Glacier Express   Leaving Zermatt the next day, I had booked a seat on the Glacier Express eastbound to Sankt Moritz. At least two trains of this name leave every morning for the longish, 7.5 hour trip across most of the southern part of Switzerland, between the southwest and the southeast. This train is a joint venture, offering a one-seat ride across Switzerland, of the two meter-gauge railroads it runs on, the MGB out of Zermatt and the Rhätische Bahn (RhB), about which I’ll have a lot more to say in a moment.

This is probably the time to mention the four best-known named Swiss rail routes, my personal ranking, and as nice as they are, my disdain for market hype. In other words, along with the Travel Lover, the Rail Lover, and the Switzerland Lover, the Travel Cynic speaketh again. I would put the Golden Pass Route of a few days ago third, because only the western part, on the narrow-gauge MOB to Montreux, is really special. The name, though is pure marketing glitz. I know of no pass it travels over that’s golden. I’d put the William Tell Express, which I’d take later, at the bottom of the pile, for reasons I’ll discuss at the time. But the name is appropriate, since it passes through Wilhelm Tell country, though it is not at all an express.

The name Glacier Express is marketing hype. There are some glaciers nearby, the Aletsch and the Rhône glaciers, but I have no recollection of being able to see any from the train, even though there is a running multilingual commentary that would have pointed them out. It even kids itself that it’s not an express, referring to itself as the “slowest express in the world”. You sit in Panoramawagen/panoramic coaches with windows to the ceiling, at-your-seat hot meal service can be purchased, and the ride is fun and scenic. I rank it second of the four. Right afterwards I’d take my favorite one, the Bernina Express that goes over the Bernina Pass, so the name makes sense, but it’s very much a local train, so the “Express” part is hype again. Still, I love ‘em all.

The only one I’d ever ridden on before, with Beverly, was the Glacier Express I’m discussing now, and we did it end to end, but I remember just bits and pieces, so doing it again was worthwhile. Connecting the two towns it does, the Glacier Express runs in just two cantons, Wallis/Valais and Graubünden. Leaving Wallis is pretty cut-and-dry, down along the Vispa to Visp, join the main line in the Rhône valley, shortly afterwards pass Brig with its connection through the Simplon Tunnel to Italy, then reach the end of Wallis past Andermatt and go over the Oberalppass to Graubünden. This last area is of interest—but only if you know what you’re doing. This is not announced—you get it from looking at maps. As you go roughly west-to-east through Andermatt and over the Oberalppass, way below you, running perpendicular, in other words north-south, is the Gotthard Tunnel under the historic Sankt-Gotthard-Pass; through this tunnel runs the other main line north-south rail route besides the Simplon Tunnel. I’d be going through the Gotthard Tunnel in a few days’ time.

Shortly after the Oberalppass the train stops in Disentis/Mustér, and here’s a good point to pause the discussion for a number of new topics. Disentis/Mustér is the point where, even though the train continues through, we pass from the jurisdiction of the Matterhorn-Gotthard-Bahn (you see, the name does make sense, since the MGB runs from the region of the Matterhorn to the region of the Sankt-Gotthard-Pass) and enter the territory of the Rhätische Bahn.

Although Helvetia is the Roman province we associate with Switzerland, that word being used on Swiss postage and currency, there was also the Roman province of Rhaetia to the east. Rhaetia was larger than eastern Switzerland, including parts of what today is Germany and Austria, but the Rhätische Bahn adopts the name to describe itself as it runs through Graubünden. In English it’s the Rhaetian Railway, French, Chemin de fer Rhétique, Italian, Ferrovia Retica, Romansh, Viafier Retica. [The careful eye will notice something about those last two. Remember, all languages but English call railroads variations on “Iron Road”. Look at the Italian Ferrovia and with some imagination, you’ll see two English words, “Ferrous Way”. Well, that’s an Iron Road, isn’t it? Then look at the Romansh Viafier and you’ll find the two elements are reversed.]

The Rhätische Bahn has the largest network of all private Swiss Railways. It is narrow gauge, which is why it connects so easily with the MGB. I now have to comment on UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Often the designations overlap, such as the Jungfraujoch WHS being located as part of, and within, the Jungfrau WHS. Now watch this: The Rhätische Bahn is a WHS. The spectacular viaduct it crosses called the Landwasserviadukt is a WHS. The entire Glacier Express route, including the part shared with the MGB is a WHS. And the Bernina Express route, which is entirely part of the RhB, is a WHS. Whew!

Graubünden, which, I’ve now decided, is my favorite canton, is the largest one. All of Switzerland is the size of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined, and Graubünden is 17% of Switzerland. Graubünden by itself is 10% larger than Delaware. Comparing cantons in order, Bern, the second largest, is only 85% the size of Graubünden, Wallis 74%, and the next two less than half its size.

Graubünden is the only canton with three official languages, German, Romansh, and Italian. If you go back to that geographic image I spoke of, which had Switzerland taking the shape of a frog, with Geneva over on the left as one front leg, next the snout, including Zermatt, then the other front leg, which is Ticino (la Svizzera italiana), Graubünden is the hind leg sticking out over on the right. Consider now how the Golden Express connected the “snout” with the “hind leg”, all of which is Graubünden. Three small southern areas in Graubünden are on the southern slopes of the Alps and protrude into Italy. They’re Italian-speaking, and therefore are the part of la Svizzera italiana that is NOT in Ticino. After Graubünden I’d have to go through Italy to get back to Ticino (“back leg” to “front leg”), then go back north through the Gotthard Tunnel. But that’s later.

The three language areas in Graubünden divide this way: 15% speak Italian, in those three southern areas. Only 54% speak German, and 31% speak Romansh. But those numbers deceive. Although there is a sizeable group of Romansh speakers who speak only that, most Romansh speakers are bilingual with German, so in reality, German speakers are a much larger percentage. I’ll make a comparison with Wales. There’s a sizeable minority of Welsh that speak only that language, but most others are bilingual with English. That’s the situation with Romansh as well.

Romansh is an umbrella term for several closely related dialects. A Swiss linguist formulated a standardized form of Romansh in 1982 called Rumantsch Grischun (Grischun is the Romansh form of the canton’s name), which has been slowly accepted. The standardized form may be used in correspondence with the federal government with a response expected the same way.

Graubünden (grau rhymes with “how”) in French is Grisons (gri.ZAW[NG]), in Italian Grigioni (gri.JO.ni) and in Romansh, as mentioned, Grischun. The name has always interested me, since grau means “gray”, and it doesn’t seem to make sense. Gray in French is gris (think of pinot gris), and that appears in Grisons; Italian is grigio (think of pinot grigio) and that appears in Grigioni. This was finally the trip where I finally figured out the meaning of Bodensee, and I also found out about Graubünden.

Cantons were added on to the original three-to-four as need arose. Areas that felt the need for protection from outside petitioned to join, even if they were French- or Italian-speaking, which explains the makeup of Switzerland today. Considerably simplified, the explanation is that political leagues developed, and one was named “Grauer Bund” or Gray League, because of the gray homespun cloth of their clothing. Eventually two other branches developed, and then the three merged under the plural name Graubünden, which eventually petitioned to join the core of cantons. As I always say, we never translate names except to analyze what they mean, so Graubünden would correspond to a name such as Grayleagues. [As to not translating names, sometimes that does work, but is unusual. When the Steinweg family immigrated from Germany to New York in the 1850’s and set up their piano factory in Long Island City, Queens, they decided to half-translate their name to Steinway. Had they instead fully translated their name, we would today be calling them Stoneway pianos.]

A person from Graubünden—drop the “grau”—is a Bündner. One of the specialties of the area is an air-dried meat, cut extremely thin, called Bündnerfleisch. It’s best as an appetizer—I ordered it in Sankt Moritz—and is served in curlicues, with dark bread and pickles. In Swiss restaurants in the US it’s usually referred to, unfortunately, in French as Viande de Grisons. In Wallis, in Zermatt, I had something quite similar that was simply called Trockenfleisch, literally Dry Meat, or better, Air-dried Meat.

So here the Glacier Express sits in the station in Disentis/Mustér, the first stop in Graubünden, whose official name is bilingually German-Romansh. This town is a major Romansh center, which is immediately obvious from the signs. The four-language signs in every Swiss station telling you not to cross the cracks in German-English-French-Italian, with the local language moving to the top, appears in Disentis/Mustér with Romansh at the top and Italian lacking. The Disentis Monastery is visible from the station on the hill above the town, and, while the German part of the town’s name uses the actual name of the monastery, the Romansh part of the name derives from the word for “monastery”.

The route then goes along the Vorderrhein (Anterior Rhine), which is soon joined by the Hinterrhein (Posterior Rhine) and we arrive in Chur, the capital of Graubünden. The name is standardly an almost-rhyme with Coor(‘s Beer), except that in Switzerland it’s pronounced KHOOR instead. At Chur the train turns south, but the Rhein goes north to form the border with Liechtenstein, then Austria, and it then flows into the Bodensee. And just a few kilometers north of Chur is Maienfeld, the home of Heidi.

