My photo editing software is misbehaving so I’ll diagnose that and get some photos uploaded when I get to the hotel in Zermatt tomorrow.
The morning started with breakfast at the hotel, pretty standard fare. There were croissants, cereals, bread for toasting and eggs. I ended up just having a bowl of cereal and a couple of croissants. Checkout time at the hotel was earlier than the Ibis hotels I’ve been staying at. That was okay though because we’d made loose plans yesterday that would have put us on the move early.
I got myself checked out after breakfast and made my way up the main street to the church. This is where the iconic imagery of the train rolling through a roundabout can be found. Three trains went through in about 45 minutes. Heather and Sean arrived just in time for the third train. My earlier arrival meant I’d scoped out where to stand to get good footage so Sean was ready to go when the next train came.
Wandered around the square there for a bit, the church interior was decked out. I didn’t take any photos or really move once I stepped inside aside from moving to check out the excessively oversized organ. I dunno I just get this really awkward sense that it’s not right to take photos in a church if you’re not religious leaning, a bit of a weird stance as I have taken plenty of photos of the outside of churches on this trip.
Anyway there was a surprise train that rolled through. Sean had checked the timetable and this train was not on it. So that was nice to get photos of. The one we were expecting then rolled out towards St Moritz as timetabled. So what that other train was we don’t know. We popped in and had some Italian Gelati after that and realised the train line was right next to the restaurant so we got to see yet another train roll up the hill St Moritz-bound.
We made our way back towards the stations. Heather and Sean picked up their luggage and we did some souvenir shopping. We ended up back at the restaurant we had dinner last night, Sean had a coffee and ordered some chips to tide them over as they were having lunch on the train. While I was still quite full from lunch and gelati they offered me some chips as they wouldn’t be able to finish the size of bowl they ended up with.
Then the time came for us to part ways. Their onwards journey was taking them into Italy for a flight home to Manchester, while I was returning on the Bernina line back to Chur. With a selfie outside the station, a hug and a handshake the Chur crew disbanded with an aim to meet again if we are ever in each other’s city.
The train ride back to Chur was surprisingly more complicated than the ride down. I had to change trains twice and it seemed a rather pointless change as I got to Pontresena on a St Moritz bound service, had to change to a train to Samedan (that would have been the train I would have stayed on if I was on my own and heading back the long way earlier in the day), then get off at Samedan to change to the train to Chur. I’m feeling like I probably could have stayed on the St Moritz train and changed there but I guess Swiss efficiency picked the route that would get me there the fastest not with the fewest transfers.
The rest of the journey back was basically the same as on the way out, the weather was starting to roll in so the visibility later in the trip was starting to mimic the day before. 10 minutes after I got checked back in to the hotel here in Chur it started raining. I was lucky there was a break in the rain to duck out and get some food. I didn’t really have the desire or energy to pick a restaurant to sit at and go between German and English so I ended up getting Burger King just up the street. I’ll get back to the Swiss food tomorrow.
Big day tomorrow though, Glacier Express at 11am to Zermatt, 6 hours of views that match, and perhaps in some cases even exceed, yesterdays (and todays) views.
(I’ve got more photos to add to this post, my photo editing software is misbehaving though, I’ll try and get to it in Zermatt)
I haven’t even had a chance to sort through any of the photos and videos I took today. There are too many. By my count I took almost a thousand photos on my SLR alone. The phone and DJI Pocket have more photos and videos to go through at some point.
But what a day it was.
Started with a bit more of a walk around Chur, found an area I hadn’t walked in and eventually found out why. It wound its way uphill and ended with no side road to get back down to the train station that I could see. So I had to turn around and double back to the road I knew went to the station.
By the time I got back to Bahnhofstrasse (Station Street) it wasn’t long before my scheduled train to St Moritz. Heather and Sean had initially discussed catching the same train as we were on the same Bernina Express service until I realised my ticket was for a specific train earlier in the morning. No harm though, I figure I’d scope things out with the extra time.
Between Thusis and Tirano the Rhätische Bahn (RhB) network is UNESCO world heritage listed for its engineering marvel. It’s not hard to understand why. Even though they’ve modified and modernised a lot of the bridges and tunnels on the network, knowing how long ago they dug some of these tunnels and built some of these bridges almost defies belief. Across the entire journey the Albula and Bernina lines cross 196 bridges and travel through 55 tunnels over 122 kilometres.
