Today we spent some time in the area around Gruyères. We started with a visit of the Cailler factory in Broc. When arriving in Bern, one often hears announcements for a train going to Broc-Chocolatier, which I always found funny. Felt like something very Swiss to have a direct train going from the capital to a chocolate factory.

The exhibition itself I didn’t like that much. It felt a lot like corporate propaganda, where they spent a lot of time telling the visitors how well they treat the milk and cocoa farmers and that they make sure to only use the finest ingredients. Sure…

For lunch we took the bus to Gruyères. It’s a very nice old village but it’s very touristic, though surprisingly it felt less touristic compared to Zermatt. We visited the H.R. Giger museum. I expected the museum to have many more sculptures, it consisted mostly of pictures. A lot of them felt very similar, but it was still interesting to look at. Next to the train station there was also the cheese dairy where the produce the Gruyères cheese, though we didn’t visit this exhibition as well.

On the way back we took the detour via Palézieux to collect some more stations. I always thought Palézieux was a somewhat relevant city, but it turns out it’s basically just a train station in the middle of nowhere. I guess it’s a somewhat important exchange node which is why all the long-distance trains between Bern and Lausanne stop there. But given the good connections, I would have expected for some buildup to happen around the train stations. But it’s just fields right next to the tracks on one side, and only a few houses on the other side.