It’s a bit of a short one today, but don’t worry there’s a bonus post coming which I’ve been cooking up for the last few days.
The ankle this morning was still a bit sore, better than yesterday but after another 15,000 steps I figured it would be best to actually take it easy today and not do too much walking, especially as I don’t know how much I’ll need to do getting to the hotel in Stuttgart tomorrow.
So I made the decision early this morning that I’d ditch the Gotthard Tunnel Experience and just catch a train to Lugano through the tunnel instead. Had I done the experience it would have been a case of looking around Luzern this morning before heading to Erstfeld for the tour in the afternoon. Changing this idea meant I would be on trains for a lot of the morning to give the ankle more of a rest.
And it got more rest than anticipated on top of that as well.
I jumped on a train to St Gallen as I needed to get off at Arth-Goldau to change to the Intercity Express service to Lugano, how good are these seats too (and this is second class). This presented a problem, as I did something I’ve never done without it being the intention of the train. I fell asleep for a few minutes and woke up an hour and a half way from where I wanted to be when the train got to the end of the route in St Gallen. I wasn’t even asleep for that long but it was long enough to miss Arth-Goldau and wake up thinking we hadn’t been through there yet until the train got to St Gallen and I knew I’d fucked up.
So I had to jump back on the same train and head the hour and a half back to Arth-Goldau again. It was hard to be frustrated with some of the scenery though. Made it back to Arth-Goldau just after 1pm and hopped on the train to Lugano.
I remember the train ride to Huashan Mountain, hitting 300kph with ease on the high speed train in China was a smooth experience. The SBB intercity was a very similar experience until we hit the tunnel. The Gotthard Base Tunnel being a 57 kilometre long tunnel under the Alps would mean a long journey underground. At the speeds we were travelling though the journey underground was over in just 16 minutes meaning we were travelling at an average of around 215kph. Impressive.
The train arrived in Lugano just after 2pm, as I jumped off the train I found that I left rain and cold and arrived to rain and cold.
With the ankle still questionable I decided the walk down hill to the waterfront probably wasn’t the best idea so I had a bite to eat at a cafe at the station then jumped back on the train to return to Luzern. I got talking with a woman that sat next to me after Bellinzona as she and her travel partner (I’m reluctant to say mother as I don’t want to assume) attempted to sit in the section behind me but the person refused to move their luggage from the seat. It turns out she spent about 15 years in Australia and a fair bit of that time in Queensland so we were talking about the global weather and how things have been in Australia since she returned home a few years ago.
I parted with them back at Arth-Goldau and jumped back on the train to Luzern. Made it back just after 5pm and my ankle was already crying enough at just over 4,000 steps for the day. The lowest since departing for Singapore. I made it most of the way back to hotel before needing to take a break, luckily there’s a nice platform viewing area with seats to overlook the rail yards coming into Luzern so I sat there for a while and got treated to an absolute gem of critical thinking and problem solving.
A chap was attempting to load an empty barrel into his light truck and the cart the tank was on was only just enough to fit on the lift tray for the truck. Initially he lifted it with the rear wheels hanging off the back of the tray so he couldn’t roll it into the truck once it was lifted. So he brought it back down and used a rock to hold the cart in place. As he lifted it again the wheels still were hanging off the back. So plan C he grabbed two old blocks of wood and used the stone to make a fulcrum and lever the back wheels on to the lift tray and hold it in place long enough to raise the lift tray. This time it worked and he was able to load the cart into the truck.
I have no idea how he went on the other end of the trip but with application of similar critical thinking I’m sure he did just fine getting it back out again.
Anyway tomorrow it’s time to leave Switzerland and head to Stuttgart. My German Rail Pass apparently gives me free travel for the 10 days I’m going to be there (including the train getting from Dusseldorf to Brussels). But I think I still need to pay for a train to get to Stuttgart as I don’t think DB trains from Zurich are included in the Rail Pass.
Anyway keep an eye out for the other post with some more images and thoughts on Switzerland.
The ankle brace helped a bit, but the ankle is still struggling. I probably don’t myself any favours with days like today.
This morning I had a slow start as I wanted to give my ankle a bit more time in the brace before I headed out. I must have got sick of it at some point during the night in my sleep because I’d removed when I woke up this morning.