Johanna Spyri (SHPI.ri) spent some childhood summers in the area around Chur, and she chose Maienfeld as the setting for her 1880 book “Heidis Lehr- und Wanderjahre”. The full title means “Heidi’s Learning and Wandering Years”, but is usually just shortened to “Heidi”. It has become a world classic, and Heidi joins William Tell and Sherlock Holmes in the list of fictional characters relating to Switzerland. It seems to me that so many non-German-speaking people are named Heidi, and it surely is attributable to the book. Most of those people, though, are not aware that Heidi is a diminutive form of the rather rare, and less attractive, name Adelheid. I understand that tourists come from around the world to Maienfeld, located just south of Liechtenstein—I’ve never been there--and the majority of them are, you guessed it, Japanese.

I find in Wikipedia some curious facts about Heidi. There are three Heidi books, but only the first was written by Spyri. The other two, “Heidi Grows Up” and “Heidi’s Children” have a very curious English-language component, since these two were not written by her but by her English translator, Charles Tritten, presumably in English first, so it’s a curious language mix. Spyri’s Heidi was 5-8 years old and had short, black, curly hair; Tritten’s was 14, with long, straight, blond hair, in an era when hair dye was not available.

Going south, the train stops at Filisur, with connections to Davos (more later), then goes through a series of tunnels and loops to gain altitude up to Sankt Moritz and the Bernina Pass beyond it. I remember being high on the mountain and looking at the tracks way down in the valley where we had just been. One viaduct in this area is the already-mentioned WHS Landwasserviadukt. Take a look at YouTube: Train on the Landwasserviadukt Pause it at 0:07. Looking at the sheer face of that wall, isn’t it incredible to see the nose of a train come shooting out of it? Then the viaduct receives it and carries it over that valley. It is so easy to take this sort of thing for granted and not realize how spectacular it is.

Sankt Moritz   Years ago we had stopped only in passing in Sankt Moritz and Davos, and this time I decided to stay in Sankt Moritz and go back to Davos, once again as a day trip. The first comment I have is to as to the name.

The town is named after Saint Maurice. In English, if you stress that name on the last syllable, that’s how you spell it. If you stress it on the first syllable, you spell it Morris. That fact may have an effect on the usual English name for this town, which I’ll mention in a moment.

We are in Romansh territory, and the Romansh name San Murezzan appears prominently. The German name is Sankt Moritz. The normal pronunciation of that name is on the first syllable, MO.rits. However, I did hear, to my consternation, some German speakers saying mo.RITS, and on checking at home in Duden, the reference work that arbiters German pronunciation, they did list it as a secondary pronunciation. Nuts.

For reasons I do not fathom, the usual name for this town in English is San Moritz, pronounced mo.RITS. In any case, where English gets the “San” from I do not know, although the Italian name is San Maurizio (mau.RIT.sio). This is one English designation I do not like, and I’ll stick to Sankt Moritz. And that’s MO.rits.

It’s nice, but not my kind of place. It’s a world-famous winter resort, and had the Olympics in both 1928 and 1948, attractive in the summer, but not overly interesting to me. I was happy with the hotel I’d found right across from the station, the La Margna, that had just celebrated its centennial last year, 1907-2007. There’s a nice photo of the area when it was opened showing the station, the hotel, and little more going up into the town. I was given a high room, one of only a handful that had terraces, and I enjoyed sitting outside, looking beyond the station to the snow-covered mountains across the lake, simply called Laj da San Murrezan (laj sounds like “lie”). I also strolled around the lakeside promenade, which was quite attractive. But walking up the steep Via Serlas (street names are in Romansh—I wonder how many visitors realize that?) into the center of town on the hillside, I found it all rather sterile and uninteresting, even the main square. [As to street names, what would be School Street is Via da Scuola. That is not Italian, but it’s close; Italian would be Via della Scuola.]

It is customary on some older buildings in German-speaking countries to have sayings on them, and if I like the saying, I copy it down. The Town Hall in Sankt Moritz had this, with my translation below, first literal, then modified to fit the rhythm:

My one full day was meant to backtrack to get the connection to Davos, but my morning was free. Sankt Moritz hotels apparently have a deal where residents can sign out a plastic card that gets them free entry to many (many, many—this is Switzerland) cable cars in the region. I hadn’t planned on doing any cable cars, but with the free morning, I hiked back up into the town where the one going up to Piz Nair, right behind and above Sankt Moritz. Michelin gives it only two stars, not three, and it was quite nice, but not as special as some others (and more special than many others). Getting up is unusual. From behind the town square you start on a short funicular. You get off where the route turns, to walk across the platform to a second, longer funicular. I’ve never seen connecting funiculars before. When you’re finally above the town, you walk a few steps to the third segment, which is one of those large-cabin gondola cable cars that runs perpendicular to the ridge. After the eerie silence and the feeling of hanging from a clothesline, plus that creepy jostling when the gondola’s cable passes over a tower, you reach the station at the top of Piz Nair. While down in town at 1856m / 6089’ it’s 19°C/66°F, up here at 3057m / 10,029’ it’s down to 10°C/50°F. Although this day was a bit cloudy, the view south was really very nice: down below you saw all of the town and the Laj da San Murrezan, and across its valley you saw the ridge of snow-covered mountains, among them the Piz Bernina, named after the pass next to it I’d be crossing the next day, and, at 4049m / 13,284’ the highest mountain both in Graubünden in the eastern Alps. As a matter of fact, it’s the easternmost Viertausender. Italy lies beyond it.

I just found a Romansh-English dictionary online (it’s amazing what research resources we have today) to confirm what I’d thought. Piz does mean “peak”, and nair (think of French “noir”) does mean “black”, so I was standing on Black Peak looking at Bernina Peak. I’ll also point out that the word “piz” is not really new to the sunbathers among us who use the world-famous Piz Buin sunscreen. Its company’s headquarters are in Austria just over the border from Graubünden, where the mountain known as Piz Buin lies on the border between the two countries. I’ll bet you never realized you knew a Romansh word, did you? Buin is not in the Romansh dictionary, so I’ll assume it’s a proper name.

Davos   It was about an hour and a half back north to Davos, which meant I’d enjoy the trip down the valley two more times on the round trip. But it was just as much fun to see Swiss coordination at work again at the junction town of Filisur. Trains arrive once an hour at Filisur all day long, and at the same time. The train from Chur in the north, Sankt Moritz in the south, and the shuttle train from Davos in the east all pull in within a minute or two of each other. Depending on the direction you’re coming from or going to, your connection to the Davos shuttle is either across the platform or through the underpass. It all works like (Swiss) clockwork.

The shuttle to Davos-Platz takes about 20 minutes. Davos (da.VOHSS) is a long narrow town with two stations, this being the main one. At the far end is the station Davos-Dorf for service coming from the other direction, but then continuing to Davos-Platz. Davos, at 1560 m / 5118’, is the highest city in Switzerland, although there are villages that are higher. It, too, is primarily a winter resort. I like it a little more than Sankt Moritz, but it’s still more of a standard-type vacation place than I like. While most of the resorts I stopped at, Meiringen, Interlaken, Zermatt, Sankt Moritz, have populations in about the 5,000 range, Davos is more than double that, at about 13,000. Davos is known as the annual meeting place of the World Economic Forum every winter.

Davos started being popular with the British during the Belle Époque. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Treasure Island in Davos in 1881. [I’ll be discussing RLS a lot more when I’m in Samoa at the end of this coming January.] But the relaxing, laid-back atmosphere of Davos is what impressed Thomas Mann when he spent time here in 1911, when he drew on his impressions of the town and its countryside to write Der Zauberberg / The Magic Mountain in 1924, which won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929.

The main street through the long, narrow town, connecting the two stations is called simply Die Promenade (four syllables), and it was my plan, as an Urban Walker, to stroll its length of 3 kilometers / 1.8 miles and return from the other station. As the name implies, it’s a well-planned, level road, and after a commercial section, one passes pastel façades and some parkland, where I sat looking down toward the lower town and tracks paralleling Die Promenade. Again, a couple of the older houses had sayings on them, and I liked this one:

[The above is a good illustration of the nature of translation, and I’ll use my favorite quote again about translations: “Translations are like lovers. If they’re faithful, they’re not attractive, and if they’re attractive, they’re not faithful.” The literal translation is in parentheses. It’s highly faithful to the original, but not attractive. The two other translations are, to increasing degrees, more attractive, the last one finally even rhyming like the original does and having a perfect rhythmic meter even better than the original, but at the same time are increasingly less faithful. In other words, they have less of the original and more of the translator in them. Getting a translation to rhyme just because the original rhymes involves the greatest departure from the text, which is why I prefer doing translations that are not forced to rhyme. This is the inescapable nature of translation.]

