Switzerland
4th September
Rule No 1 of Interailling: Don’t plan short transfer times! If the first train is late you are buggered for the next one.
DB (German railways) are not like Swiss railways, they are often late. So if you have five or ten minutes to change trains you will be severely stuffed by a short delay.
Our train from Koblenz to Mannheim is half and hour late, which affects all the the other connections to Chur. It’s all part of the travelling experience, and worse things happen at sea (and in airports)
The Rhine is noticeably lower than the Moselle, it looks 1 to 2 metres lower than normal levels, judging by marks on the banks. The train to Mannheim is squeezed in next to the cliffs, passing through picturesque small towns and castles every few miles. It is a very beautiful landscape. The journey to Mannheim and Zurich was uneventful, apart from mild anxiety about making our connections, which we didn’t.
The Rhine valley opens up from a gorge into a wide plain scattered with ox bow lakes. Julie reckons it looked like Lincolnshire.
I manage all my Interrail tickets via the Rail Planner app. I put in the start place and destination, and the app gives us all the trains we can get. I can filter them to see if we need a reservation. Once I have saved that journey I can add the journey to my Pass and I am given a QR code which is my ticket. I can show the QR to the inspector who can then scan it.
Once we got to Zurich we had to make another spirited dash for platform 7 to continue our journey to Chur. We asked the ticket inspector about Chur , and pronounced like churn. He gave us a funny look, so I showed him our itinerary. Then he understood what we meant, it is actually pronounced Cu Hur. The Swiss countryside was very beautiful, with neat houses by lakes with people in sunbathing on lush lawns. The green fields were scattered with wooden barns and chalet houses. It was everything I expected about Switzerland.
Chur is a prosperous town and is the oldest in Switzerland, but didn’t look it. Our mobile data provider (Lebara)doesn’t cover Switzerland in our roaming plan, so it took us a while to find the hotel. I asked a charming lady the directions, and sent me off up the wrong street, damn her! Julie asked in a hotel and they gave us a map. We tracked it down in the old town.
The Franzankana hotel is old fashioned, has no lift and shared bathrooms. When we went up to our room there was a man walking the corridor wrapped (modestly) in a towel, having just used the shared shower. We had to make ourselves decent when going for a pee in the bathroom in the corridor during the night, what fun! But I did sleep very well it must be the mountain air.
Saturday 5th September
Today we traveled through the Alps from Chur to Poschiavo on the route of the Bernina Express. I say “on the route” because the actual Bernina Express is a luxury train with bigger windows and bigger prices. It would normally cost 100 Euros on the Express. We took a regular local train which is just as good and you don’t have to reserve a seat. At the start a group of small children pulled the window down and loudly shouted “hallo” at everyone they saw. They were cute to begin with, but became irritating after twenty minutes. Luckily they got off soon after.
Without doubt it is the most beautiful rail journey I have ever taken. The red Rhastiasche Bahn train gradually climbs through narrow valleys, crosses many bridges and viaducts and plunges into black tunnels. There are 55 tunnels and 196 bridges and the gauge is 1000 mm or 3 foot 3 and a half inches, whereas the Standard Gauge in the UK is four feet eight inches. The narrow gauge means it can take much tighter bends, and it winds down mountains and does complete loops under mountains.
The windows slide half way down so you can feel the wind in your hair and smell the pine trees. You can see the front of the train as it takes yet another tight bend before disappearing into a tunnel.The views are sublime and fulfilled all my expectations of seeing cows grazing in fields next to wooden chalets, proper chocolate box images!
The journey is divided into two stages, the Albula line (Chur to St Moritz) opened in 1904, and the Albula line (St Moritz to Tirano) finished in 1910. They are almost unbelievable feats of enginerring that should be exprienced by all train lovers. Between Ozpezio Bernina and Tirano there is a 1,800 metre (5,900 feet) difference in elevation.
At Bergun Fislsur station people walked across the tracks confidently, one of them carrying a baby. Try that at Clapham Junction…
In the valleys there are unfeasibly green pastures like golf courses, there has been no drought like we have in England. The train wasn’t very busy so we could move from seats on the right to seats on the left to get better photos. Close to the top of the climb at Ospizio Bernina (2253 metres) we had fantastic views of glaciers and cascading waterfalls. I was blown away by the entire experience.
After Alp Gruen, the train winds its way to the valley of Poschiavo, where the Swiss speak Italian. Our hotel in the town is Hotel Centrale, one of a small cluster of hotels in the village centre. The hotel is three hundred years old, doesn’t have a lift but we do have an ensuite this time. We have got used to carrying bags up lots of stairs.
Once we sorted out our room, we walked about three miles through beautiful countryside to the lake at the bottom of the valley, which was (of course) Mediterranean Blue. I sat by the lakeside and listened to Bob Mortimer’s “Hotel Avocado” as an audio book. It is read by Bob and is laugh out loud funny. To return to the hotel we took the Rhatische train from the village of Le Prese. The rail tracks run straight down the high street, so we stuck our hands out like flagging down a H22 bus. It took 5 minutes to get back to Poschiavo.
