Brienz is set on a lake, with little wooden and stone houses (some with beautiful little wooden shingle walls) with brightly coloured flower boxes under the windows - geraniums seem to be a popular choice. It is, according to the marketing, a "typically Swiss" village. It is particularly well known for its wood carvings. We've seen some stunning examples - but the prices reflect the amount of time and skill it takes to carve them - 6 hours for a basic elephant about 10cm high. So it's no wonder that a stunning deer carving I really liked was 24,500 CHF ($NZ 40,000).

Today (Thur) we took a trip to an "Outdoor Museum" - where old buildings from around Switzerland have been transported and restored to give a picture of life in Switzerland in earlier times. From thatched roof dwellings to stone "smithy" workshops and farm buildings- there were over 50 buildings and traditional Swiss crafts and passtimes were on display as well as farm animals.

We watched rope making, carving and pottery demonstrations, wandered through Beech and Elm woodlands, and patted goats, donkeys, pigs, rabbits and chickens and saw some more cows and sheep.
The cows have much bigger ears than NZ cows and they wag them alot - to keep the flys away. They all seem to wear bells - even the ones we've seen in the mountains, and the local sheep in the village also have bells on.

The museum also had areas where we could do activities - Scott and Sarah had a go with the woodworking tool that takes bark off - and we all got creative with the corks and acorns and wire and made some little boats and ornaments.

The weather for tomorrow is rain, so we've planned that to be our stay home day. Grateful for the advice we received during our planning to schedule these "do nothing" days in. We're currently averaging around 18,000 steps a day, so looking forward to a day off.

Disappointingly our new Camera stopped working today. Of course the warranty is only valid in Singapore - fortunately we are travelling back through Singapore, but 7 weeks without a decent camera is not really something we really want to contemplate. Even if we'd bought if in NZ we'd have the same problem though. Some of our photos are stuck on the camera so that is also disappointing. On the bright side at least we have phones that have cameras we can use.

Sarah: I liked patting the baby goats. The donkeys coat was really really soft.

Scott: I really liked using the tool that scraped the bark off the branches. I want to get one to use at home.