Our Switzerland Adventure: Day 1 — Of Planes, Trains, and Funiculars
Early this past March, I looked deeply into my wife’s eyes as our 40 thanniversary approached (St. Patrick’s Day, incidentally, selected not because of impatience on my part, as my wife believes, but more strategically so that I would never forget an anniversary — and for 39 years I hadn’t, so men take note). As I lost myself in her teal eyes, I said, “Darling, an epic anniversary demands an epic vacation. Where shall we celebrate this year?”
A day or two later we were watching a travel special on hiking the Alps hosted by travel guru Rick Steves, which led to us reviewing another of his episodes on Switzerland, and suddenly the vision crystallized right in front of us. Janis and I love hiking, love mountains, love cheese, love “The Sound Of Music “ — so Switzerland here we come.
Fast forward to early September, and Veni, vidi, vici. We’ve recently returned from a 12-day trip-of-a-lifetime, our eyes still blinking from the afterglow of the wonders we saw (and cheese we consumed). Using a half-dozen of the most memorable hikes we took as a launching point, I’d like to share some of our adventures and reflections with anyone with interest and a few minutes to waste.
Day 1: Of Trains, Planes, and Funiculars
At 15,940 square miles, all of Switzerland can fit easily into my home state of Iowa. But whereas tourists planning to vacation in Iowa can pretty much cover the state by visiting the Field of Dreams, one or two bridges in Madison County, Captain Kirk’s future birthplace, and Birdsell’s ice cream parlor in Mason City (best chocolate soda ever), with Switzerland good luck with that.
Switzerland is an embarrassment of natural and cultural riches. In the end, after weeks of research (trust me, YouTube is your friend in vacation-prep), we mapped out our Swiss assault. First, we’d spend a couple nights in Luzern, a quick hour train ride from Zurich, and a gateway city to the Alps with its own impressive collection of mountains to start acclimating us for the higher climbs ahead.
Our overnight flight from DC to Zurich touched down on schedule (pause for a moment to reflect on that little miracle) at 11:00am, and the Zurich Flughaven train station was situated a short walk across the street from picking up our bags. Maybe it’s because of legendary Swiss engineering (or some might cynically argue it’s because of Switzerland’s compact size), but the Swiss train system is a marvel.
In fact, this became our first vacation ever where we did not rent a car. Each of our destinations was within a short walk of a train station, gondola ride, bus stop, chair lift, rope climb, bullock cart, or funicular. (Believe me, I had fun with that word when I first heard it. “Hey Janis, may I kiss you on the funicular?” And would you believe, she said no! Forty years of marriage and she still can brush me off like a bug.)
Not only that, but in a tour de force of brilliant transportation marketing, the Swiss have created several versions of a “travel pass” for tourists, which allows within a preselected date-range unlimited rides on their SBB (German abbreviation for the Swiss national railway) trains, boats, and busses, as well as steep discounts for regional transportation networks, free admission to museums, and no doubt other benefits which I will learn about months from now. “Hey, when you were in Switzerland, did you get your free daily massage with your Swiss Travel Pass?” someone will ask me, and I’ll weep and gnash my teeth for two or three minutes.
In the end, we went with the first-class Cadillac version of the full travel pass, which cost $1,800 for the two of us, because this was our 40 thanniversary (ruby), not our fourth (Styrofoam, I think), and my wife deserves it for putting up with me for four decades. Decades! I can’t get my brain around that. A business or car that lasts a decade is deserving of accolades, but something that endures, even thrives, for four of them, what word can even appropriately describe that?! Try five words: First Class Swiss Travel Pass, baby.
Another area where SBB has achieved global, if not intergalactic, dominance is in their wondrous SBB mobile travel app. With it, you can insert your location, then your desired destination, and instantly a string of the upcoming available rides appears, telling you the platform, time of departure, type of train ( Commuter will make more stops, Inter-Regional fewer), length of journey, and expected occupancy (information which highfalutin first-classers like us would want to know.)
After heading through customs and picking up our luggage, we first needed to take a ten-minute ride from Zurich Flughaven to Zurich Hauptbahnhof, the city’s main station (Zurich HB for short — and yes, I know; traveling through Switzerland is like taking a train ride through an Ikea store for the names). Once there, we had to figure out which of the 3,000 daily trains heading in and out of Zurich HB would take us to Luzern.
Janis did not yet know that I was a trained Jedi in the ways of the SBB mobile app, so when she saw a large departure/arrival sign across the station, off she went to investigate. I whipped out my phone, punched in Zurich HB to Luzern, and (insert here the sound of a Jedi laser sword) instantly I had the next three hours’ worth of options on the screen. I called out to Janis, “Platform 5 in ten minutes! Let’s go!”
If I could only have had my camera out to capture that look of astonishment and awe she had on her face right then. Why it may have been forty years earlier, St. Patrick’s Day, that I had last seen that look. I do believe if I had asked right then and there, she would have allowed me to kiss her on the funicular.
Ten minutes later, we were in the train, and on our way to Luzern.
Bear Clifton is a pastor, writer and screenwriter. His latest book, “Communion With Christ” is now available through Amazon. His blogs and scripts can be enjoyed at his ministry website: trainyourselfministry.c
om and his writing website: blclifton.com. Bear is also the author of “Ben-Hur: The Odyssey”, and “A Sparrow Could Fall”, all available through Amazon.
Originally published at https://www.trainyourselfministry.com.