two weeks ago, we tried out the bernina express panoramic train from chur to tirano, and afterwards the bernina express bus to lugano.

the beginning of the trip, from chur to st. moritz, is similar to the last part of the glacier express train ride (starting in zermatt), following the albula line, and then follows the bernina line via the bernina pass to italy, peaking at 2253 meters above sea level.

we were lucky and the weather was (once again) quite good – which was quite some luck: on the day before, where we originally wanted to go but didn’t got a reservation, it was raining like crazy. the panorama carriages were once again nice, though taking photos is still quite a challenge thanks to the reflections which are almost always there. but hey, we were there to enjoy the views, and not to make great photos. (that’s for some other time. there’s a lot of beauty out there, for example the morteratsch glacier which we could watch while driving by.)

anyway. the second main part of the trip, the express bus from tirano to lugano, wasn’t as good as we hoped – i always feel kind of squeezed in a bus and am looking forward to leave it :-). the views were nice, but the next time i’d still skip that part.

yesterday we were on an excursion, which led us from our home to some nice places between lake constance and schaffhausen with a final stop in baden before we returned home.

we first traveled to tägerwilen to look at a small design settlement with eight houses, where different materials were used. unfortunately, the weather wasn’t very great at that point, and it was not very easy to take good pictures there anyway… afterwards, we walked over to gottlieben and waited for our boat.

we traveled by boat on lake constance and the rhine to schaffhausen. the weather was still not great, it was cloudy, but at least it wasn’t raining. when approaching schaffhausen, the clouds started to rip apart.

in schaffhausen, the clouds began to clear up. we explored the old town a bit.

finally, we walked up to the munot, a fortification built during the 16th century. from there we had a great view – some of the above photos were taken from there or from the way up/down.

finally, we proceeded by train to waldshut to drink coffee, and continued by train to baden to eat dinner. at least, that was what we planned to do in baden. turns out that the city center is essentially dead from 6 pm on, except fast food “restaurants” or pubs. we had to walk quite some distance outside of the city center to find something to eat; we ended up in an italian restaurant chain near the kantonsschule. on the way back, two of us who had to travel westwards wanted to take bus 3, which would have allowed them to arrive home earlier than if they would take the later bus which would be perfect for us. bus 3 is supposed to leave at the same stop. unfortunately, unknown to us and also to google maps, apple maps, map.search.ch etc., there are two stops called “kantonsschule”. at the time we located the second stop on a map, their bus was already gone… really great. anyway, we eventually got back to the main station, and were able to depart in direction of our beds after this long day…

yesterday i made a trip to arosa, taking the cable car up to weisshorn and walking down around 750 m (total elevation difference); it was essentially this hike, except that i stopped at prätschli as the sun began to hide behind the mountains and as i missed the turn somewhen before which lead to maran. anyway, it was a great day for a hike, with clear sky, a bright sun (i had to use my sunglasses; something i haven’t needed in lappland ;-) ), and lots of snow.
several parts of the trail were pretty steep, for example the very beginning, which was a bit scary at first. at these moments, i really wished i had some kind of stick, and was somewhat afraid to slip and slide down. but nothing went wrong, i got down safely and without slipping. i had lunch at the sattelhütte, and did a lot of small stops to take photos. well, the whole thing took me much longer than the anticipated 2 1/2 hours, but who cares. :-)

the way back was a little more adventurous. the idea was to take the regional train from arosa to chur, and then changing into an intercity to basel, jumping out in zurich. i was sleepy (the night wasn’t very long, getting up at 5 and going to bed at 1 isn’t a good combination) and dozed off several time. at one point i noticed we were still at the same point as before i dozed off the last time, but then dozed off again. eventually i realized we were sitting in the darkness, the only light coming from the other train standing next to ours. i started to get awake a bit, and to listen to the other people in the coach, to find out what’s going on. well, nobody really knew, until the conductor walked by outside and someone in my coach opened up a window and asked him. apparently, the locomotive had a defect. eventually they got light working again, though no heating, and we even started rolling a few meters, probably to enable the other train to continue, as the end of our train was apparently blocking its way. after some more waiting, almost one hour after we stopped there in the first place, a second train came up from chur and we changed into that one, which after little more waiting took us down to chur. with somewhat more than one hour of delay, and our intercity to zurich having just left the train station, i ended up in an interregio train to basel via zurich, which took like half an hour longer than the intercity. so, with around 1 1/2 hours of delay, i finally got home. at least, we had some fun in the darkness in that coach, and also later on with light and on the new train; it’s great to sit among nice people :-)

(and no, i didn’t write that text into the snow. and there was more text, like hearts and names and stuff. didn’t took pictures of these, though.)

yesterday, i spent over 15 hours on various trains in switzerland. i started at 6 am at the main station in zürich and proceeded to zermatt via visp. in zermatt, i explored the city a bit in the 45 minutes i had, and got back to the train station to get on the glacier express, departing 10 am, which eventually led me to st. moritz. the glacier express is one of the famous panoramic train lines in switzerland, similar to the golden pass panoramics tour i did a couple of years ago, leading through the alps, peaking in oberalbpass at 2033 meters above sea level. the weather was mostly beautiful, except a lot of fog around chur. i had the three course meal on the train, it was really good. (there are also vegetarian choices.) finally, in disentis, there was a fasnacht parade going on.

