Relying On A Network of Trains, Boats, Buses And Cable Cars The challenge: how to get to this tiny, mountain-clinging village in the Bernese Oberland with a minimum of aggravation and a maximum of punctuality. MÜRREN, SWITZERLAND -- The challenge: how to get to this tiny, mountain-clinging village in the Bernese Oberland with a minimum of aggravation and a maximum of punctuality.
A little advance guidebook research told me Mürren's population was just 350 and the cliff it straddles is so sheer that the village is inaccessible by car.
Yes, a sober sobriquet about Switzerland has it that "the trains run on time." And the country's citizens are known for their hospitality. But in researching the route to my hotel, where I was meeting friends for a 6:30 p.m. dinner, I discovered the journey from Zurich to Mürren involved no less than four changes of train - plenty of opportunity for a missed connection.
The convoluted route is linked thanks to the Swiss Travel System, a network of trains, boats, buses and mountain-climbing cable cars covering the entire country. The country's reputation reassured me just enough that I purchased a rail pass and put the Swiss axiom to the test: Could these trains actually transport a jet-lagged traveler, and his checked luggage, across the Alps, planting him with his change of clothes at his hotel in time for dinner?
The first leg of my journey began in Los Angeles, flying Swiss Airlines nonstop to Zurich. But I didn't check my bag to Zurich; I used the Swiss Travel System's Fly Rail Baggage service to check it through to Mürren. The service guaranteed bags checked in for the flight would be delivered to Mürren by 6 p.m. the day of my arrival, just 30 minutes to spare before dinner.
Ordinarily, I avoid checking bags whenever possible, especially on outbound flights. I handed over my bag at the LAX check-in counter with more than the usual trepidation, knowing I wouldn't see it again for 18 hours and after many handoffs.
At the Zurich Airport, I boarded a train that took me to that city's main rail station. It was a quick jump to the train for Interlaken. From there, I transferred onto a cog rail train to the village of Lauterbrunnen. Here, a funicular was waiting to make the 10-minute climb up the steep valley wall. I left the angled train car for yet another train and a 10-minute amble along the cliff to Mürren.
It was a four-hour journey on five trains, with connection times ranging between 2 and 20 minutes. Although it sounds complex, it turned out to be a sensible way to cope with jet lag, the September scenery a soothing succession of farmhouse tableaus and snow-capped peaks. Nodding in and out of slumber, I dreamed of adopting a few cows to try a new career in artisanal cheese-making.
Fortunately, my lodging at the Hotel Eiger was right across the street from the Mürren station. The bag I had checked in at LAX was sitting in the lobby. The hotel's baggage cart had beaten me to the front desk.
What's more, I was able to get from LAX all the way to Mürren without negotiating with a taxi driver or porter. In fact, during two weeks in Switzerland staying in six hotels, I never stepped into a car for a single journey.
Forgive me if I gush, but with public transportation this good, who would want to?
A survey commissioned by Rail Europe [conducted by Menlo Consulting Group] found that only 16 percent of Americans prefer to travel through Europe by car, while 70 percent favor exploring by train.
Saying "the trains run on time" gives short shrift to Switzerland's trove of scenic and natural attractions. It also overlooks the country's buses, paddle-wheel lake steamers and peak-scaling gondolas, which maintain meticulous schedules, too.
The Swiss PostBus - mail coaches expanded to transportation in 1906 - started with three buses and a 12-mile route. Today, as the PostBus celebrates a century of operation, the route network covers 6,400 miles, with 2,000 buses transporting 102 million passengers a year.
The PostBus is not so much a competitor to the rail system as an extension of the trains, reaching from the rail platform to even more remote villages and trail heads, and sometimes offering more direct routes than the train network provides. And some PostBus routes have found their own acclaim, like the Palm Express between St. Moritz and palm tree-lined Lugano. Most people travel this four-hour route for the memorable lakefront scenery.
Similarly, classic lake steamers connect the cities and resort towns straddling the larger bodies of water, notably the lakes of Zurich (sailing to Rapperswil), Geneva (Lausanne, Vevey, Montreaux), Lucern (Vitznau, Weggis) and Interlaken (Brienz). Most of the paddle-wheel boats are museum pieces that date to World War I or earlier and typically operate in summer.
The comprehensive Swiss Travel System links all these elements seamlessly - before my trip, I viewed the entire travel schedule from the Zurich Airport to Mürren online on one page, rather than jumping from one site to another to connect the dots. It meant that more of my transit time was spent enjoying the scenery and less about wondering about my next connection.
But as a closet train admirer, I was content to focus my transportation needs by riding the rails. While in Mürren, I also day-tripped to Jungfraujoch, the highest train station in Europe. The cog train ride from Wengen (on the opposite side of the valley from Mürren) is barely 10 miles, but with adult fares running a stiff $120 round trip, it's got to be the most expensive train trip in the world on a per-mile basis. Fortunately, possessing a Swiss Rail Pass cut the ticket price in half.
Amazingly, half of this scenic train journey lies inside a tunnel. But the passage is an engineering marvel, carved more than a century ago in the heart of the Eiger, one of the Alps' fiercest mountains, the scene of multiple climbing dramas. It's also avalanche country, and as the train climbed the lower slopes into the tunnel, I could hear sun-touched glacier ice breaking free and crashing down the mountain faces, the thunder echoing up and down the Lauterbrunnen Valley.
Halfway up the tunnel we stopped at Eigerwand, a "window" carved from the tunnel out to the north face of the Eiger, an awesome, sheer expanse of rock and ice. The access was used in several heart-stopping rescues when unexpected blizzards swept in on climbing teams (replicated in the 1975 Clint Eastwood thriller, "The Eiger Sanction").
Farther along, the train stopped at Eismeer, a south-facing window that looks down on the 14-mile Aletsch Glacier, Europe's longest, where massive folds of snow that feed the glacier glistened like marshmallow cream.
Perched on a ridge at 11,333 feet elevation, the Jungfraujoch terminus is more than your typical train station, a bustling beehive with five restaurants, glacier sleigh rides and elevators that escort visitors down to glacier caverns and up to observation decks with awesome views from the top of the Alps.
I couldn't imagine a more spectacular place to be perched on a clear day.
Yes, Switzerland's trains run on time. But the Swiss Travel System delivers scenery and convenience like no other country's transportation system, allowing the trains, buses and boats to become an attraction in their own right.
Source:Hindustanis.org
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