Crash Landing on You | Sigriswil Panorama Bridge — Where He Stopped Her

Jeong-hyeok is photographing the Bernese Alps when he notices a woman further along the bridge who is not looking at the view. She is looking down. He does not know her, will not know her for years, and he stops her anyway.

The bridge is the Panoramabrücke at Sigriswil: 340 metres across the Gummi gorge, 182 metres of air underneath, Lake Thun opening out to the south and the Alps stacked behind it. It opened in 2012 to link Sigriswil and Aeschlen on the panorama walking route, and it does not sway, which surprises people who arrive nervous.

Entry is 8 francs. A Thun guest card halves it; an Interlaken guest card does not work, which catches out visitors basing themselves in Interlaken for the whole Crash Landing circuit. Train to Thun, bus 25 to Sigriswil Dorf, then five minutes on foot.

Walk the full length and back. The view changes completely depending on direction — one way is lake and haze, the other is the gorge dropping away beneath the deck — and the crossing takes about four minutes if you do not stop, which nobody does.

Stand at the midpoint where the drop is deepest. The scene works because the bridge gives you two things at once: the most spectacular view in the canton, and a very long way down. Both were on screen. Only one of them was what he saw.

Cover photo: the Sigriswil suspension bridge, by Theo Lauber, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.