i took some photos on the trip. unfortunately, one cannot open the windows of the glacier express, whence there are always some more or less ugly reflections lurking around. here are some of the better shots:

if you want to take a lot of photos, better take a usual train, since on these routes they often have windows which can be opened. i might do that somewhen soon, at least for the part from andermatt to disentis.

besides the inability to open the windows, the trip is great! if you have a chance, do it. it’s probably also very interesting during summer, and also during winter when there’s more snow than this year…

on december 8, 2008, i did another trip which i never wrote about so far. this time, i visited switzerland’s jungfraujoch, featuring europe’s highest train station at 3.454 meters above sea level. i did that trip on a monday to avoid the hordes of tourists wich invade the jungfraujoch in particular on weekends.

eigernordwand station.

the first stop of the train inside the mountain is the eigernordwand station.

eismeer station.

the second stop of the train inside the mountain is the eismeer station, giving a wonderful view on the lower grindelwald glacier.

note that the windows were steamy, which adds a neat glow to the scenery:

the top of europe.

at the final station, jungfraujoch station, one enters a huge station. here are some views from one outside part of the station:

two panoramas; the first gives another view from the station, similar to the one above, and the second one shows in detail a metal rope which survived an ice storm:

art & ice.

inside the station, one can find several pieces of art, including an ice palace consisting completely of ice:

outside, again.

this time, on the other side of the station, where one can walk on snow:

another panoramic view:

the way back.

finally, some views from the trip back to zürich:

i took these photos on my train ride on the 23.12.2007, somewhere between switzerland and northern germany. unfortunately, it was neither white in zürich nor in northern germany…

this one is not about me, but about drunken fellows travelling by train which are talkative. way too talkative. annoyingly talkative.
on my trip to oldenburg, one week ago, a pretty drunken guy, maybe around 70 or 80 years old, equipped with a walker and lots of booze, began asking me at münster’s main station whether he’s on the right platform for the next train to osnabrück. well, yes, he was, and so he decided it’s a good idea to stay with me and talking to me. in the train, he managed to chase someone out of his seat so we could sit there and annoyed lots of people by talking loud, which provoked some angry reactions, though they died quickly as they probably noticed that there’s no way to change the situation… well, then i spend the next fourty minutes listening to his tales and bad jokes. the couple in the seats next to us seemed to really enjoy this, often they had visible problems not to start laughing out loudly. so at least someone in that train was enjoying the whole situation. at one point the situation was pretty bizarre, when he started telling me that he could kill someone using his harmonica, by bashing it hard enough into someones brain, and then continuing that he once killed a few rabbits. while i was expecting to hear some gory details, he explained that he gave them something with mildew to eat. then, later, he started telling how easy it is to build a hand grenade with a bottle of korn, which could kill lots of people in the train. sounds great if you hear this from a completely drunken guy equipped with lots of booze… at some point, when he realized we were going to osnabrück, he suddenly noticed that he wanted to go to münster and he just came from osnabrück. what the heck, so he decided to take the train another time, to return to münster. well, finally, in osnabrück, i got rid of him… i was really glad he was simply drunken and talkative, but not aggressive…
then, yesterday, when travelling back to zürich, i had another such experience. in the ice from hannover to zürich, i was sitting at the very end of the train. everything was fine, until i went to the restroom, noticing that someone had just smoked inside there, it was stinking like hell, and when i got out my clothes were stinking, too. i suspected the guy who was inside before me, he was sitting a few seats away from me and seemed to be talking alot to the other people around him. well, first i thought that he probably knows them, and ignored the issue. later, i saw him drinking booze, and a bit more later, people around him started leaving the train when they reached their destination (or decided to change the coach, who knows…). at some point, most of the people were gone at the end of the coach where i was sitting, and at some point he looked at me and decided i’m the next one he could talk to. well, there goes the last two hours of my train ride, which i wanted to spend listening to music and watching the night through the window… in these two hours, i learned a lot on how drunk he was, about his profession, about his hobbies, about his train ride, about his salary, about his name, about his life, about his interest in martial arts – he boasted that he’s a shaolin master, and that he could easily kill people but he’d never do this, because he is such a nice guy. great, that was what i really wanted to hear. thank you. he decided many times to go smoking again, to the restroom (smoking is actually forbidden in the whole train)… well. the last hour i spend alone with him, the few people which were left left us in basel (maybe they left the train, or at least the coach). during that hour, he decided that he could smoke inside the compartment, too. well. i thought “fuck you.” and just hoped that the last thirty minutes would fly away as fast as possible… finally, zürich was announced and, contrary to my usual style of waiting until the train really arrives, i jumped up, grabbed my stuff, said goodbye and went a few coaches forward…
well. i don’t really care when people are drunk, but if they are, it would be really nice if they could simply sleep or be silent, and stop annoying other people…

after returning from bordeaux, the return having been quite adventurous, i traveled trough the alps into the ticino, to the monte generoso. here are some photos from the train ride.

if you’ve ever seen the cover of opeth‘s fifth masterpiece blackwater park, you’ll know what i mean with opethesque (if you haven’t, look here). i took some similar shots this morning throu the train’s window:

unfortunately i missed to catch some more impressions which were even more opethesque… well, maybe next time.

yesterday and today i was traveling by train. here are some impressions: