28 October - Reflections on Switzerland

We planned a quiet day since we were tired after the last few days of travelling. We also had a mountain of washing to catch up on. When we had arrived home the previous night we realised a certain young lady had left the fridge slightly ajar (her favourite trick) and pretty much all the food in the fridge had to be thrown. This meant a big shop for groceries as well.

We caught up on most of the washing and shopping/cooking in the morning and let Astrid have a decent lunchtime sleep so headed to the park in the afternoon. It was still cold out so after an hour or so we went back to the apartment for some hot chocolate and episodes of playschool.

So for today's update here are our thoughts on Switzerland:

We knew we wouldn't get to see everything in our 5 days/4 nights and there are definitely things we want to go back and see.  We were fairly underwhelmed by Geneva, but we might have just had a bad day. Plus we were tired. Montreux and Luzern were lovely towns to walk around and we could have spent longer in both.

Interlaken wasn't that exciting, although we didn't really see much of it and used it as a base. We would have loved to have stayed longer in one of the towns further up the Alps. We could easily have had a few days there and done more exploring of the alpine regions and some of the walking trails. Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen were lovely, but plenty of others we passed through also looked great.

Despite the appalling weather we loved Zurich and would have loved to have spent more time there. We will have to go back.  There were also plenty of places we didn't see. We didn't get to see any of the Northern regions or the South-Western Italian regions.  Definitely a country to go back to at some stage.

The Trains:
The rail system is brilliant. All the trains were clean, comfortable and efficient. Aside from a few issues working out connections we had no complaints. The international commutes between Paris and Geneva/Zurich were great and less hassle than flying.  Most of the smaller towns had free train/tram/bus connections for tourists which made life easy and the bigger cities had reasonably priced passes.

The trains do very much run on time. The first day or so we were freaked out that the trains just took off without warning. No door closing sound, no announcements, no warning at all. They just leave. The first couple of times Astrid and our bags went flying as we were unprepared. We soon figured out that they go by the railway clocks (which are all perfectly synchronised). Once you know what time your train is meant to leave you just know to be seated and ready at exactly that time.  There are copious clocks around, and all the trains had them so it was easy once we knew. Anto also synchronised his watch to 'train time' which made it easy.

They often didn't make announcements about stations and stops so sometimes you just had to guess how long til your station. The time stopped at each station would also vary as the train would leave when it got to 'exactly' it's leaving time. This meant we often didn't know how long we would be stopped for in order to get ourselves and all our gear off (and Astrid in the carrier) so we sometimes had to rush around just in case.

The currency:
Switzerland uses Swiss Francs and it is worth slightly less than an Aussie Dollar. It made it easy to see how hideously expensive everything was. The food was extremely expensive in restaurants and cafes, but fairly well priced at the supermarket.  So if you could do your own catering it wouldn't have been too bad. Coffee and soft drink was very expensive, but beer and wine not so much. Chocolate was very well priced and delicious!

The Swiss Francs seem to come in stupid coin denominations. The 5 Franc is a silver piece that looks exactly like an Aussie 20 cent piece. Very deceiving, when you are carrying around a pocket full of them and you realise how much money it is. For 10 Francs they go to a note that looks like our $50.  The half Franc looked like a 5c piece and again you could end up with a ton of them in your pocket.

The language/s:
It was very odd swapping between German and French in different towns. We didn't go to any of the Italian areas, but Luzern had a lot of Italian sections, where everything was Italian food in German. Another odd experience. The Swiss all spoke French and German with very precise accents to it was actually easier to understand than French in France or German in Germany. They were also more willing to swap to English than the French and pretty much all spoke some English.

Weird hotel things:
All the hotels we stayed at gave us a heap of hand towels and no face washers. They also have towels that are a good large size, unlike most hotels where you struggle to find one big enough to wrap around yourself.  When they made up the beds, they always put 2 single bed doonas (folded lengthwise) onto the bed, so each person had their own doona.  The baby cot (porta cots) were really  nice, with big thick mattresses and came with a pillow and thick doona. They obviously don't care about SIDS guidelines in Switzerland. Astrid didn't get the doonas, but she had her sleeping bag anyway. She enjoyed the more comfy matresses. All hotels seemed to include breakfast, which was good given how expensive food (and hotels) are.

All breakfast seemed to consist of copious different choices of meat, cheese, yoghurts and breads. It was generally really yummy though.

Going out with a baby:
Every time we went into a restaurant or cafe they appeared with a highchair automatically. Very different to France where you have to ask and may or may not get one.  They also assumed that you weren't going to feed your baby as they never asked if we wanted anything for Astrid and if we did order something (or ask for an extra plate so she could share ours) they looked at us like we were weird.  Generally they loved babies though and she got tonnes of attention, biscuits and chocolate and multiple people offered to take her home.

General impressions: 
The food was good, but not as good as Paris.  The German influenced food was pretty good quality but the French influenced just wasn't as good as what we were used to. It's hard to beat Paris though!  The food was nice everywhere we went and we  enjoyed most of our meals.

The people were very no nonsense. They don't chat much (unlike Paris) but were friendly and  helpful.  We didn't get hassled at all and we didn't really see any homeless people (unlike Paris, where there is one on every corner). Of course the Swiss probably hide them all, or it's too cold........

The scenery can't be beaten and photos couldn't do it justice.

They really do love banks, watches and chocolate..... and Roger Federer....... all 4 were everywhere!