Shortly after I scribbled down this saying I got close to the station in Davos-Dorf. A half block away I saw a crossing gate go down on a side street, so I could tell the train had just pulled into the station ahead. The Urban Walker for a short distance became the Urban Sprinter. I dashed onto the platform and into the first door on the train just as it closed behind me. You could say I had ein fröhlich Herz, right out of the saying I’d just been reading. As luck had it, it was the first class section, corresponding to my Swiss Pass. It was only about four minutes through the lower town to the main station, mein fröhlich Herz still pounding all the way, where I made my onward connection back down to Filisur, where, as ever, two other trains had just pulled in for connections in either direction.

Bernina Express   I was pleased to find that, of the four well-known named rail routes in Switzerland, it would turn out that I was most satisfied with the Bernina Express out of Sankt Moritz over the Bernina Pass adjacent to Piz Bernina. I knew the least about it, and the surprises and revelations were certainly a factor in my enjoyment. I liked it so much it’s the only one I’d do again tomorrow.

Part of the fun is the Rhätische Bahn. Remember, not only is the RhB itself a World Heritage Site, so is its Landwasserviadukt, the Glacier Express that it shares with the MGB, and its own Bernina Express. It has a well-known livery in a distinctive red that you noticed as one of its trains crossed the viaduct, and it also has an affectionate nickname: Die kleine Rote. The literal translation of that is a bit clumsy: The Little Red (One). I would improve on that by opening up the translation so it really sounds affectionate in English. I’d call it “Little Red”.

It’s just one more route of the RhB that crosses the Bernina Pass, but it’s sometimes referred to as the Berninabahn, as though it were another railroad. It’s a better name than calling it the touristy Bernina Express, since, once again, the charming train stops at every charming small town on the route and is the antithesis of high speed.

Just as I earlier used the quick stop of the Glacier Express at Disentis/Mustér to talk about Graubünden, let’s get on the Berninabahn now and I’ll talk about it as we go over the pass to Italy. Technically, the route of the Berninabahn starts in Chur and comes all the way down to Sankt Moritz before crossing the pass, but that’s a duplication of the Glacier Express, and is also the main north-south line through Graubünden. I find it advisable to take one of the trains starting at Sankt Moritz in the first place. They are frequent, except not all have Panoramawagen; since I wanted one, I made sure I took the right train. The route weaves out of town and passes attractive villages and ski resorts. Cable cars and chairlifts sprout everywhere. As you go up you see waterfalls on the side and an attractive landscape. As you come up the gentle approach to the summit, Piz Bernina is on the right.

There are three routes, rail and road, that connect Switzerland and Italy. The other two are standard gauge, and use the famous tunnels (Simplon, Sankt Gotthard) to cross the Alps and connect major northern cities to southern ones. They mean serious business. For instance, the main route from Zürich to Milan is through the Sankt Gotthard tunnel, stopping in Lugano on the way.

But the Berninabahn, built in 1908-1910, is funky, as is its route. This meter-gauge railway (after all, it’s still the RhB) has the distinction of crossing the Alps without the need of a major tunnel. It also has no need of a cog or rack, since the gradients over the pass are a maximum of 7%. It is therefore the highest adhesion railway in Europe, the Bernina Pass being at 2328 m / 7638’. But there’s something else. It “doesn’t go anywhere”, but dead-ends in Tirano, Italy, right over the border, then turns around and comes back. That it doesn’t go anywhere is of course an exaggeration, which I’ll explain when we get to Tirano.

As we pulled over the gentle, broad and flat top of the pass, they announced two other facts that I reveled in. The area is spacious enough so that there are two lakes there. The first one we came across, which happens to be smaller, is called Laj Nair. Just steps away along the route is the larger of the two, called Lago Bianco. Then they explained that between these two lakes so close to each other came the Wasserscheide. Scheiden means to part, to separate, and a Wasserscheide, literally a water-separation, describes quite graphically in German what we usually call in English a continental divide.

The whole concept of a continental divide is attractive—just to picture that at that rise, water flows in two directions. But rarely when crossing a continental divide do you actually see water doing so! As a matter of fact, only rarely do you see a continental divide in a spectacular mountain pass. I remember just last September in New Mexico driving from Chama toward Durango. I knew I was crossing the continental divide because my road map said so, but it wasn’t even marked on the highway, let alone did it have actual flowing water to see. But here at the summit, raindrops falling into Laj Nair would flow back down north to where the train had just come, make their way into the Inn River flowing into Austria (think of Innsbruck, literally Innsbridge), into the Danube and to the Black Sea. On the other hand neighboring raindrops falling into Lago Bianco would flow ahead into Italy, work their way down to the Po and into the Adriatic. How graphic. How pleasing. Of course the Alps, being the high point in the continent, form continental divides in many directions, and I’ll remind of our passing the Rhône going down to France and the Mediterranean, and the Vorderrhein working its way to become the Rhine (the Aare also flows into it) flowing into the North Sea.

But in the names of the lakes, you must have notice what other “Scheide” happens in this pass. Given the three words of Romansh we now know (laj, piz, nair), we can quickly see that Laj Nair is Black Lake. Steps away is Lago Bianco, which many will recognize as Italian for White Lake. So for the third (out of four) times we cross a language border within Switzerland, with Romansh (and German) behind us, and Italian, first in Switzerland, then Italy, in front of us. We probably should stop calling the canton Graubünden (or Grischun) and start calling it Grigioni.

This means we are entering la Svizzera italiana, and it’s worth discussing that as an entity. The bulk of la Svizzera italiana is in the canton of Ticino, the only canton with Italian as its only official language. In area it’s the fifth largest canton, but only 40% the size of Grigioni/Graubünden. But here in Grigioni, there are four valleys on the south side of the Alps that are part of la Svizzera italiana. But these four valleys comprise only 13% of the area of Grigioni, and its 14,000 population only 8% of its population. A pair of the four valleys, Val Calanca and Val Mesolcina, border Ticino directly to the east. Since they form a contiguous entity with Ticino, they interest me less, since they form a unit. Directly east of this pair, a valley in Italy separates the third Italian Swiss valley in Grigioni, Val Bregaglia, from the contiguous Italian Swiss area. Val Bregaglia is just to the southwest of Sankt Moritz, and although it doesn’t connect directly to the contiguous Italian Swiss area, not that much of Italy separates it. (Of course, the comment does have to be made that Ticino and all four valleys do all border Italy, so, disregarding nationality, there is a uniform italophone area across the board here.)

Most interesting to me is the fourth valley, Val Poschiavo (pos.KYA.vo), which lies to the southeast of Sankt Moritz. It’s a considerable distance from the contiguous Swiss Italian area (2.5 hours by bus, which I would be experiencing shortly). We had been going up the Bernina Valley before the pass, and happily, the valley that descends on the other side is indeed the Poschiavo Valley.

We pass the town of Poschiavo itself, and then Brusio, which offers a treat. Railroad designers, like highway designers, have their tricks to decrease or gain altitude. The zig-zag entry down to Montreux is an example of a railroad using a technique that highways also use. I’ve also been in spiral tunnels within mountains that are used to change height. But when you see it out-of-doors, it’s all the more impressive. Just south of Brusio is a viaduct that I did not expect, but many people in the train started to get up in anticipation of arriving there. It’s a Kreisviadukt, or spiral viaduct. The train circles down the viaduct clockwise, then crosses under it. This, as it turns out, is so popular, that I had a hard time choosing between YouTube videos. I’ve ended up with two. Here’s the view looking back towards the town of Brusio. Spiral Viaduct at Brusio from South It’s also impressive from the train, which is of course how I saw it. Spiral Viaduct at Brusio from Train Notice the large windows on the panorama coaches, and also how narrow the rest of the Poschiavo valley up ahead is.

The best streetcar systems have their own right-of-way, but many traditional ones ride in automobile traffic. Railroads almost always have their own right-of-way, and it’s rare, but not impossible, to find a rail line in a street. The term used is “street running”, and it’s a very quaint thing to find. As we neared the southern end of the Poschiavo valley, they announced that the train would be running through a couple of towns, such as Le Prese, “like a tram”, and I knew they meant we’d be doing a street run. Street runs also impress YouTube video takers. Street Running in Le Prese Notice the cars pulling back to the right-hand side of the road once the train has passed.