The first leg of my journey was the Chur to St Moritz train that incorporates the Albula line section from Thusis to St Moritz, including the iconic Landwasser Viaduct and the Albula tunnel (that took 5 minutes and 20ish seconds to traverse by my count I’ll use a stopwatch tomorrow on my way back). Interestingly I was the only person in the entire first class carriage. Also I got interviewed by a couple of people from RhB’s social media team for a TikTok about people travelling in first class. So keep an eye out for that I guess?
Beginning the climb into the alps the train snakes and loops its way up hundreds of metres above sea level. This is usually the first leg of the entire Bernina Express route, but that version of the journey was booked out days after it became available so I had to settle for the St Moritz to Tirano leg.
On reaching St Moritz and stepping out of the train, I was surprised by how… not cold it was. The forecast was for 3 degrees but even with the overcast conditions and borderline snowfall it didn’t feel cold. Even when I sat near the lake to have my lunch. It wasn’t until a bit of a front moved through with some wind that it felt proper cold. That wind was obviously coming straight off some ice because that cold air cut through.
Heather and Sean arrived just on 2pm and we went for a meander around St Moritz. Wondering how many of the houses were occupied (not necessarily owner-occupied based on my previous post about the Zurich tour mentioning ownership rates here), trying to find good places to get good views, and me getting a second dose of heading down a street that had no side access back to where we wanted to go, forcing us to double back. That aside the place was amazing, and I imagine it would look stellar in the middle of January when winter is in full swing and seasonal residency would be higher than the off season it is now.
By 4pm we were headed back to the station to jump onboard our 4:15 Bernina Express service. The panoramic windows allowed ample viewing area but there were also small openable windows at the ends of the carriage for glass-free viewing (behind automatic doors to keep the rest of the travellers warm too). I almost regret not coming later into summer where the open-air carriages run as I think that would be a stunning experience.
The Bernina line begins by climbing from St Moritz further into the Alps. Crossing at the highest point 2,253m above sea level at Lago Bianco. The lake at the top of the Alps is divided into two, with one half flowing down to the south via the Poschiavino eventually reaching the Mediterranean, while the other half flows north via the Danube to eventually reach the Black Sea. During winter the lake freezes over, but during the high summer thaws to clear blue waters.
The line crosses over itself and loops back and forth as it snakes its way up and down both sides of the mountains. This process provides opportunities for travellers on both sides of the train to share in the mega views and not have half the passengers feel like they have missed out. Don’t quote me on this because I’m not sure I heard it correctly, but the scenic lines (Bernina especially) were engineered with tourist rail and sightseeing in mind. I could certainly believe it!
The journey ends descending down through the final stretch. Another road sharing location as the train rolls through one of the main streets of Tirano before coming to a stop at RhB Tirano. Onwards services into Italy (such as the one Heather and Sean would be catching tomorrow) require passengers to transfer from the RhB to Trenitalia as the rail companies operate on separate gauge track.
We had dinner at the restaurant at the station as the location we had initially earmarked that was between our hotels had stopped serving food by the time we were getting there. When in Italy, it’s either gotta be pasta or lasagne right? I had lasagne. Heather and Sean both had different pasta dishes (from memory). It was great, food was hot, atmosphere was buzzing as we were sitting outside right next to the station. All in all, it was a good night.
Until I got back to the hotel and tried to use the internet to upload the days highlights. But in the grand scheme of things for that to be worst thing about the day was really not that bad at all.
Heather and Sean yesterday had put forward the idea of catching the train up to Arosa, a skiing village to the south east that would take around an hour to get there. The information we had received was that the Chur Guest Card from Chur Tourism would give us free travel on the buses and mountain railways for the duration of our stay. As none of us had any other plans we decided to go for it even though the weather was not ideal as you can see in the picture above. The plan was to check out how things were looking and potentially catch the cable car to the mountain top overseeing Chur to get some town views.
