Switzerland

I made a short trip to Switzerland between 17.05.07 and 20.05.07 to get a "big picture"-view of the country, and also to take a few of the panoramic railway trips my family have been telling me about.

I had totally forgotten that 17th of May was Ascension Day in Holland, so I had made plans to take the tram to the station. One problem with that...this country doesn't work well in the mornings, and especially not on public holidays. There were no trams in the morning, so I tried to call for a taxi. Tried two different companies, and they didn't answer. I figured I'd find some closer to the Kurhaus, or flag down one on the way, so I started walking. When I came over there I found no cabs, so I started walking down the 9-tramline as that one started earlier. On the first tramstop down, I met Peter and his daughter. They had the same problem I did, so we started walking along the road and finally managed to flag down a taxi..I have to get a number for a 24 hour taxi service, because this was just silly (I'm not used to taxi centrals being closed in my country...)

This was a short cityhopper-flight, so I spent about half the time flying as I did getting through the hordes of Dutch people going on vacation. Funny how much the gates where you need a passport suck compared to the Schengen area. Much less hassle whenever I fly to Norway...

The airport at Zurich is spread out, so you have to take a short train ride to get to the baggage claim from the gates. Inside the train, they play mooing sounds, cowbells, yodeling and show images of Matterhorn and hot milchmadchen on the walls. Cheesy...

Getting my railway tickets were surprisingly easy, and the guy at the counter spoke perfect english and was very helpful. After grabbing a Bratwurst, I was off on a five hour train ride to Zermatt. It was raining, and a little foggy, so it wasn't a good day to watch mountains, but I was still very impressed by some of the mountains, especially after Thun on the way past Kandersteg to Brig.

Getting into Zermatt was a downer. I was worried before I left, because the weather forecast was not very good. It would suck royally to go on a panoramic trip through Switzerland without being able to see anything because of the fog. Now, in Zermatt, it was foggy, raining, cold, and I could barely make out the bottom part of Matterhorn. To make things worse, the museums closed as I came into the station, and so did the shops. In frustration I went hiking, just to have something to do. I started walking the trail towards the foot of the Matterhorn. After a couple of hours of walking in the rain I turned back. I had walked to a few minor stopover points on the way to the Hornli Ridge, but it was getting darker, and I did not have proper gear, so I found it best to turn back. The biggest problem was that I was wearing new shoes, which had not been "walked in". I was rewarded with big blisters on my toes.
I normally walk a lot when I'm traveling, so this could have been a problem, but the next day I picked up a pack of synthetic skin from a hiking store, solving the whole issue. The footpath here didn't look anything like what I'm used to. It was very well maintained, with water ditches, sign-posting, benches for resting and in general it felt more like a maintained mountain road rather than a path. The whole place felt like a resort, rather than a mountain village.

In short: First day, no museums, no gornergrat, no Matterhorn, just another generic artificial alpine village with ski rentals, shops selling equipment and luxury goods. Bah!

Decided to get up really early the next day to try to catch the GornerGrat. This was risky, as the ride was 42 minutes each way, and by skipping breakfast and taking the first one I would have only 25 minutes to check out and get to the station. But, as Lukasz always tells me, "No risk, no fun!".
The next morning I woke up to clear skies, and the gorgeous Matterhorn staring me in the face from the parking lot of the hotel. The ride up the Gornergrat was awesome. I could see all these gorgeous 4000-meter peaks that I didn't see the day before, and it was a truly great view of the valley and the surrounding peaks. Going so early meant I also got up there before the morning mist, so I got to see the mist gently rolling into the valley. This made up for the whole cold and wet evening I had before. This was also a personal height record for me, at 3089 meters, even though it was cheating using a train to get there. I got off the Gornergrat, ran to the hotel, checked out, ran to the station, and made it with just five minutes to spare. Normally, I'm always on time, and I don't like to be late, so I was a bit stressed out, but it worked out in the end.

Friday's program was going on the Glacier Express to the capital of the canton of Graubunden - Chur. The weather was really nice - it had turned around completely from the day before, so it was a good day for watching mountains. Swiss trains in general have big windows, so you get a good view from the regular trains, but replacing parts of the roof with windows was very nice when the train was running in the deep valleys. When upgrading the coaches, they could have put a little bit more effort in by spraying on a layer of antireflective coating on the windows. The reflections are really disturbing, and I have reflections in the windows in nearly every shot I made from inside the train. Lots of stupid tourists on the train, taking pictures with the flash enabled on their small compact cameras and shouting every time a snow-capped peak would emerge.