The arrival in Tirano, which is in Lombardia / Lombardy, Italy, was a great ending to the trip because of all the surprises. This is the only point where the Rhätische Bahn leaves Switzerland, but the suddenness of the arrival in Tirano surprised me. There was a sign on the side of the route saying you were entering Italy, and I suspected we’d go a short distance until we actually came to Tirano, but no, as we entered Italy, the same signpost said we were entering Tirano, which, I now know, hugs the international border. And then, in no more than 3-4 minutes, we pulled into the station. The suddenness of being there was a shock. Then, for reasons I cannot fathom, I was suspecting Tirano would be some gritty, industrial burgh of a railhead, but it was beautiful and charming. But I think the biggest shock was that all those 3-4 minutes in town was not only a street run, the route of the street run actually crossed one end of the main square that had the cathedral on it! Take a look. Street Run in Tirano Behind the camera here is the rest of the main square with the cathedral, and in another moment, the train pulls into the station.

I thoroughly enjoyed riding the Berninabahn, considerably more than the other special routes—I think you can tell that. I have one last video on the subject. I’m including it because it’s of semi-professional quality and is a nice summary of the route even back north of Sankt Moritz. It’s narrated in German, which actually adds to the atmosphere, and you should listen to try to recognize words, which you will, but I’ll point out any new information. Die kleine Rote

In Tirano, customs officials waved arriving passengers past as we left the Bahnhof der Rhätischen Bahn—but perhaps here we should call it the Stazione della Ferrovia Retica. The town of 3,000 is pleasant, and we’d seen a lot of it on the street run coming in. We faced a piazza, and to the right was the other stazione, the Stazione delle Ferrovie dello Stato, the Station of the (Italian) State Railways. This is the time to explain the exaggeration that the Rhätische Bahn “doesn’t go anywhere”. Of course, the point is that the major routes through the big tunnels carry most of the traffic. Arriving from Switzerland to Tirano, assuming this isn’t one’s destination, there are two choices. You can go across the piazza and get an Italian rail ticket. The only thing is, the route is just a local, suburban one leading southwest to Milan, 110 kilometers / 68 miles away. I suppose there you could then get a northbound train to Lugano and on to Zürich. But that’s out of the way, and the Swiss Pass wouldn’t apply. A direct route to get back into the next area of Switzerland, Ticino, specifically Lugano, is the choice of those who really aren’t planning on leaving Switzerland at this point and, barring backtracking, want to continue on in Switzerland. This is, once again, the problem with the quirks in the political geography of Switzerland, where there are international borders in inconvenient locations.

Therefore, the Rhätische Bahn has established a bus solution, especially given that within Switzerland, Postbuses are scheduled to make regular connections to water and rail. But we are outside of Switzerland, so the Bahn has contracted with an Italian company to run buses, without any intermediate stops in Italy, due west from Tirano to Lugano. Since it was a service of the Rhätische Bahn, although in Italy, the Swiss Card applied. This route runs four or more times a day in each direction, but as it turned out, the train I’d wanted with panorama coaches didn’t connect directly, so I had a 2 ½ hour layover. And these buses are popular. They require a reservation, and Rail Europe had told me it was sold out for when I wanted it. I tried again the next day, and fortunately it went through, so I knew the bus (ugh) would be packed.

This day had three parts, the train, the bus, and the evening visit of Lugano. The bus was going to be the low point, but turned out to be an interesting adventure in culture. I wonder if the Italian Swiss have the same temperament as the Italians do. I suspect so. Remember, Italy is the country of independent people, especially drivers, who often park, or double park, in places others wouldn’t dare to. I could tell that the driver had attitude, so I knew this trip was going to be an adventure, un’avventura italiana.

The map we just saw shows the distance between the end of the Poschiavo Valley at Tirano and the route to the rest of la Svizzera italiana in Lugano. It’s a 2 ½-hour drive. And off we went, through surprisingly attractive countryside.

It was soon obvious that the driver wasn’t happy with the traffic on the main road, so, on one of the many traffic circles, he zoomed down a side road in some town, went down back streets, and came out at the next traffic circle, where he could rejoin the main road, or zig down back streets on the other side. And remember, this wasn’t some odd one-time charter bus, this was a regularly scheduled route that ran several times a day. But it was also Italy.

We finally reached Lake Como. Let me remind the reader of the sequence of the major three Italian Lakes (some parts of which are also Swiss Lakes). Furthest from us in the bus, to the west, is Lago Maggiore, which forms mostly a straight north-south line. Most of it is Italian, but the northernmost part reaches into the far side of Ticino, at the city of Locarno. The surface of this lake, by the way, is the lowest point in Switzerland at only 195 meters / 640’. Next closer is the Lago di Lugano, where I was headed, shaped like a deep-bowled pipe. The bowl was at the further side (west) and the stem was closer. The border here is the most irregular of all, but generally, the center section is Swiss, and the far side of the bowl and nearest side of the stem are Italian. This lake is higher, at 273 meters / 896’.

But blocking our way to Lugano was the top end of Lago di Como. I described it earlier looking like an armless man running. Another way to describe it is like an upside-down Y. Our bus route reached the lake at the man’s “ear”, and we had to drive around his “head” and down to his “shoulder” on the far side, to continue to Lugano. This lake is entirely in Italy, its surface elevation is close to that of Maggiore, at 198 meters / 650’, and, surprisingly, it’s one of the deepest lakes in Europe. It’s roughly 400 meters / 1312’ deep, and, given its surface elevation, about half of that, 200 m / 656’, is below sea level. And it’s drop-dead gorgeous.

As our avventura italiana continued around the top of Lake Como there were beautiful late-afternoon views. Then, as we were about ready to leave the lake and move west again, the driver pulled just off the road and barely onto a small parking lot. There were no rest facilities on the bus, and he announced, in Italian and barely passable, pre-memorized German and English: Quindici minuti! Fünfzehn Minuten! Fifteen minutes!, continuing to explain it was a rest stop, and the facilities, as they were, were in two cafés on the edge of the parking lot. This struck me as so tipico italiano, and not at all tipico svizzero. Afterward, there was a moment or two to walk across the road to the small marina to sigh at the lake.

And our avventura italiana continued and heightened. Going west, we met the “pipe stem” of Lago di Lugano, the part that was Italian. As we drove along the north shore, it came back to me. Six years ago (2002/3 “Maggiore”), I drove Beverly up from Venice to come see the Italian Lakes, which she’d always wanted to do. I remember driving along this northern side of the lake, and remember the road through the towns as being VERY narrow. We were then in Ticino and Lugano for the first and, until now, only time, but I couldn’t drive into the old part of town, and I remember circling it, and then leaving. Anyway, that entry road was narrow, and added to the current adventure. The bus kept stopping so that oncoming cars could pass us. Finally, someone with a pickup truck couldn’t, so he backed up a block to a wide space. And this was a scheduled bus service running several times a day! At the border, the Swiss officials waved us by and we entered Ticino, and shortly afterward, Lugano.

Lugano   Lugano is gorgeous, and I’m so glad I came back. It’s located fetchingly on a bend in the lake, the corner where the westbound road we were coming in on meets the main north-south highway and rail route. The bus, 20 minutes late, was to let us off at the rail station, which has a curious location. The entire west side of Lugano is on a steep hill, and the road and rail routes are halfway up it, way over the town, perpendicular to our arrival route. But there was a problem. As we were coming along the “pipe stem” of the lake, black clouds started gathering. Someone pointed out the huge black, conical mass of Monte San Salvatore at the southern end of town, yet very close, and you couldn’t tell if the mountain or the clouds were blacker. Arriving at the station, the first drops started to fall, and everyone rushed inside. I was now convinced that the third part of this day, the early evening visit to Lugano, was going to be a washout.

At least I was at the station, and it had been my intention anyway to check out the location of my train the next morning, something I always do for easy movement at the time. But then, in the downpour, I sat down on a step and dug some shoes and socks out of my bag to exchange for my sandals. It was going to be some evening. The street and terrace in front of this hillside station looked down on the downpour hitting the roofs below. Bummer.

I always do my homework in advance, and I knew that this station, quite uniquely, had a funicular connection down to one of the main squares below in the old town, where I’d made a reservation at what sounded like an interesting hotel, the Hotel Dante (the Piazza di Dante was nearby, and I appreciated the irony of just having worked with the Dante quotation in Death Valley [2007/15]). But how far was the funicular, especially in the rain? How close would it let me off to my hotel?

Then everything suddenly went positive. This was Switzerland, and on looking around a bit more, I found the funicular, which left from right inside the station, running right through the floor and down the hillside below. The 1.10 franc fare? Wait, the Swiss Pass covers municipal transportation, right? And it did, so the funicular was my first local transportation freebie, and down the hillside I went, not having gotten wet yet.

The tiny lower station was on a square, but built into the front end of a building with a covering that projected, so as I stood there I still didn’t get wet. The curb I was waiting on curved to my right, where there was a doorway perpendicular to me three steps away. But how would I get to the Hotel Dante? Well, I looked again, and, incredibly, that doorway was the Hotel Dante, built into several historic buildings right at the funicular. So it turned out that the funicular brought me absolutely door-to-door without a raindrop hitting me in the downpour.