I had some of my emergency supply of snack bars for first breakfast, and picked up the usual pretzel and choccy milk for the main breakfast. I sat near one of the platforms and watched the world go by for around 20 minutes before moving on to walk around the old town. I revisited a small section of it I walked through yesterday while waiting for my laundry, the buildings may be old but the shops certainly are not. Just looking through each street you could easily find many up-market retail stores and fashion showrooms.
The wooden bridges were something else though. What amazing design and engineering went into these structures. Also the amount of water that moves down the Reuss is immense, it’s not hard to see why they built small hydro power capabilities here after a few of the city’s mills were destroyed in a fire in 1875. Apparently after a 1995 revamp the system generates enough power for 1500 homes in Lucerne.
After completing a loop of the lower old town I was back at Luzern Bahnhof. Grabbed a bite to eat for a late lunch (a chicken schnitzel roll) and got ready to catch the train to the Transport Museum. At this point the weather had already started to turn and by the time the train arrived it was properly raining (up to this point I had only experienced light showers, no substantial downpours).
It ended up being only one station to get to the museum. Not even on the train long enough for a ticket inspector to come by. The museum was right across the road from the train line, and includes a planetarium and documentary cinema as well as the transport museum. What a museum it is too. I didn’t expect there to be space, aviation, automobiles, trains and boats all in the one museum. While it was 35CHF (around $50 in Australian money) I really feel like it was actually good value for the amount of stuff they have. The only negative I could give it is the lack of branded merch in the shop, which is a minor grievance really, everything else about the museum and the staff working there was fantastic.
While there were many great elements to the museum, it was a sight to see a legendary Be6/8 in the flesh. Ever since building the Lego kit during lockdown it had been somewhat of a goal to see this locomotive after reading up on some of the history of it from the kit. Without boring you with the details the key point was detaching the driving wheels from the central chassis to allow the train to handle tighter curves, that improved it’s capabilities allowing the loco to travel more complex lines and still haul more freight than its predecessors.
There was also a replica section of the Gotthard-basis Tunnel, with accompanying pillars detailing the tunnel boring, construction and safety aspects of the tunnel. As well as an installation cross-sectioning a steam train to show the full flow process of how a steam engine works.
Then it was time to face the weather and head back to the hotel to give the ankle a much needed rest. On the way back through the station I picked up a wrap from the supermarket and trundled back under the protection of my travel umbrella.
Tomorrow’s forecast is for the rain to continue early in the morning but ease through the day. I envision I will get time to explore more of the old town that I missed today when the rain eases tomorrow afternoon. As for tomorrow morning, we’ll have to wait and see what the weather is doing.
Figured out the 18th is going to be a good day to be spending travelling to Stuttgart as well, as it is Ascension Day the German’s and Swiss observe at least the morning as a public holiday but most places will observe the whole day as a public holiday and won’t open. Public transport, hotels and the obvious essential services being the exceptions.
Woke up this morning at about 6:30, that’s been a pretty standard time throughout the trip, and figured I might as well get up and have a shower. As I rolled out of bed I found that I couldn’t stand. My left ankle felt like it had been sprained in several directions and wouldn’t let me put any pressure on it.
Well shit.
I had planned a rest day for tomorrow where I would take it easy and find something with a fair amount of sitting to do. After eventually hobbling my way to the shower I managed to hit the ankle with a burst of cold from the tap. Not perfect, or ideal, but it seemed to help enough to get me going to pick up an ankle brace. I guess this is what suddenly doing 120,000 thousand steps and about 95 kilometres of walking does to your ankles?
On the way back I called into the Luzern information centre. As I had planned to go to Mount Rigi today I wanted to find out some information relating to booking tickets for the boat and train. As I was speaking with the staff member she checked the forecast and confirmed this afternoon would be the best conditions until Saturday to get decent views from the summit. So that set that plan in motion. At least on a boat (where the pier was just opposite the station) and the train (where the station was just opposite the pier) not a lot of walking would be involved.
The boat was due to leave at 11, it was 10:45 and while the pier was just across the road I wasn’t able to push myself to get there in time. The next boat was at 12 so I got to sit and see some of the world go by in Luzern. It feels very similar to Zurich in many ways, with the old town remaining fairly untouched with the modern city being built around it. Probably the only major difference I’ve found so far is that Luzern doesn’t have any trams. They have electrified trolley buses though, and some of those end up being quite long so it’s not a bad alternative. I have a free pass from the hotel so I might be using the buses tomorrow.
