More pictures at the bottom.
Went to Switzerland again this year. I played a couple of shows, and we did some sightseeing. My wife is from there, so we visited family. Switzerland is so well organized! We bought Swiss Rail passes that get you on just about any bus, tram, train, boat (lots of lakes in Swizzli) and even cable cars and museums. A 2-week pass is about $650 CAD each, and we got way more than our money’s worth, not to mention the convenience of it all.
And there aren’t any fare gates, you simply walk on whichever conveyance you wish. Like the Zurich hauptbahnhof (main train station), 26 tracks, close to 500,000 passengers a day! And everyone simply walks onto the train. Of course there are ticket windows and machines for those who don’t have a pass. Swiss citizens can buy annual passes. There are random ticket checks, and on the trains our passes were checked almost every time. Fair enough. Fare enough?
German is the official language of Switzerland, though the Swiss have their own cute dialect. Basically it sounds softer and less guttural than German, and they do things like add -li to the end of words, such as trainli, boatli (pronounced as in boatley). They’re so cute those Swizzlis! Most people speak English well, and are glad to. I have still learned only basic terms…
We took the Glacier Express train, from Zermatt to St. Moritz. It’s an 8 hour panoramic ride through the Alps, not a fast express! It’s 291 kilometers, with 91 tunnels and 291 bridges. There are few if any straight stretches, you can almost always see the rest of the train from your car.
Swiss trains are super duper in general, and the Glacier Express is a heck of a great journey! Spiral tunnels and even helical tunnels. I had to look that one up: a spiral is like a vortex, or a tornado, or a clock spring with a varying width, and a helix is like a slinky, iykwim. Same diameter top to bottom. Word nerd here.
Here’s the Glacier Express website with good pics and video.
I was surprised at the number of golf courses in the Alps!
We stayed the night before at a typical Swiss chalet-type hotel in Tasch, a little town 15 minutes from Zermatt.
The picture at the top is the view from our balcony. Zermatt is in the distance, nestled in the valley past the two ridges.
This country is so cute!
Zermatt is like a bigger Whistler or Banff, no cars, lots of tourists and shops. Perhaps because it’s shoulder season prices were reasonable there. I’m not too chuffed about the place, it’s a typical touristy place, though many of the buildings are in the classic old Swiss chalet style. When I say no cars, there are a few, though you need a permit to drive in. They have electric buggies for taxis and civic work vehicles etc.
My favourite part of Zermatt though is found off the main stroll that we found by accident. (We’re pretty free-form travellers, we don’t plan to the second. Or even the day.) There’s a small area of 16th and 17th century homes, granaries, and barns, most still inhabited by people, if not animals and grain. Rough-hewn wabi-sabi wood buildings, where the upper structures are on short stilts above a stone cellar.
A really cool feature is that the stilts are topped with 3 foot diameter stone slabs to keep rats out. Kind of like those things on the ratlines on moored ships. Very interesting, very clever.
The scenery in the Alps is really spectacular. The mountains, the stone, it’s very different from what I’m familiar with in Canada. Most of the buildings, homes, sheds, barns (LOTS of barns and sheds. Highly agricultural country) are roofed with stone slabs. Different from slate. They’re irregularly shaped, producing lovely patterns on the ancient weather-beaten buildings. Basically the same stones you see in the picture above.
We got pretty good weather on the journey, so we were able to enjoy the view, mostly. Apparently we passed by the Matterhorn, though it was cloudy and we didn’t actually see it! There were some big mountain storms when we were there, which we managed to avoid, many mountain passes were closed due to 6-8 meters of snow! 6-8 meters!!! That’s like 20-26 feet of snow! And now all that snow is melting and causing flooding.
We went to the Swiss National Circus one night in Zurich. It’s over 100 years old and still run by descendants of the original founders. It was absolutely fantastic. They spend a month (June) every year in Zurich, and travel around the country the rest of the time. It sets up in a plaza in front of the opera house. The plaza is tiled, and the circus is in a tent, and over the years they’ve figured out how to set it up. There are anchor points for the guy lines (of course these days they use ratchet straps!) hidden below removable tiles in the plaza. The Swiss are so organized and button-down. Which is likely a good thing for watchmakers and bankers…
Circus website here.
I was actually excited (a little) to go to McDonald’s in Zurich because I’ve read that the ingredients are much better, European-style. For instance, it’s said that the fries have 3 ingredients, rather than the 18 in North America. I hadn’t tried McD’s in years, and I have to say, it’s all as crappy there as at home. Good to know that some things don’t change. I guess.
I played a “fabulous” show at a very cool outdoor garden food stand kind of place in Zurich called Mica’s Garten. The manager who hired me made the fabulous comment. Always nice to hear.
Great audience, there are little decks and alcoves all over, where people hang out and eat, and they were super appreciative of my music, buying CDs and asking for autographs, requesting songs, and picking up some of my new hoodie merchandise. It was a wonderful night at work, and it paid well too!
https://www.micasgarten.ch/home
I also performed at the related venue Frau Gerold’s Garten, smack dab in the hip industrial area of Zurich. A nice synchronicity:(Jungian reference! Jung was a Zuricher) totally by accident we booked our vacation stay within walking distance of both venues. I love it when things line up like that!
Two days later I trained over to Basel and played there, again some real audience appreciation and love.
Next: Europe’s biggest water fall!