The hotel was a charmer. They had munchies all over, including brownies at the check-in desk, gummy-bear type candies elsewhere, and chocolates. And by the time I unpacked for my one evening there, not only had the summer storm blown over, but perfectly blue sky appeared. My evening in Lugano was salvaged.

The old town of Lugano turned out to be great to walk through. Largely pedestrian, the narrow streets have arcades to walk under, and I meandered for quite a while. The longish Via Nassa was the luxury shopping street and led to the southern part of the old town. Via Nassa is just a block or two in from the lakeshore promenade, where I sat for a while and looked south to the huge mass of Monte San Salvatore. Right across from it, on the opposite shore, there was one area built up much more than the others, and I knew I was looking directly at Campione d’Italia, the Italian enclave surrounded entirely by Switzerland. Casino money was one reason it was so built up. Walking along the lake you see the swans, which are in all urban lake shore areas, back in Luzern, and also in Zürich later. Lugano has a population of about 52,000, so it’s about the size of Luzern, and larger than any of the resorts I’d been staying in. As I walked back along the lakeshore, first one rainbow came out over the lake, and then a double rainbow, something you don’t see very often. Ships were pulling in from the lake cruises. I’d be taking such cruises, free of charge with the Swiss Pass, in the next days on the Vierwaldstätter See and Zürich See. As for doing the same on the Lago di Lugano—that’ll have to be next time. I had dinner in an outdoor café on the square my hotel was on, and yes, I had pasta.

The next morning, I had a little bit of time after breakfast to walk around the streets a bit more, which I really wanted to do. It had been a Sunday evening before, but now on a weekday, Via Nassa and the other streets were more alive, as were stylish cafés, and closer by, the fruit and vegetable stands looked lush, as did the meats, cheeses, pastas, olive oil, and desserts displayed in front of the salumeria. After checking out of the hotel, just three steps away was the funicular again, bringing me right back up to the station.

William Tell Express   Leaving Lugano, I took the train I rank fourth among the well-known named trains, the William Tell Express. Well, yes and no. It actually starts in Locarno over on Lake Maggiore, and from Lugano you take a suburban train for a half hour and change in Bellinzona to meet it. Several other passengers and I understood that the one we met at Bellinzona, which did have the correct name, was supposed to have panoramic coaches, but it was just a plain train, with not too many people. It was no loss, since the ride due north was attractive, but no Bernina.

You keep on going up the valley toward the Sankt-Gotthard-Pass, the historic route used for centuries to connect Germany and Italy, but before the pass, the rail line enters the 1881 Gotthard Tunnel, and this is my first transit of this one. (There is also a 1980 Gotthard Road Tunnel.) You pass south-north under Andermatt, as described in the west-east Golden Pass Route earlier, and come out on the north slope. You’ve left la Svizzera italiana and entered die Deutschschweiz. This fourth crossing of a language border in Switzerland is the most blatant, since a mountain separates the two languages. Under construction is the Gotthard Basistunnel / Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT). It starts much earlier, and therefore lower, on one side, and comes out much later, and equally low, on the other. It is scheduled for completion in 2016, and will be the longest tunnel in the world at about 57 kilometers / 35.4 miles. It should reduce the present 3.5-hour rail time between Zürich and Milan by one hour.

Shortly after leaving the current rail tunnel in the north, the village of Altdorf appears nearby, the traditional location of the market square where Wilhelm Tell shot the apple off his son’s head, and the site of a well-known 1895 bronze statue of the two of them. I have not been to Altdorf. Immediately after it is the station at Flüelen, located at the southern end of the Urner See (Lake Uri), the southeasternmost projection of the Vierwaldstättersee. The Reuss, which exits the lake at Luzern, enters it here, so we are literally at the opposite end. The William Tell express then continues around the lake to Luzern on the far side. Frankly, I don’t think that the William Tell Express is too thrilling a deal, except for the fact that between Flüelen and Luzern, you can leave the train and take the lake steamer trip as an alternate to the continuation of the same ticket. Now the steamer trip is something special, and lends its prestige to the William Tell Express, but it seems to me is really quite independent of it, which is why I rank this rail route as I do.

So a number of us got off on that beautiful day at the lakeside Flüelen rail station and walked steps—mere steps (remember, this is Switzerland)—into a flowered lakeside park with a fountain, to await the steamer due in a few minutes. The adventure (das Abenteuer) out of Flüelen was quite memorable on several levels, which I’ll describe separately.

HISTORIC STEAMER I’d read that several lovingly restored historic steamers, along with the more modern ones, are put in service during the summer, and the one that was due was one of the historic ones, and the senior of these steamers to boot. The “Uri” was the one that pulled into the dock at Flüelen, and, dating from 1901, it’s the oldest paddle-wheel steamer in Switzerland. The name alone worked for me on several levels, since I was boarding the “Uri”, in Uri (both Flüelen and Altdorf are in that canton), on the Urner See (Lake Uri) section of the Vierwaldstättersee. I think at this point we should look at just what I’m talking about on YouTube, where it continues to amaze me how there is available exactly what I need. Steamship “Uri” Approaching Flüelen

HISTORIC STEAM ENGINE This was the last thing I expected to see, and the last thing I’d have expected to find fascinating. Upon entering the main deck, right in the center midships was a railed opening to the deck below with a view down to the steam engine. Granted, there were more males around the railing, but plenty of females came by for a look as well. What you saw were the two giant pistons going round and round. I’m sure that the area was open more than just for the possibility of viewing, since a closed deck would assuredly have impeded the swing of the pistons. One would also expect such an area to be filthy with grit and grease, making it very unattractive, but it was spotless. Not only that, the piston housings were painted a bright red, and some others nearby were a bright green. Exposed metal was absolutely gleaming stainless steel. This engine was PRETTY! Adding to the attractive visual image were the oil containers. Attractive brass containers with windows so you could see the jostling oil were attached to all moving parts, and some locations had two together. I counted a total of 17. These brass containers would look attractive on anyone’s dining table.

Both the port and starboard walls had little windows so you could see each of the huge paddlewheels going around. The German name is Schaufelrad, and yes, Schaufel means shovel, but calling what’s attached to the wheel shovels makes as much sense as calling them paddles. To boot, each paddle/shovel of the six on a wheel was a bright red color, and reminded me of red snow shovels.

I understand that the other steamers have similar setups to view the steam engines. The renovation of the “Uri” in 1991-1994 had numerous local benefactors, and I thought the names of the chief contributors were interesting enough to write down, although there are no surprises:

I was also very pleased to see a plaque put up in 1998 by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers declaring the “Steamboat Uri Engine” to be a Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark.

Given this background, we have to look at it. Amazingly, there are not only YouTube videos of several steamers on this lake, there are videos of several of their engines as well, so finding “Uri”’s was no problem. “Uri” Steam Engine 1 This is a 12-second quickie. I included it so you can pause it as soon as it starts to catch the red paddlewheel spinning outside the window. (I, too, thought that was me standing there in black, but the video is dated two years ago.)

This one shows different operations best. “Uri” Steam Engine 2 Pause it at 0:25 and note the spotlessly gleaming stainless steel, and the bright red housing. When the piston stops for a moment during docking at a town, right under the date of 1901, you can clearly see a pair of the brass oil containers.

I included one last 15-second quickie. “Uri” Steam Engine 3 This is the angle I preferred to watch the pistons in. It’s as hypnotic as watching a waterfall. From here you can see some of the green housings as well.

GIFT There’s one tie-in of interest between the William Tell Express and the steamers. If you’re taking the train and change to the steamer, you’re promised a free hot meal onboard and a gift. This is again a marketing ploy, but did work out to my liking. Right after boarding, those making the connection were directed to the ticket office to get a gift and a voucher for a meal. The hot main course was OK, but I wondered what trinket they could be giving away. It turned out to be a Victorinox pocket knife that I was very pleased with.

Victorinox, founded in 1884 and located nearby in canton Schwyz, has supplied knives to the Swiss army since 1891. It recently acquired its only competitor, and is now sole supplier. Its emblem, a white cross in a red shield with a white border (very Swiss looking), is a famous sign of quality. Its name derives from the original owner’s mother’s name, Victor(ia), and the French term for stainless steel (acier) inox(ydable). The multifunctional Swiss Army Knife, widely used outside the Swiss Army, is the centerpiece of Victorinox’s business. One of its models is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Of the production that is exported, most goes to the United States, which has a curious connection as to the name. After WW2, when the knife was called the Schweizer Offiziersmesser (Swiss Officer’s Knife), or possibly the Schweizer Militärmesser, many American soldiers who acquired them had trouble with the name. The began using the term Swiss Officers’ Knife, but then also Swiss Army Knife. This is the name that stuck for international use, and just the term “Swiss Army” has achieved almost icon status denoting versatility, dependability, and quality.

