Winter made a little appearance last weekend. After two weeks of radiant sun, clouds came and left a little bit of snow even in Zurich. But that didn’t stop us. I’m still longing for white winter landscapes! And with that in mind, we went to a place we have visited a few times already but never disappoints: Kandersteg and the magical alpine lake Oeschinensee (you can see here photos from Oeschinensee in winter and summer).

We couldn’t have chosen a better day for this trip. Since 2010, the little mountain village of Kandersteg celebrates the “Belle Epoque Woche“, a week that makes you feel as if you had traveled back in time to the beautiful Belle Epoque era (1884-1914). It’s a whole week full of events, where villagers and visitors alike dress in Victorian clothes (women wear long skirts, furs and beautiful hats while men dress in top hats and tails). There are formal dinners, parades, sport events (such as sled races using old fashioned sleds or skiers using wooden skies) and there’s even a Belle Epoque Ball!! And seeing all of this with the snow covering the pretty village just adds more magic to the experience. We didn’t stay long to see all those events, as we went only the first day of the Belle Epoque Woche. But it was quite fun to see all the people around us dressed in historical dresses while they were walking around the market selling beautiful Victorian hats and objects from the beginning of the XX century. It really felt as if we were in another time!

After exploring the Belle Epoque market, we took the gondola to Oeschinensee. At almost 2000m of altitude, the low clouds were playing with the peaks around us, hiding and uncovering them, letting the light come and go in a magical way, while a strange and beautiful blue hue covered part of the mountains. We walked through the beautiful snowed forest that precedes the lake, we hiked up to get better views of the lake and the mountains from above and we finally walked on the frozen lake before we had lunch in the Berghaus by the lake. When we went to take the gondola back to the valley, the sun was still illuminating the impressive Blüemlisalp while the clouds closed above us and the snow started to fall. Sun and snow falling, it was one of my favorite moments of this trip.

Here are some of the photos I took in Kandersteg and beautiful Oeschinensee. I hope you like them!

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