Basel with Emma Munzinger get to see the city from a completely different perspective. An old school maidservant, Munzinger takes guests with her to her new workplace in the home of one of Basel’s most illustrious families. There, allowed to peek behind doors that are normally shut, visitors can learn all about the history of Basel’s “Daigs” – as the upper crust is called in Basel dialect – as well as picking up many a juicy piece of gossip.

No one is too young to go to sea! On this boat trip on Lake Bienne, children can get a taste of what it means to be at the helm. Those who sign up in advance not only get to visit the captain on the bridge, but can also have a go at steering the boat on their own – at the helm and with the captain’s cap on their head! So if that’s not enough to fire a young sea pup’s imagination, what is?

As a guest on the footplate of the steam train from Brienz up the Rothorn, you get to experience both the marvels of steam and the wonders of nature at first hand. Passing through romantic meadows and chugging alongside precipitous cliff faces, the cog railway climbs 1,678 m to the craggy ridge at the top, with gradients of up to 25 percent in places. The Brienz–Rothorn mountain railway is Switzerland’s only steam railway to provide a daily service.

What started as an April Fool’s joke can now be experienced for real. On the Brunni near Engelberg, Pius the mountain cleaner takes guests on a via ferrata with a difference. And because flossing rock faces is not just fun, but likely to make you hungry, too, the assignment is followed by a hearty supper at the Brunnihütte – until the sun sets behind “Switzerland’s cleanest mountain.”