Day 14 - He's In Switzerland, April 26th
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Welcome To Switzerland
We are awakened, as we arrive in Zurich, by an apologetic (but insistent) conductor - he misquoted the rate for the upgrade last night and he would like us to pay him another 70 Euros. We don't have the money, so we go to the ATM in Zurich, only to find that it pays out SwissFrancs, not Euros. We give the conductor our last 20 Euros and he runs to catch his train (which leaves in 4 minutes.)
I grab us coffee and pastries and we board the next train to Bern.
We Are Going To Wankdorf?
Next Stop, Gruyeres
We arrive at Bern where we are informed by the local Tourist Information Office that the Giger Museum isn't "just outside Bern" (as the website claims) but a 4 hour journey involving two trains and two bus rides, plus a 45 minute wait in Wankdorf. When we arrive in Wankdorf, I discover that it's market day. Leaving an exhausted Hobbit outside the local Scottish Restaurant, I traverse the market collecting fresh produce, cheese, bread and ham for our lunch. With only a few minutes to spare, we dash back to the train station for our connecting train.
Swiss Heavy Metal Band Poster In The Train Station
HR Giger Museum
The train drops us off in Gruyeres and the train station is empty. We find a local who explains that the Giger Museum is up the hill, near the castle. We hike up the hill and find the museum. We tour the museum and I explain Giger's progression as an artist (the museum has works from his student days in the '60s to his most recent works.) After the museum tour, we tour the castle and then we head down the hill to the train.
Wendell at H.R. Giger Museum
Traiining Through Switzerland
We have to take 4 trains from Gruyeres to Orsieres (where we rent skis for our trek up St. Bernard Pass.) The first train takes about 45 minutes and drops us in a very small Swiss town - it's got a train depot, a bus station and a 5 position rifle range across from the train tracks.
The Town Rifle Range
The Scenic Route
There's a train called the Glacier Express which runs along the south side of Switzerland. It takes all day to traverse about 1/3 of the Swiss border, but includes some spectacular scenery. In summertime riders are advised to make reservations several weeks in advance.
By complete happenstance, the next train to arrive at this station was this scenic train. Our First Class Eurail Pass got us into the First Class section and we had plush seats, panoramic windows and almost the entire car to ourselves. We got to enjoy the scenery for the 2+ hour ride into Montreux.
Hobbit
Zurich does not have any bathrooms except those that you pay two francs for (about 1.50).
There was a street market and Wendell got us good food so the starvation thing is over. He got crusty bread, yummy cheese, farm grown ham, figs, apples (ok our apples are better), and Tobblerone.
The Swiss do not actually speak French, they speak a dialect of French. Wendell can understand them but I cannot.
Wendell does this really funny thing, when he's talking to someone he asks first if they speak German, then he'll ask about English last. Which is funny because why doesn't he ask about English first? He knows it the best and it's the language most likely to be someone's second language.
We took about 32 trams and buses (see my earlier comment about the inside of Europe's transportation systems) to the H.R. Giger museum in Gruyere. Giger is the guy that designed Alien. His alien's looked more mamillian than the ones in the movie whicch looked more insect like. It was actually cool to see his stuff because as we went to other museums of older artists you could see where he got his themes from.
We also had a look through the local castle. Switzerland has a zillion castles since they've never had a war so they've never gotten torn down.
Their history is a little boring but it really is pretty. We ended up by accident on the panoramic train which is one of the fancy pantsy trains. Our Eurail pass gets us on for free so why not?
The fancy pantsy first class toilet however, was literally open to the ground. Yuck. When we got to Montreaux, Wendell was crashing so we got a room and fell asleep.
Train Toilet And Track Below
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