We popped in to the servo next to the hotel to pick up some supplies and jumped on the bus to head to the station. The station was one of the stops on the street, where the train travels from Chur central station up the road to Chur Altstadt (where we were getting on) before leaving the streets to head through the mountains to Arosa. There was a 20 minute wait, but that was fine we watched the raging torrent of glacial and snow melt running down the channel and spoke about some of the history of Switzerland while we waited.
We jumped on at the back of the train where we were the only ones in the carriage and were able to spread out a bit, the openable windows in these carriages would come in handy as we made our way through the idyllic scenery. As we progressed up the mountain through various tunnels and across various bridges, along came a ticket inspector.
We showed the Chur Guest Card assuming it was the correct ticket to show for the train ride, as the terminology suggested:
“Free use of public transport in the TransReno fare network, Zone 1 (2nd Class). Not valid for bikes and dogs. Valid after check-in. Not included: Bernina Express and Glacier Express. In addition, the guest card is not valid if the train does pass the station Felsberg, Chur West, Chur Altstadt Chur, Wiesental and Haldenstein without stopping.”
As we got on at Chur Altstadt we had figured we were in the clear. The inspector confirmed with us that it was not the entire Arosa line. There I was thinking “Well shit, this time I don’t have a ticket at all unlike yesterday so I’m proper fucked now” especially after Sean mentioned they had Interrail passes. However, the inspector had a machine and costed up some fares for us for the outbound and return trip. I’m lucky that I have physical tickets for everything associated with the next four days of train trips I’m doing because I feel like my luck is running out with these inspectors already and I’m only 5 days in to my 42 day journey.
That issue aside though the train ride was amazing and was a taster for what’s to come over the next few days. Between the Bernina Express to Tirano, the standard train back from Tirano, and the Glacier Express this is where I’ll be putting the hammer down on the photo tally.
The only downside was that it was raining at Arosa, and the mist meant we didn’t really get a good look at the mountains. Depending on my timing getting back from Tirano on Friday, I might attempt to get back there again and see if I get more favourable weather. It had started to clear on the way back down, as you can see, the middle photo of the three above and the one below are the same bridge.
When we got back down to the station we made our way through the old town, a section of the city that was missed in my self-guided walking tour. So now I do kind of feel like I’ve seen all of Chur. It was interesting to walk through and see all the narrow laneways and historic architecture of the old city, where you then cross a road and it’s all new and modern.
We walked around and got to the base station for the cable car… and it was closed. Until June it’s only open on weekends. Just to add salt into the wound the staff member that showed up (where I actually did not see where he came from, it was like he just appeared from around the corner) to inform us of this then took a ride up on the cable car himself. Oh well.
We ended up making our way back to the hotel for a while then popped back into town to check on some final information before heading out tomorrow. It turns out we are on the same Bernina Express train and even in the same carriage. I’m on an earlier train getting to St Moritz so I’ve said I’ll scout out what we need to do and have a quick look around. The forecast is for it to be only 3 degrees. So that’ll be fun!
Anyway that’s just about it for today, I had dinner in a nice restaurant where everything was in German. I had bolognese in the end, but didn’t take any photos as I got a vibe that it was not the place for that sort of thing as I got a couple of looks the minute I got my phone out to double check some translations. But hey, the food was delicious so I butchered saying “Das war lecker, danke” (that was delicious, thanks) to the wait staff, paid for the food and made my way out.
Tomorrow is the first of four pretty big days of rail travel that will see me visit 5 destinations across 8 different train services and 2 countries. So I’m off to sort through my luggage to make sure I have everything for an overnight bag as my suitcase is staying here in Chur until I come back on Friday.
Here’s a lesson in what not to do: Don’t purchase tickets online and then lose your only way to access them by… not being online.
It’s a bit of a long one but I promise I’ll come back to that. Today was the day to depart Zurich and head south towards the Alps. I had booked a lot of my tickets in advance but stupidly forgot the one to get me from Zurich to Chur, figuring I had no idea at that point what I was going to be doing I purchased a day pass before leaving and thought nothing more of it at the time.
It turns out I probably could have spent a bit more of the morning in Zurich as I thought it was a 10am checkout but it turns out it was a midday checkout. But I’d booked my all day train ticket and planned which train I was catching so I opted against it and made my way to the station.