I really liked some of the terrain we passed, especially around Andermatt. My brother tells me the skiing is good up there too, so maybe I'll have to go next winter, as there will be no Avoriaz-trip for me next year. Going up the to the Oberpass was the most interesting part. The pass itself was boring, as I've seen this sort of terrain many times before, in Norway. I like the small villages you often see high up in the mountainsides. Not the same "How the #$%#! did they get up there?"-feeling you get in some of the fjords back home, but still...
I think this train is probably better if you take it the other way, because then it starts off boring, and gets gradually better, rather than seeing all the good parts early on, and then just waiting to get to the end.

For me, the Glacier Express ended up at Chur - the oldest town in Switzerland. People have been living there for 5000 years. Chur was a nice, small town. Lots of narrow, winding alleys and nice houses with pretty mountains in all directions. One thing I found strange here was all the people smoking in the street. I saw people smoking everywhere. I even saw a couple of pregnant women chain-smoking!
Also, most of the young people were wearing gangsta-outfits with caps, bling and sunglasses. I blame MTV.

Saturday morning I got up early to catch the Bernina Express . The first couple of hours on the train were boring. I don't know if it was just that I was jaded from having seen so many great mountains the day before, but it wasn't too appealing. Then we got close to the pass itself and things changed for the better. The landscape turned into dry mountain terrain, different from the other parts of Switzerland I've seen. The train would turn in tight circles in order to climb up to the pass. The pass itself wasn't too spectacular. Some high mountains with stone desert in between, one big glacier-fed lake, and a couple of smaller ones. A sign was marking the watershed where water from one lake is going into the Adriatic, and water from the others are going into the Black Sea.

The descent from the mountain pass was really great. It made the whole trip for me. This was a really bright, sunny day, and the train was descending in big circles into this deep valley below. The landscape here was different from what I'd seen earlier on the trip, with orchards and wine ranks everywhere. At the end, we drove into Italy, but only 2 kilometers or so. The border is just outside the town of Tirano. I passed through the most cursory passport inspection I've ever experienced (You just held up something with a picture and walked past. Half an hour later they took off for lunch or something, so there were no more checks). The town center of Tirano seemed to live off the tourists coming from the Bernina Pass. There were restaurants and bars everywhere. I looked around for a kiosk to grab a sandwich or something, but didn't find any. Normally, I don't bother to eat at restaurants when I'm traveling alone like this. Mostly it's because I don't like to sit alone and wait for my food. I finally found a tobacco-store that also sold Gatorade, so I could at least get some sugar into my bloodstream for the trip back.

Going back the same way I came turned out to be boring. After the awesome ascent up the Poschiavo valley, when you get to the pass, you know it's going to be boring for the rest of the trip. It doesn't really help either that down the line they point out "sights" like a soda factory over the speakers. You sort of know it's going to be downhill from there... In retrospect, I wish I had planned to take the bus to Lugano, stay overnight in Lugano, and then take the train back to Zurich the next morning...

Sunday I went back to Zurich, walked around the city and looked at the Zurichsee from the walkway. There was also a park there with lots of girls in bikinis - sweet...
There was this long shopping street outside the central station, but since this was a Sunday, all the shops were closed. They were mostly selling hideously expensive clothes, shoes and jewelry, so no great loss anyway. I walked up to a small railroad that would take you up the side of the Zurichberg. From the top of the railroad you could walk into this forested area that had nice views of the city.

Parts of eastern Switzerland looked really familiar- like the hilly bits of eastern Norway where I grew up, so I felt a bit homesick right then and there. This doesn't happen a lot, as I'm not normally very tied to places. I had no problem moving around from Lillehammer, to Trondheim, to Kongsberg, and now to The Hague...but I'm having some issues with living in a flat country..

I was really impressed with the swiss rail system. Fairly cheap, very organized, well maintained cars and a commitment to run on time. I almost cracked up when I first heard "Wir bieten um ihre Verstandnis." over the speakers when the train had to stop to let an oncoming train pass. They're asking for forgiveness for waiting for other trains? Also, on one of the trains they had a two minute delay, so they would regularly apologize over the speakers for this.

I had a good time in Switzerland - except for that last boring part of the rerun of the Bernina Express, but there was too much rail for one long weekend. Can't say I'm looking forward to going on more trains next weekend...
I got an overview of the central and eastern parts of Switzerland, and it gave me some ideas about where I want to go when I go back.

Pictures are here