Crash Landing on You | Lake Lungern — The Country That Belonged to Neither of Them

Two people who spent sixteen episodes separated by the most heavily fortified border on earth end up meeting, once a year, in a country that belongs to neither of them. Switzerland is the compromise. Lake Lungern is where the series puts them.

It is a small lake in Obwalden, an hour or so from Interlaken over the Brünig Pass, and it is a startling turquoise — glacial flour suspended in meltwater, the same effect as Brienz but in a tighter bowl with the village of Lungern stacked on one shore and the Schönbüel ridge behind. In summer the water reaches about 23 degrees, which for an Alpine lake is remarkable, and people swim in it.

Seepark Lungern has a beach, a diving platform and a water trampoline. Seebad Bürglen is free, with barbecues and toilets, and is the better call if you want the lake rather than the facilities. A flat nine-kilometre path circles the whole thing in about two hours.

Trains run direct on the Luzern–Interlaken line and stop at Lungern village, so unlike most of this itinerary you do not need a car.

Walk the far shore, away from the village, until you can hear nothing. The ending only works because it is provisional — no reunion, no resolution, just an agreement to keep turning up at the same lake. Standing on a shore that will look identical next year, that reads less like a compromise and more like the most durable thing the show could offer them.

Cover photo: Lake Lungern, by Oleg Yunakov, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.