Now the freebie they gave away was no Swiss Army Knife. It was a small Victorinox model, in red, with the famous emblem. It fits in the palm of the hand and has only two implements, a blade and a scissor. I think it’s an ideal gift for the William Tell Express to give away.

Via licensing, Victorinox has extended its name and emblem into other fields, including quality luggage. The larger bag I’d left in Zürich was a Victorinox, I have others at home, and bought two more carry-ons when I got back home.

WILLIAM TELL But this whole area is steeped in the story of William Tell. I will defer once again to Rossini. His Overture starts with a prelude called Dawn, and that is reminiscent of all those who go to the top of the Rigi to watch dawn come up over the Vierwaldstättersee. Then comes the dynamic section called Storm. They say storms are common here in the Urner See; today is beautiful, but over the mountains yesterday, I had my storm in Lugano. Then comes the Calm, also known as the Ranz des vaches, which is a melody that was played on the horn by Swiss herdsmen to their cows, and we’ve seen those up in the Alpine meadows. The ranz des vaches has become a symbol of Swiss longing for home. Then there’s the ultra-dynamic Finale, sometimes referred to as the Cavalry Charge … wait, what’s that on the lakeshore? Two horsemen? One’s a bearded bowman in a black mask shooting silver bullets? The other is Tonto with an apple on his head?

Just kidding. But it’s appropriate now to do an encore, and I’ll do it just the way Bramwell Tovey did it last year at the New York Philharmonic, when he literally encored just the Finale. Last time we heard all four parts played by the Berliner Philharmoniker in Germany, to the north of Switzerland. Here’s a recording by l’Orchestra della Scala (the La Scala Orchestra) in Italy, to the south of Switzerland, conducted by Riccardo Muti. Finale, Overture to William Tell Hi-ho Silver, away … to the Rütli!

And off to the Rütli we sailed. It’s high on a hill where the lake bends to the left, and is best viewed from across the lake at the stop at Brunnen. And the coordination of transportation continued. At any stop we make that’s on a rail line (there are many), the possibility of connections is pointed out, as are those to chairlifts and funiculars. We greeted other steamers coming in the opposite direction, including some historic ones, in which case it was announced that at the next stop you could backtrack if you wanted to on the ship that’s about to dock in the other direction. We went through the wasp waist at Ober Nas/Unter Nas, stopped again at Vitznau at the Rigibahn, and were soon back in Luzern, where the dock was across from the Bahnhof, just steps away across the bus loading area. In a half hour my train took me back to Zürich, where I’d started.

Zürich   Most places I’d stayed in were small towns of about 5,000 population. Luzern and Lugano are small cities in the 50-60,000 range. Zürich is Switzerland’s big city, with a population of 360,000, but the metropolitan area has about a million people. The Hauptbahnhof / Main Station in Zürich is huge, and busy. According to a copy of the Tages-Anzeiger I picked up (nicknamed the Tagi or TA, with national scope out of Zürich), every 24 hours, about 340,000 people frequent the station, which is the equivalent of about the population of the whole city, and people often meet each other at the clock in the center.

The layout of the city is easy to picture. Like Luzern, it’s at the outlet of a lake. Zürich lies at the very northern end of the banana-shaped Zürich See, which is drained by the Limmat. The center city is evenly divided by this south-to-north river. The huge Hauptbahnhof is at the upper end of the west bank nosing up to the river, with the famous Bahnhofstrasse running down to the lake a bit inland on the west bank. Its gentle curve, like an opening parenthesis, indicates that it was built on a filled-in moat that ran down to the lake, which at one time helped protect the city.

I had booked a nice enough, but pricey, hotel, whose advantage was its location, on the east bank a short walk over a bridge from the station. I checked in and set off for my late-afternoon and evening visit to Zürich, which has a few areas worth visiting. Zürich being well-serviced by streetcars, I used my Swiss Pass to zip down the east bank along the Limmat to the lake, then walked over to the Bürkliplatz on the west bank to check out the lake steamer location and schedules for the next day. I then started out by doing my sightseeing of the Bahnhofstrasse up the west bank. It’s a major shopping and banking street, and since I had no real interest in either, I could see what I wanted from the tram. On Bahnhofstrasse I passed Tiffany, Prada, Dior, Armani, Hermès, Chanel, Cartier, Swarovski--and those are just the names I noted down. As to all the banks, I understand there’s more money in the bank vaults under Bahnhofstrasse than you can shake a stick at. By the way, Zürich is one of those cities that has a nickname. Just as Philadelphia can be called Philly, locals affectionately call Zürich Züri (TSÜ.ri).

I walked for a few hours through the old town on both sides of the river. There were the two cathedrals, in one of which Zwingli preached in the 1500’s, churches, squares and pleasant alleyways. Not a whole lot, but nice for a stroll. My favorite things were the Erker in Augustinerstrasse. They say that Erker (AIR.ker) translates as oriel window, but I have yet to meet a speaker of English who knows that term, so Beverly and I have always stuck to calling them Erker, a practice I continue. They are the hallmark of townhouses of a certain era in the German countries. An Erker is a rectangular projection, most often of wood, that extends from a town house, usually one floor above street level. They replace what would have been a floor-to-ceiling window, and, although I’ve never been in one, I’d say one accommodates 1-2 people. The angular Erker has windows on all three sides, and their exteriors are usually highly decorated, often with wood carvings, and very distinctive. Anyway, Michelin guided me to Augustinerstrasse, in whose two café-filled blocks I counted seven Erker on the townhouses, giving the area a very distinctive look. Among the seven were a couple of surprises. At least one was higher up, two floors above street level. And two or three were double-deckers, high Erker connecting two floors.

On my full day in Zürich I was leaving in the evening, so I checked my small bag at the hotel on check-out and took the tram back to Bürkliplatz. There are historic steamers on the Zürich See as well, and I took the 1909 “Stadt Zürich” (City of Zürich). It was the longer trip that goes to Rapperswil about ¾ of the way down the lake. Only few steamers go further. There is another historic steamer called the “Stadt Rapperswil” from 1914. In regard to that, I have to comment about two types of town names in the Zürich area. I do not know why, but many towns end in –wil. Aside from Rapperswil, there’s Thalwil, Wädenswil, Adliswil, Richterswil, and more. Even more surprising to me is the many more towns only here with names ending in –ikon, which is not a Germanic ending. Perhaps the explanation is something like the origin of the name Interlaken. Anyway, only in the Zürich area there’s Pfäffikon, Zollikon, Bendikon, Schmerikon, Uetikon, Uerikon, and more.

The Zürich hotel was the only one on this trip, pricey as it was, that didn’t include breakfast, but that was no concern, as I ordered a nice breakfast in the dining room of the steamer. If you’ve ever noticed Hero jams in the supermarket, you may know they’re Swiss, and little bottles were served with breakfast. The steam engine was also viewable, and specifications were posted near the paddlewheels, including : “Drehzahl, max: 57 U/min”, meaning the maximum number of turns was 57 revolutions per minute. At high speed, that’s about one turn per second, which is impressive.

Also included in the Swiss Pass was a river cruise on the Limmat and slightly into the lake. This was on a low-lying boat that could sail under the low bridges, but was much less impressive than the steamer trip.

Since we are now about to now leave die Deutschschweiz for transit through Germany, it’s worth discussing a bit more about the language situation here, which is unusual. In la Suisse romande, the French speakers feel a close kinship with France and the francophone world. In la Svizzera italiana, the Italian speakers also feel a close kinship with Italy and the italophone world. In both cases, what they speak is an across-the-border standard. But not here. Swiss speakers to not feel any great kinship to the rest of the germanophone world in Austria and Germany. They do speak standard German (Hochdeutsch), with the slightest of variations. But that’s until they go home, where they slip into Schweizer Deutsch, also called Schwyzerdütsch.

Most areas have local dialects. Someone from Munich might know the Bavarian dialect, and might even be able to slip into it with family and friends. But it all still has rural, less-educated overtones, and most of the time, he’d stick to Hochdeutsch. But that isn’t so in Switzerland. Maybe because of its rugged individualism and independence over the centuries, but Schwyzerdütsch, the local dialect, is far more prevalent than elsewhere. In this regard I recall a story Beverly told me when, before we met, she was in Switzerland visiting a school. Everything in class was in Hochdeutsch. Teachers and others spoke to her in Hochdeutsch. But the minute the kids got into the halls, out would come Schwyzerdütsch. Even in the faculty room, teachers would speak to her in Hochdeutsch, then turn to the next person and shift to Schwyzerdütsch. Print media is in Hochdeutsch, and so is most broadcast media. But Switzerland is a different world.

Actually, there’s even more to it than that. There is an implicit indication that Schwyzerdütsch is uniform. It is not, and actually, people are proud to be speaking the Bern, Luzern, Basel, or Zürich dialect, or many others, rather than even speaking something in conformity with other German Swiss. The German Swiss have a very independent streak and are generally very conservative people, with politics being even more local than elsewhere, and that’s reflected in their parochialism on the language issue.