On the boat we cruised past lots of varying Swiss architecture and landscapes. Lots of high end hotels line the waterfront and some rather expensive residential properties (one that I saw in a real estate window was going for 2,25mil CHF (3.75mil AUD at current exchange rates). Not hard to understand why the home ownership rates in Switzerland are so low with those kinds of prices!
The boat arrived at Vitznau just before 1pm and the train was waiting for us (the timetables line up for the train and the boat so you can walk straight off a boat onto a train and vice-versa). There was a couple of tour groups on the boat as there were reserved carriages at the back of the train, this was something I later discovered why Luzern seems popular with south-east Asian, particularly Chinese tourists. While on the ascent the train stopped at the station for the cable car and a couple got on and sat near me. I could tell straight away they were Australian. As we got closer to the summit we also reached the clouds. I dropped a comment that we’re not going to see much from the summit at this rate and watched it click with them that I was also an Aussie. They also come from Melbourne, north western suburbs and were on their honeymoon.
The train reached the summit just before 2pm. The last train I could catch to get a boat back to Luzern was 5pm, but I had no intentions really of staying around that long. I made my way up the short climb to the base of the TV and radio tower. The clouds were, annoyingly, sticking to the top of Mount Rigi the same way the clouds were sticking to the top of the Matterhorn in Zermatt yesterday.
At the summit there is a large rock with Chinese calligraphy, Mount Rigi is partnered with Emei Shan in Sichuan Province. With rocks from each mountain being transferred to the other. So the large rock at the summit is part of Emei Shan. Come to think of it now, I didn’t even get a photo of the rock itself. I took a photo of the plaque explaining the rock, but not the rock. Whoops.
By 3pm I was feeling like I had seen the best of the conditions so I made my way down to the souvenir shop, picked up a couple of things, and then waited for the train to trundle up the mountain for the return journey at 4pm. It ended up being one of the older model electric cars. We arrived at the Vitznau station just before 5pm and the boat arrived on time at 5:05pm. The views back in the early stages were a bit better than the outbound trip as the sun was out but the rain clouds started to roll in late in the journey.
This evening I spent the evening doing boring stuff. Went a did a load of laundry at the laundromat as I was basically out of clean underwear. That was… interesting. Anyone that uses Miele dryers would know, but for those of you that don’t and might be thinking of getting one, the ETA to completion does not include the cooldown time. Once it’s “finished” it still cycles for a good 10-15 minutes while the clothes cool down. They really should just count that in the time so I’m not standing around like an idiot with people waiting for the dryer to dry their clothes.
That’s all for today. I’ve got my ankle in a brace overnight so hopefully it clears up. In sitting here writing this post though I’ve just had a cramp in my right leg. Probably from the compensating of the left ankle.
Another big day of train travel today. Not scenic trains this time though, I just need to transfer between a few different trains to get where I am going.
Destination: Lucerne (Luzern)
Before departing though, there was time to do a bit of souvenir shopping and sightseeing before checking out of the hotel. Mind you though, even after checking out I hung around for a bit longer to try and catch a glimpse of the Matterhorn.
This was probably the best conditions I got, overhearing a local talking to a couple from Britain I heard him say it is often like this as the mountain being the highest peak holds the clouds and prevents them from lifting or moving.
Mind you, when you consider Zermatt sits at just over 1,600 metres above sea level I was already nearing the elevation of the summit of Victoria’s highest peak, Mount Bogong at 1,979m and not far at all from the 1,773m Mount Buller (the last place I went to in Australia that had anything remotely resembling snow). So seeing this behemoth of a mountain in the distance, even though a bunch of clouds were in the way, was certainly something!
A last walk along the Zermatt main street towards the station before jumping on the train to make my way towards Lucerne.
A brief stop in Bern to change trains, before we were heading onwards to Lucerne. I didn’t get any photos from this train as it was easily the busiest commuter train in the time I’ve been here. At this point I had entered the latest network operator. Bern–Lötschberg–Simplon (BLS). They appear to operate the network in the north-west of Switzerland including Bern, Basel, Thun and Zug. Though the operators have a lot of overlap with trains running between major cities so the area of responsibility may be bigger or smaller. One of the major projects BLS are responsible for is the Lötschberg Base Tunnel. A 34.5km long tunnel connecting Visp with Spiez under the northern Swiss Alps.
