“The Beggar’s Kitchen”
If you want to go up from Farnern to Schmiedenmatt, you will reach a level spot at the height before the breakthrough. Today this is called “Bättlerchuchi”.
The real beggar's kitchen is on the old path above this rock gate. Mountaineers who know the Jura very well claim that this is the most beautiful place in the world! You can enjoy a panoramic view that is rarely found anywhere and plants grow that you would otherwise have to look for far and wide. So a special place.
There are two versions of the explanation of the term “beggar’s kitchen”:
On the crossing from the canton of Bern to the canton of Solothurn, traveling boiler and umbrella workers liked to camp, take a break here and feast on the things they had begged or stolen. It was not uncommon to hear them singing, laughing and joking all the way down to the village. The rising smoke of the campfire showed the villagers that the “beggars were cooking”.
When the Bernese state hunters then chased the rabble away, they camped with children and all on the Solothurn side, at the Hofbergli, until they were chased away from there again and returned to their original place in the beggar's kitchen!
Other narrators believe that the name Bättlerchuchi comes from the time when the mouse-poor Welschenrohrers came to the Bipperamt to beg in the 19th century. On the way home they would have rested here in the breakthrough, warmed themselves by a fire and had something to eat from the begging bag before they set off again on the way to Rosinlital.
It is believed that the Romans already used this crossing as a mule track because Roman coins were found here.