What's the Matter, Horn?

Thursday - 30 April 2009 - Zermatt

The last day of the tour was saved for the best possible weather and the most stunning scenery of the entire trip, and that's saying a lot. This return visit for me to Zermatt involved two high speed trains including one through the new 4,000 mile (if I have my metric conversion correct) tunnel under the Alps, a postal bus to go around the gigantic rock slide that buried part of the beautiful narrow gauge train to Zermatt, and then a lovely ride on that part of the beautiful narrow gauge train from St. Nicholas (really) to Zermatt that we were obliged to take since you can't drive in a postal bus or any other but emergency vehicle to "car free" Zermatt. I think the scenery is beautiful, but I was mostly looking at rocks high above the train tracks up ahead.

Our guide scheduled a very short time for the group to be at top of the above 10,000 feet MSL Gornergrat summit station of the high volume tourist attraction cog railway since he was afraid of most of the group having the bends or sunstroke or maybe overexertion. Us four intrepid "break aways", uh, broke away and stayed quite a bit longer after the crowd went back down. To quote my friend Ray Solaire, it was a glorious day. Zermatt is a huge tourist trap (even seems to have some attractions copied from Disney World roller coaster) but offers gourmet international food. See picture. After walking through the town checking out chocolate bars with pictures of some Disney attraction on them and more souvenir cow bells we took the narrow gauge train back to St. Nicholas, the postal bus around the gigantic rock slide, the high speed train through the new tunnel under the Alps, changed at Spiez (or maybe it was Nertz or Plotz) back to Interlaken where everyone exchanged real or false e-mail addresses and wished each other a safe trip home. Some of the good wishes for parting were truly heartfelt for one reason or another.


Friday - 1 May 2009 - Flight Level 340, 2000 miles east of Dullas over the Atlanic somewhat south of Greenland

I was up at 5:15 am this morning, caught the 6:10 am Postal Bus to the Interlaken Ost station after (with permission) breaking into the hotel bar where the espresso/coffee machine was in the dark for the 1 hour high speed IC train to Bern and the 1 hour really high speed IC train to Zurich Airport half way across Switzerland. It was nice to travel alone again, but not that very nice. The trip was fantastic, well beyond expectations. Our "break out" group was most compatible, I made new friends, and took a lot of pictures of which only a very few have been included in these reports. There were some very bizarre folks on the tour, but all love trains although some a bit too much. Nevertheless the tour leader, Carl Fowler of Rail Travel Center, was an inspiration for anyone who wants to learn how to do that sort of thing professionally, I got along with everyone, and have lots of stories to tell. I may follow up these notes with these more personal observations via private e-mails and plan to edit and post the best pictures (the ones with the journal entries were to illustrate my mostly true reports, not necessary the best "snaps") on Picasaweb by a week or two. I plan to post my last cruise photo album covering Rio to Barbados as well now that my crazy travel is planned to slow down (he said).

The Top of Europe Wasn't but Was Snowy

Wednesday - 29 April 2009 - Jungfrau

The brochures in Interlaken say that the Jungfrau train goes to the "Top of Europe". Actually Jungfrau is a very high mountain and may be the highest one in the Swiss Alps, but the neat meter gauge train that goes from Kleine Sheldegg to the "Top of Europe" observation station well below the summit spends its entire 1 1/2 hours in a tunnel and costs a $100 supplement even with a Swiss Pass rail card. Also it was snowing and the expensive train isn't even inside the Jungfrau but runs through a spiral tunnel through the Eiger, but I suppose it's THE EIGER, for heaven's sake. Me and the other three of us "break outs" didn't take our tour leaders advice to go back to Interlaken when the snow started and take lake cruises at lower elevation but instead went on a series of trams, narrow gauge trains, really narrower gauge trains, gigantic and small cable cars, and various other means (hard to remember but I do seem to remember the the vertical cable car which we latter found out is the "back-up" maintenance car since most tourists have nightmares when they take it) first to the high mountain town of Murren to see the inside of a blizzard, then on a really nifty train with a big snow plow on its front as the weather began to improve. We then went back to Murren to find the Jungfrau and Eiger now visible, met a local "giver of mercy" to find out that this legend is real (it was drooling), took lots of pictures of the Eiger and Jungrau, had a nice lunch of French fries with a local beer and then went on a remarkably modern narrow gauge to Gimmelsnerd (maybe not quite the correct name) to price out souvenir cow bells. A thoroughly glorious day!