The train from Bern ran express to Lucerne, stopping at only a few towns along the way to offload the few passengers that were on the train. By the time we reached Lucerne I was one of only six people getting off from my half of the six carriage train (the BLS trains run similar to Melbourne, with 3 carriage sets that can be connected into longer trains for peak periods). This was where I encountered probably the worst weather conditions so far on the trip, which considering the forecast leading up to it, I’ve been quite lucky given it was looking like it was going to be this bad for the first couple of weeks in Europe.
I arrived in Lucerne just after 6pm, headed to the hotel to get checked in before heading out for dinner. Given it was chucking it down with rain I jumped into the first restaurant I came across. A kebab shop. The server didn’t speak English but made do with ordering a “doner box” which is a kebab in a box. If you had a HSP without the trinity of sauces. It was nice but nothing like a proper HSP so I’ll be looking forward to tucking into one of those when I get home.
That’s about it for today, I headed back to the hotel tired and sore and basically fell asleep without posting any updates or highlights. I think a day full of train travel and transfers with the suitcase just took it out of me.
Anyway, I’m off to try and find an ankle brace now as my left ankle is crying enough from all the walking I’ve done this week (according to my watch, 118,000 steps and over 90km of walking). So hopefully that is easy to come by and I can get to Mount Rigi this afternoon as that looks like it will be the best of the conditions as the weather for the rest of the time here is looking… shit.
I’ve diagnosed the issue, it was my laptop being out of space on the C: Drive due to temporary files. I’ve got a backlog of photos to edit and upload.
Today was the day, the Glacier Express. One of the key reasons I came Switzerland was to do this train journey after seeing footage of it online. The slowest express train in the world takes 8 hours to get from St Moritz to Zermatt, a distance of around 160km. It winds its way along the Rhone to Visp and then turns to follow the Matter Vispa towards the Matterhorn.
For me, I was catching the Chur to Zermatt leg of the journey, still 6 hours of the 8 hour journey. The downside was that I was going to be on the isle, but hey, at least I had a seat.
I jumped on the bus at the hotel and made my way around to the station. Bought a couple of souvenirs for the Bernina and Glacier Express and sat in the station for a while as I was there early. I think I finally figured out that this artwork is the Rhaetian Canton in blue, and the country Switzerland in red.
I headed up to the platform early as there wasn’t really much else happening and found a service with Camera Panorama cars.
Needed those on the Bernina Express with everyone fighting for time with the small opening windows we had. The SBB conductor (who double as the train’s ticket inspectors) was using a pole to whack the brakes of this particular train. When I asked what the purpose behind this process was, she explained it was to ensure the brakes were aligned with the wheels as the turns and bumps of the railways sometimes knock them out of alignment. They just use the pole to check if it’s completely broken or just needs a light tap back into alignment. I assume if any of the brakes are completely broken they would need to take the carriage out of service for repairs.
That train left (on schedule of course, we are in Switzerland). And the display updated to show the train to Zermatt. A few moments later the train arrived and those of us joining the journey at Chur were able to jump on board. I was boarding carriage 22 (though it wasn’t actually 22 carriages long) with an isle seat facing away from the direction of travel. Possibly the worst of seating positions one could get.
Interestingly though, the two window seats that were booked, were never occupied. The woman sitting opposite me asked if I was travelling with people, I said no I’m on my own and so we both took the opportunity to sidle over to the window seats. That’s a score but I am left to wonder who would book first class seats on this train that ends up being worth about $300 and then not turn up for it? Unless there was a medical emergency that prevented me from being there, I was 100% boarding that train for how much it cost.
For the next 6 hours we wound our way through the Swiss Alps along the Rhone valley. Crossing multiple times and making a few stops along the way to get out and stretch our legs (and take a lot of photos).
At just before 6pm we arrived in Zermatt. The ride up the Matter Vispa line included various sections of rack rail to assist the trains in getting up and down the steep grades. I had a short walk up the main street to the hotel and got checked in before taking a quick walk around the town and grabbing a bite to eat from one of the many cafe’s.
I’ll leave you with the photo of Binny in front of the latest stop on our adventure.
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