A picture of Astrid in her new French coat and Swiss hat:

25 October - Our trip through the Swiss Alps and up to Jungfrau Joch, the highest railway station in Europe

Interlaken
The verdict on the Interlaken hotel is that the location is fantastic for being directly opposite the train station, and annoying for being right opposite the train station. The tour groups were actually louder than the trains but they left early.  The two single beds pushed together with wooden panels down the middle were more of a problem.
Astrid woke up before 7 so we headed upstairs for breakfast. Not as good as the the day before in Montreux but we still managed to eat many types of bread product, meat and cheese. We packed our stuff for the day, including warm clothes and headed to the train station.

The Jungfau Trip
We had to catch the train from Interlaken West where were were to Interlaken Ost (East). We of course missed the first train and had to wait half an hour. Once 5 mins down the track at Interlaken Ost, we also missed a train trying to find the right platform and had another half hour wait. The Swiss are great at not labelling or explaining things. We have had trouble with train connections all through Switzerland because they don't usually put the same end point on the timetables as what is listed on your ticket, you are supposed to just know where all the station changes are and then it's easy to figure out. Until then it's pretty much impossible and we keep having to ask. The Jungfrau trip was again the same. It was sold as a single ticket but involved at least 4 train/station changes and there were multiple different ways to go, through different towns. Once you sorted this out it wasn't hard, but until then it was all a mystery.

We decided to head up through the Grindelwald route as it's supposed to be a nice town.  Interlaken is right at the base of some impressive mountains so straight out of Interlaken the scenery was fairly impressive. The first section of the trip was about 40 mins and we climbed from 500m at Interlaken to 1034m at Grindelwald. We did have one stop at Zweillutschinen (forever known as the town that we hook and un-hook at, since we can't pronounce it) where trains were unhooked to go different directions. then onto Grindelwald.

 Grindelwald is full of chocolate box houses and backed by sheer cliffs which were covered in ice and snow. It was pretty impressive. We decided to stop here and let Astrid have a leg stretch and a play. We wandered the shops while waiting for the next train and she had a fun play at a park with some pretty nice views.

The next leg was to Kleine Scheidegg and involved 30% gradients as we climbed to 2061m. We were now surrounded by snowy cliffs and steep valleys. The train moved pretty slowly and it took 33 mins to get to Kleine Scheidegg. We passed through lots of stations that operate as ski run points during the season. They are a few weeks from the ski season starting and most places are deserted except for the tourists going up the Jungfrau and lots of walkers out doing the scenic trails.

We changed trains at Kleine Scheidegg and we didn't have a break here as it was pretty busy with trains coming in thick and fast and we wanted to get up to Jungfrau Joch for lunch.  The next section of train was almost entirely in tunnels, so not too much to see except at the viewing stations from within the tunnel. Eigerwand (2865m) and Eismeer (3160m) stations which had glass platforms for viewing and allowed the downward trains to past while you got some good shots.

It was during this section of the trip that Astrid lost the plot. She was really tired and got a bit hysterical but Anto finally got her to sleep with several million verses of 'soft kitty' so she at least got some rest.

We finally got to Jungfrau Joch (3454m) and it was indeed cold and very high. We headed into the restaurant building with about a million other tourists. It was right on 1pm and a bad time to be arriving. We decided to give the bistro a miss as it was packed and went up the restaurant. It was expected to be expensive but turned out to not be any more so than any other Swiss meal and was really nice food. The views were spectacular over the Jungfrau and were lovely to watch while we ate. I had a leek soup with a ricotta ravioli through it and some cheese, it sounds weird but was lovely. Anto had a meat and cheese platter that was really good. Astrid had a bit of everything and a tonne of bread and butter and most of our hot chocolate.

During lunch we realised we were feeling a bit sick and lightheaded from the altitude. Astrid didn't seem bothered but Anto felt quite blah.  We suited up and wandered through the long, dark and cold tunnels out onto the snow face.  There wasn't a huge area you were allowed to play in but Astrid loved the snow and thought it was the best fun ever to lay in it, roll in it and touch it. She kept taking her mittens off and realising it was cold and not knowing why. We think a trip to the snow might be in order for next winter! Incidentally it was about 1 degree while we were up there so not actually that cold, at least not compared to a Canberra winter. We didn't even put half our warm clothes on.

As it was quite bright and cold and we didn't want Astrid running around too much in the altitude we took some photos and went back in for the next train down. It's at least 2.5 hours back so it had already been a long day.  The trains back were busy and we headed down to Kleine Scheidegg much quicker than we went up.  We decided to change here to a train to Lauterbrunnen and go back through some different towns. This was another packed train. Luckily the Japanese tourists that were stuck with us thought Astrid was hilarious and spent most of the hour long ride posing for photos with her and picking up all the things she was throwing at them.  We were grateful they were so good humoured about it. They still wanted photos when we got off the train, and took video, so she is probably on all of their facebook pages by now!

Lauterbrunnen is another beautiful ski town and if we weren't so tired and wanting to get back to the hotel we wouldn't have minded exploring.  You could spend days wandering through all the towns and walking some of the trails. It's a shame we only had one day. There were plenty of towns we didn't get to see at all.

We finally got back to Interlaken at about 5.30 after another 2 shortish train rides. Astrid was over it by this stage so we took her back to the hotel room for a break while Anto went and fetched some supplies. She managed to fall asleep on the bed and it was a shame to wake her for dinner. We had planned on some Cheese fondue but everyone else obviously had the same idea as the place we had wanted to go to couldn't fit us in until 8.30. Thinking that wasn't a good idea we got some Indian instead and got Astrid off to sleep after her big day of trains and snow!