The train ride was smooth. The Intercity Express (ICE) services operate on the Stadler KISS platform, a double-decker train developed here in Switzerland. Apparently it’s an acronym that translates to “Comfortable, Innovative, Sprint-capable, Suburban”. Quite interesting that they have the curved windows on the top deck to get more of a panoramic view. I guess it makes sense they make their own trains given their demands for precision.
The lakes continued on for around half the journey, but eventually gave way to the mountains and I got my first glimpse of the snow-capped peaks in the distance.
No doubt you’re wondering where the story of the opening paragraph comes in? Keep reading we’re almost there.
The train arrived in Chur on time. As it turns out the name of the town is actually pronounced Cur, or Cor, depending on who you’re speaking to. But it’s like, incur, without the “in”, or curve without the “ve” if that makes sense. To me it makes sense because it’s not pronounced “Zoo-rich” as the h is silent it becomes “Zoo-Rick”. So it makes sense to me.
Anyway the first thing I did was have a shower because the walk from Chur West station to the hotel with an 18kg case in a late spring Switzerland sun was not fun. Apparently the average humidity level at this time of year is 71% and I could believe that. Then I headed back into the centre of town, but instead of being sensible and taking the train… I walked.
And walked.
In the end today I’ve walked a mammoth 24,400 steps. And have drawn on the map below my best guess at the walking tour of Chur I took myself on.
By 5pm I was heading back to Chur West, decided not to be stupid this time and jumped on the train, except I jumped on the wrong train. Sure I jumped on a train to Thusis which is the direction I wanted to be going, but it was an express train that was not stopping where I wanted to be going. Well shit that’s a problem. But before I had a chance to jump off the train and head back to Chur, I encountered SBB ticket inspectors.
Queue the opening paragraph. There I was being asked for my ticket and I had no internet connection to view it with and had, at various points, been given the opportunity to download it but had not done so. The hotel when I bought the ticket, Zurich Station where there was free Wifi, Chur station where there was free Wifi, the hotel when I checked in and was given the Wifi password, the Chur information centre where there was free Wifi. The universe was throwing opportunities at me to download the damn ticket and I missed all of them. Anyway here is the sign notifying you what the deal is with ticketing. Pay particular attention to the bit in the bottom left of the yellow sticker.
Yes, that is a 100 Swiss Francs fine at minimum. 160AUD at current exchange rates. So I’m now speaking to this ticket inspector trying to explain to him that I didn’t have internet to access it, he says it’s not a good enough excuse. I explain that I don’t have internet because roaming is not enabled for Switzerland with my provider and that I was from Australia. He seemed to click at this, it might have come up before I don’t know, but he offered to hotspot his phone so I could access the tickets through his mobile connection. I was able to do it and show the ticket. Came away from it with a stern warning to download my tickets in future and he sent me on my way apologising profusely for my idiot traveller moment.
Met a wonderful couple in the lobby by pure luck of checking if the restaurant was open (it wasn’t). Shaun (edit: Sean) and Heather from England. They were looking to ask the front desk about the buses and asked me if I knew anything, I didn’t as I spent all day legging it around town. Turns out we might be doing the same Bernina Express trip in a couple of days as we both ended up having to book just the St Moritz to Tirano leg due to the Chur to Tirano service being booked out extremely quickly.
Anyway that about sums up the day. I leave you with the photo of Binny the Wandering Ibis basking in the Switzerland sun outside the latest stop.
Oh and something completely off topic, I’ve now started a spot the fast food game. So far I’m up to 6 Burger Kings, 2 Macca’s, 3 Subways and one KFC.
Actually one more for the road, I rolled out the hat for the first time so here’s a photo with my face in it.
Well I had a better night’s sleep last night after I figured out I could open the window to let some of the cool Swiss air into the room. The air conditioning either isn’t working or is intentionally turned so low that it barely pushes any air, and that made the room extremely hot the first night.
Today I booked in to a city bus tour and Lake Zurich cruise. It was scheduled to leave at midday so I had the morning to wander around looking at more of Zurich. I decided to head in the direction I accidentally started heading after arriving in Zurich. Did some train spotting at the western end of Zurich Central Station and wandered the back streets of Zurich. It was here I finally found my first Macca’s, after seeing six Burger King’s already. I was beginning to think I wasn’t going to see one until I reached Chur where I know there is one (you will see when I get there later tomorrow).