We said we all now know three words in Romansh. To this I’ll add that we all already know, and have in English, two words in Swiss German. But let me first indicate that Swiss words and names tend to use a lot of diminutives, particularly the ending –i. I won’t go into it any deeper now, but notice names like Heidi, Zwingli, Rütli, Bürkli(platz). The two words you know both end this way as well.

The first one we’ve used already: Rösti, the potato dish. You can see that it’s based on “little roasted (things)”. The only shocker for me, being a stickler for pronunciation, is that the Swiss say it differently from what I’d realized. I always pronounced it as written. Probably most English—and even German—speakers do, too. But now I know the local pronunciation is RÖSH.ti. apparently, it can even be spelled locally as Röschti. Who knew?

The other word is Muesli. When checking, I found that many English speakers say something like MYOO.zli. To discuss it more, I also have to point out that another quirk of Swiss German is to have the unusual combination of vowels ÜE, each in its own syllable, such as in the name of the town Flüelen (FLÜ.e.len). Well, the accurate spelling is Müesli, and it’s pronounced MÜ.ess.li. It is, of course, the rolled oats breakfast cereal where the oats are blended with dried fruits, nuts, and seeds. It was developed around 1900 by a Swiss doctor named Bircher for patients in his hospital, and was originally known as Birchermüesli. The word is a diminutive in –li of the Swiss word Mües, which in Standard German is Mus, as in Apfelmus (applesauce). Mües/Mus describes a purée or blend, so Müesli is a “little blend”.

Finally, more generally on languages, it is obvious in Switzerland that we live in an increasingly global world. In the Swiss garden, blended with the four natives species, are quite a number of exotics, and some of the exotics are creeping up on the native species. I came across a list of the top ten languages in Switzerland by number of speakers in the thousands: German 4640; French 1485; Italian 471; Serbo-Croatian 103; Albanian 95; Portuguese 89.5; Spanish 77.5; English 73; Turkish 44.5; Romansh 35; (others 173).

Here are some points of many that can be derived from this. The number of speakers of Romansh, one of the official languages, is only 48% of the number of native English speakers who have settled here. Put another way, for every Romansh speaker crossing the street there are two native English speakers. The non-official language with the most speakers, is Serbo-Croatian. Just picture that. The speakers of Serbo-Croation are 22% of the speakers of the next larger official language after Romansh, Italian. Or, for very five Italian speakers on the bus, statistically there is one speaker of Serbo-Croatian. It’s a new world.

CityNightLine   I got my small bag from the hotel, and got my larger wheeled bag out of storage at the station. I found there was actually a waiting room in the station, surprising, since so many trains leave so frequently. It was air-conditioned, and I repacked so that everything was in the big bag. After relaxing with my book, I went down to my train.

The CityNightLine (CNL) sleeper trains have been around since 1995. The company is a daughter company of the Deutsche Bahn (DB, German Rail), incorporated under Swiss law. Its name really does consist of those three English words written together. I also find I am running out of directions to criss-cross Germany by CityNightLine trains. Beverly and I first did it in 2004 coming from Budapest via Vienna. In Munich we took the CityNightLine Pollux northwest to Amsterdam in 12h21. It was Beverly’s last train ride. In 2005, as part of my “Around the World by Rail” trip, I took CityNightLine Perseus from Berlin southwest via Brussels to Paris in 11h57. Those two form an X pattern. Now I was to take the CityNightLine Komet due north from Zürich via Basel to Hamburg, slicing through that X in 11h50. I’m running out of directions.

The train was two-level, but not like US Superliners, which have two separate floors of accommodations connected by a single staircase in the center of the car. Here, there was a regular train corridor along the windows, and every few meters/yards was another little staircase. Going up half a level, there was one larger compartment including a sitting room. Going down, there was a pair of smaller compartments that fit in underneath the larger one above, and mine was one of these, quite cozy. It was in the dining car that I had my last meal of Zürcher Geschnetzeltes, along with Swiss wine. The first new canton we passed through was Aargau, (rhymes with “how”) named after the river (Aare + Gau, meaning area or district, but to me, for the smoothest translation I like “Aarland”). We then passed through another pair of half-cantons, Basel-Land (Basel-Countryside) and finally, Basel-Stadt (Basel-City). There we stopped at the Hauptbahnhof in the center city on the south side of the river, then crossed the Rhein as it bends to the north and stopped at the Badischer Bahnhof described early in the discussion of Switzerland, a new experience for me, before transiting Germany to Hamburg.

'Schengen'   Crossing the border out of Switzerland brings to mind the changes that have been taking place in travel in Europe since 1985 regarding border crossings, which has become a breeze due to the Schengen Agreement signed that year and a follow-up signed in 1990. Although the Schengen Agreement developed independently from the European Union, it has been incorporated into the laws of the EU. There remain anomalies, such as Norway and Iceland being Schengen signatories, but not EU members. The agreements set up the Schengen Zone, within which all travel is equivalent to domestic travel, in effect, abolishing political borders. There are no internal checkpoints within the Zone, and no border patrols. To the original signatories there have been many more. Roughly, the Zone covers most of Western Europe, and extends well into Eastern Europe. For anyone having gotten used to incessant border checks when moving around Europe, the change is remarkable. And as for the complications there used to be crossing the Iron Curtain—well, I won’t even go there. It is today possible to drive from Portugal to Warsaw, up through the Baltics, take a ferry to Finland, and continue down Scandinavia going back to Portugal, and never stop at a single border. It’s as simple as crossing state lines in the US, and is ironic that right now, the US is doing the opposite, tightening security at border crossings.

It seems like difficult border crossings must have always existed, but that isn’t so. Up until just before World War One you could go from Paris to Saint Petersburg without a passport, so what’s happening now is essentially reinventing the wheel. The difficult border period is the time that I like to refer to as the 75-Year War, the period of constant turmoil, including the fascist and communist periods, from 1914 to 1989, in other words from Sarajevo to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

It should be noted though, that after World War Two, there were two areas where local treaties had already started to bring back the past. This covered the Benelux area for one, and the five Nordic countries from Iceland to Finland for another. Also, since Irish independence in 1922 there’s been an open border between it and the UK. Now, with Schengen, most of Europe is that way, but it took a good part of a century to regain what had been lost in the way of openness.

The Schengen Zone can be best described by negatives, in other words, it’s “everywhere except”. It reaches in the east to, but does NOT include, Russia, Byelorussia, Ukraine, Moldova, and Turkey. The UK and Ireland are only partially involved, in police and judicial cooperation, but they still do have border checks between them and the continent. Romania and Bulgaria opted in in 2007 and Cyprus in 2004, but have not yet implemented the Agreement. Although Slovenia is in, the “Western Balkans” (the rest of the former Yugoslavia, and Albania) are currently in negotiations.

And that finally brings us to Switzerland (and Liechtenstein). Switzerland, which usually doesn’t join anything, has opted in to Schengen, and it is expected that both Switzerland and Liechtenstein will finally implement the Agreement in December, 2008. This means that, when the attendant on the CityNightLine took my passport for a border check in July, that will no more be necessary later in the year. Different conditions will apply in Basel as to stopping at the German Badischer Bahnhof on Swiss territory. It is now clearer why the Italian officials in Tirano and the Swiss officials near Lugano were so blasé about waving us through—they’ll be out of a job in a few months, anyway. Given the irregular borders of Switzerland, such as in la Svizzera italiana, that should be a great convenience. It should also be even more helpful to the two enclaves in Switzerland, the German Büsingen in the north and the Italian Campione d’Italia in the south.

I’ll say again in this context that it’s a different world. When I discussed the former Austria-Hungary as the Ghost Country (2004/10), since there were still close ties between Vienna and Prague to its north and Budapest to its east despite the Iron Curtain, now the borders are just as open as when the three cities were all part of Austria-Hungary. I think again when coming from Moscow to Berlin in 2005, there was a passport check between Byelorussia and Poland, and then another one between Poland and Germany, but that latter one is now gone. Just think of that.

The question remains: Why is it called the Schengen Agreement? The quick answer is that Schengen is the village in Luxemburg where the Agreement was signed in 1985, and where a monument was built to commemorate the event. But that begs the question: Why there? I haven’t seen any explanations, but I would speculate an answer, which seems to me to be obvious.

If you were setting up an agreement to repair the open borders that had existed up until World War One, since the major combatants then were France and Germany, it would be logical to have it signed on their common border. But the Rhein/Rhin separates the two, it doesn’t join them. And on which side would you do the signing anyway?

That brings us to the river pronounced mo.ZEL or MO.zel. Say mo.ZEL and you’ll spell it the French way, Moselle. It starts in France, leaves France through its northeastern border, where it then forms the border between Luxemburg and Germany, then turns into Germany, where it’s the MO.zel and spelled Mosel. It goes down past Trier to Koblenz where it joins the Rhein. Beverly and I took a Mosel river cruise from Koblenz up to Trier.