As it was getting close to the tour time I made my way back to where the tour bus departs from and attempted to check in with the organisers. I had been advised that the ticket would come to me via email but I had not received anything. Assuming the information was also sent digitally to the organisers I mentioned that I was here for the tour. “Do you have a ticket?”, oh dear this is going to be a problem isn’t it? “No I never received a ticket, I purchased it from the info centre in the station”, he rather abruptly responds “No ticket, no tour”. Okay, so I hightail it back to the info centre. The representative there can’t find any record of my booking. She calls both tour companies in case I was booked on the second one I didn’t speak to, nothing. Nobody but my bank account had an record I had purchased the tour. She asked me if I still had the receipt, which I did but it was back in the hotel and it was 11:50 at this point. There were two options. Book the 12 o’clock tour and leg it back there in time to board. Grab the receipt and organise the refund later. Or go back to the hotel, grab the receipt, and transfer the booking to the 2pm tour. I opted to do the latter.
Once I had the receipt the booking transfer was easy and despite me saying not to worry about it I received a packet of Haribo’s for the inconvenience. Now I had another hour to kill and I’d already had lunch before the original tour time, so I decided to just hang out at the Starbuck’s across the road until the tour start time.
This time booking in for the tour I handed the ticket over to the chap in the booking office and he said “ah, you have ticket now”, as I explained that the info centre made the mistake and never actually booked me in he nodded and said “it happens from time to time, but you are ready to go now.”
It would have been ideal for the 12 o’clock tour to work out, as it started raining part way through the bus tour as you will see in some of my photos below. I have a lot of things to look up to cover some of the history of Zurich but to cover some of the basics (and hopefully I’ve got all of this right but I’ll fact check later), the city is in one of 26 states of Switzerland, each state is run by a Caton that formulate regional policy and tax laws. There is then an overall federal government that address wider national and international issues. The city started as a gateway for trade coming from upstream on the lake. The Roman empire established a trading port that would later become Zurich. The city started with fabrics, specifically silk and cotton, before moving heavily into building Switzerland’s infrastructure. A man named Alfred Escher established many things Zurich is now famous for. He pushed legislation to allow the establishment of private rail companies that resulted in rapid and widespread development of Switzerland’s rail network. To help pay for all of this, he established Schweizerische Kreditanstalt which later became known as Credit Suisse. As the rail projects started to grow in number more workers were needed with engineering and science skills, so he established the Zurich Polytechnic (now known as ETH Zurich), and to help pay for insurance for the workers established Swiss Life, the largest life insurance company in Switzerland. So this Escher chap did earn the title of “Founder of Modern Switzerland”.
There’s a lot more to talk about regarding the history of Zurich and its role in Switzerland history as a whole. But we leave it with this, the mascot of Zurich is the lion, and it is used in almost all major structures as part of Zurich’s heritage. As you can see here on RHI Insurance headquarters (an insurance company that insures insurance company), and the Kunsthaus Zurich (Art Museum, with bonus bronze statue of “the Gates of Hell”), as well as the lion statue on the waterfront of lake Zurich.
Tomorrow it’s time to leave Zurich and head south towards the Alps to a town called Chur. I feel like there is definitely a lot more to explore of this city so if I’m ever back in Europe I’d like to spend some more time here.
More photos to share, I’ll get to them when I reach Chur. Cheers!
Update: Some History
A bit more from the tour that I’ve remembered. The Bahnhofstrausse shopping street used to form part of the moat that protected the main village along with a city wall. The moat was filled in and turned into the walking shopping strip with tram lines running down the centre (another similarity to Melbourne to add to the list) in1867. The other part of the moat still forms the Schanzengraben through parts of the city centre. The wall was torn down during the Helvetic Revolution in the late 1700’s.
If you think our rental market is bananas at home, Switzerland’s home ownership rate in some cities sits at 10%! Geneva is the worst with 10%, Zurich sits at approximately 28%, the capital city Bern sits at just under 40%. The majority of Swiss simply don’t have the capital required to purchase a home. Rental laws are sufficient to protect tenants from sudden eviction, with the legislation stating that homeowners must allow their tenants to find a new property. A process that, due to how hot their rental market is, can take years!
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