Anyway, where the river leaves France, the very first town on the left in Luxemburg is Schengen. To me this is clearly why this town was chosen. Walk a bit south of the center of Schengen and you walk into France. Walk a bit east from the center of Schengen and you walk over the bridge into Germany. You couldn’t find a better location near both France and Germany, but not physically in either of them. And there’s where it was signed.

Queen Mary 2   I got to the Hauptbahnhof in Hamburg and had some time to kill, and eventually found a nice waiting room that the DB ran, that was kind of hidden away and hard to find. I read my book there for a couple of hours, where they had free ice cream bars and hot drinks. My deck on the QM2 was set to board at 2:00 PM, but upper-level World Club members can get on at noon, when otherwise only people in the expensive cabins get to board. When the taxi got me there, it struck me that arriving a little later than noon might have resulted in less crowding. In the hubbub, I met Paul and his wife, originally from New York City, now in New Hampshire. Paul was asking questions I wanted answered also, and we got to chatting. We later found out that we had a great deal in common, including experience on the original Queen Elizabeth and, incredibly, the Liberté. Later, Paul and I got together for dinner in New York and had some great conversation.

I’m at the top Platinum Level of the Cunard World Club, partially because this was my sixth crossing on the QM2. As I’ve said in the past, what I tally is voyages, everything from a one-nighter to seven weeks on the Caronia. By that method of counting, this was lifetime voyage number 44.

It was two years ago that I sailed on the QM2 out of Hamburg for the first time (2006/9). I refer to that entry for a review of my visit to Wedel (VÉ.del, é as in café), a half-hour down the Elbe, and its Ship Greeting Point, and also to the most incredible sailaway of my life. Hamburg goes all out for cruise ships in general and the QM2 in particular. There were people gathered next to the ship at the Cruise Center in a midway-like area, celebrating, with small ships sailing all around us, lights flashing all the way down the river, and then our coming to the Wedel greeting point. But I was surprised at the schedule this year: the ship was scheduled to sail in the middle of the night, after 4 AM. I finally found out that it was the tides that caused this unusual sailing time. So that night, we still went to sleep in Hamburg, to wake up in the morning in the North Sea.

But at about 10 PM, Hamburg did put on a fireworks display for us, and also something I’d never seen before, a blue light display called Blaue Nächte / Blue Nights. After the fireworks, many buildings had blue illuminations on them in the otherwise black night—a dome here, a terrace there, some architectural feature somewhere else. It gave an unusual, restful feeling. It was a light display put on for the occasion by the city, designed by a specialist in illuminations.

The last thing I expected to find on YouTube was the QM2 in Hamburg, although I don’t know why, since there’s so much material on YouTube. Incredibly, what was available is very specifically my sailing. The videos are dated either July 30 or 31, since the sailing was an overnight affair. I’m posting three of them, showing a sequence.

QM2 in Hamburg - Afternoon A new celebration, Hamburg Cruise Days 2008, named in English, apparently ran from July 30 to August 3, when some seven cruise ships were in the harbor, including the QM2 and the Deutschland. Notice the party atmosphere to celebrate the harbor and the visit of the QM2.

QM2 Sailaway – Before Dawn Notice the blue lights, especially at the beginning. Also remember that the foghorn you hear on the QM2 was taken from the original Queen Mary in Long Beach. This was about 4:30 AM, and most of us on the ship were fast asleep, but listen to the people cheering on the shore.

QM2 at Wedel - Daybreak Down the Elbe, the QM2 passes the Ship Greeting Point at Wedel at about 5:00 AM. They’re playing “Auf Wiedersehn” in the beginning. I’m still asleep, but look at all the people waving on the shore. Then they play “God Save the Queen”. When I was in Wedel, they showed me the collection of tapes of all the national anthems.

It occurs to me that “Auf Wiedersehn” is an ideal travel song, and it’s appropriate that we take a closer look at it, along with my translation, which does not rhyme, and takes just a liberty or two to fit the rhythm.

Note how “Wiedersehn” and “rendezvous” are appropriate matches in the last line, and that this song fits Wedel’s purposes very well, to say nothing of being generally appropriate for people you’ve met while traveling whose company you’ve enjoyed.

That next day we went down the English Channel and past Dover. Two years ago I did the same thing, passing the lights of Dover at night on the QM2, and last year I went to Dover by rail on a day trip out of London. I seem to be developing some sort of flip-flop land-and-sea relationship with the town.

August 1, the Swiss national holiday, by the way—they must have been busy at the Rütli--saw our early arrival in Southampton for the day to exchange passengers. Many Brits had taken a four-day round trip from here to Hamburg, meaning there were lots of new faces for the actual transatlantic portion of this trip. For a while I had had a mental aberration to jump ship for the day and take the train into London to see the Sherlock Holmes Museum, since I’d just been to Meiringen, but I promptly cured myself of that and stayed on board. We had been forewarned, I’m glad to say, that the Queen Victoria would be in port while we were there, and we could see her just a short distance away. I sail on the QV next January NY-Panama Canal-LA.

The crossing was fine, but I was disappointed in the lack of decent lectures this time. There were, as always, plenty of receptions in the evening before dinner, for which one dresses to the nines, some for everyone, others by special invitation. Everyone goes to the Captain’s reception. By invitation in your mailbox is the World Club reception, also in the large Queen’s Room, and the Senior Officers’ reception in the more intimate night club. At the World Club, Paul, who is Platinum Level WC, and I, Diamond Level WC, were having a chat with Captain Christopher Rynd, with whom I’ve sailed in the past, and an interesting point came up in discussion. There is always a gathering on the QM2 for people who had sailed on the original Queen Mary. Paul and I had both sailed on the original Queen Elizabeth (as I’ve said, I suspect he’s my long-lost twin), and he said he’d talked his way into the Queen Mary meeting. I suggested to the Captain that, in the future, it shouldn’t be billed as a gathering for those who’d sailed on the original QM, but also on the original QE. Perhaps better than that, it should be for anyone who’d sailed on any Cunard ship that is now part of history. Captain Rynd really seemed receptive to that, and said he’d bring it up to the organizers.

At the WC reception they always announce the numbers of nationalities of passengers on board. There are many, from around the world, but you usually listen for the large groups. From the UK there were 690, but when it came to those from the USA at a close 695, a big whoop went up. An even bigger whoop went up when the number of Germans was announced as something in the 800’s. But of course, that’s nationalities, not languages. Even adding in the Austrians and Swiss Germans, there were still more English speakers than German speakers.

Cunard is really trying to please its regulars in the World Club. Early boarding is one plus, and Paul finally got me interested in taking advantage of their free internet service. People on the Diamond Level get eight hours free, for which others would be billed $167.95. Better yet, you can use your own laptop as long as you go to one of the hotspots in public areas, which I did, eagerly. I don’t like using public computers for e-mail if I don’t have to, and I have to post material to the website from my own computer, where the articles are written in Word. I was able to do both on this trip, but I hear on the Victoria, although I’ll still get the same free time, I have to use their computers, which will restrict me.

There’s a Todd English restaurant onboard. I don’t usually like to go to these specialty restaurants on ships, but this time I tried the freebie lunch there, for which the World Club comped me the $20 charge. It was nice, but nothing I need to do again. The WC also had an afternoon wine tasting for certain members, also OK, but memorable for another reason. I hadn’t heard much German spoken on board, and I struck up a conversation in German at the wine tasting with a man who said he’d thought I’d looked familiar. We decided we were both on the Caronia around South America in the winter of 2004, but I added that it wasn’t just me, at the time I was with Beverly, who was in her wheelchair. That brought it back to him. He remembered how we would slow-dance at her wheelchair, and how I took care of her. Aside from commenting that it’s a small world, it’s interesting how, four years later, these impressions remain.

We got into the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in the early morning and I took a taxi through the Brooklyn-Battery tunnel to Battery Park and home, which just took a few minutes. I’ve mentioned how the program “Law and Order” films in New York, on the street, and with many interiors done at facilities on the Chelsea Piers (2008/8). I’d gotten an e-mail in Switzerland from the manager of our condominium in New York to residents that, on Friday, July 25, Law and Order would be filming at the bar of a restaurant across the street from The Regatta, and then on our roof. (On that date I was on the Glacier Express from Zermatt to Sankt Moritz.) When I got home, I asked the concierge how that all came off. It went very well, and they let the cast and crew in our back entrance for less disruption in our lobby. He also told me that the condominium would be earning a fee of $10,000 for the filming, and that we would be told when that episode would be running. Stay tuned, literally, but if you see any L&O episode on a roof with a view of the bay and river, including the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and the Verazzano-Narrows Bridge, you’ll know where it was filmed. Anyway, home again.