Primavera Europae

Diavolezza - Tirano

From Bernina Diavolezza I hopped on the Bernina Express again, to complete the UNESCO World Heritage route to Tirano. The route from Bernina Diavolezza onwards is actually the most stunning of the route in my mind. The train still keeps on rising from the 2km height of Diavolezza station and the landscape looks so harsh & hostile it’s as if we’re deep in the Siberia - nothing but snow and rocks as far as the eye can see. And as the clouds are definitely back for good again, it’s actually quite not that far that the eye can see. You can only here and there get a glimpse of the nearby peaks, and sometimes the visibility drops to zero and all you can see from the window is the solid whiteness of the cloud. At some points the scenes look almost alien, as if were on some other planet already: stones and rocky hills of various tones of brown and yellow, with white of the snow here and there and the mist of the clouds being blown by the winds on the hills.

But again, as we start the decline from the top the landscape becomes less hostile and trees and plants reappear in the scenery with finally even some green in the fields when we come down to the first valleys. It’s funny how at some point in a valley you think the train has already done all the descending there is to do, but then yet another steep decline starts as we head down to yet another valley another kilometer below the first one - that really puts the heights of the mountains into perspective!

The finale of the Bernina Express is a unique 360 spin of the track where the train makes the final descent into the valley where the end of the tracks, Tirano is located. And with that spin it is time say goodbye to Switzerland as the train makes the final couple of kilometers to Tirano already on the Italian territory. Danke, grazie, merci Switzerland - it was quite a ride!

Berghaus Diavolezza, Pontresina. 60€, including a 4 course dinner and breakfast (plus the obligatory ride on the cable car: 27€)

First and only hostel stay during the trip. The regular rooms were meant for 2-4 people and the price for just 1 person would have been about the same as for much higher number of people, so I decided that the group accommodation was a good compromise. This being low-season, I ended up having a room of 3 double-decker beds all to myself.

(And since there was no mirror in the room, the obligatory self shot is taken later on the ride back down to the train stop.)

Diavolezza

I decided to end my stay in Switzerland on top. I found a hostel/hotel that was situated at 2978m, just by the 3905m peak of Piz Palü. To get there I hopped of the Bernina Express at the Bernina Diavolezza stop, which is really just a tiny stop almost in the middle of snowy nowhere at the height of 2km. The only thing in a vicinity is a cable car station, where I hop on the gondola lift for the final part of the journey: a one kilometer rise to the top. On top there’s nothing but a start of a skiing slope and the restaurant/hotel/hostel where I’m staying. As the last cable car goes downhill at 17:00, it’s just us 20 or so persons who either are staying in the hotel or who work there overnight on the top of the mountain. Don’t think I’ve ever slept in such a remote location.

I had pictured myself enjoying the sunset, the blue hour, stars in the crisp night sky and then sunrise again in the morning there high up with the, supposedly, spectacular scenery. But, Diavolezza (she-devil in Italian) was being a big tease: the whole top was in a dense cloud when I got there - visibility was 10m at best. It was pretty chilling to see some skiers still hit the slopes in those conditions, but I guess they knew the bends by heart already. So all there was to see was gray whiteness all around, not even a slight hint of the mountain tops nearby. For all I knew I could have been on flatlands of Idaho. (Well, the air was so breathtakingly thin you could tell you were at high altitude).

Needless to say I was really disappointed with the weather conditions, but there was nothing to be done. So I just spent couple of hours sifting through the photos again while sipping a beer, before starting the 4-course dinner which was included in the room price (not that there really would have been any other options for dining at the top). That was actually the first real dinner I had in Switzerland, so it was a nice change to the routine of kebabs and sandwiches…

When I got to my room after dinner and opened the window, I noticed the weather had cleared up a a bit - there were a few periods where the clouds were less dense and in those moments I could notice the looming shapes of the nearby peaks and an occasional glimpse of the moonlight from above.

And in the morning, the moody mistress Diavolezza finally decided to reveal herself: for a while after the sunrise it was crisp & clear and I was finally able to see where I had stayed the night. And what a great location it was, and especially beautiful in the morning light! That clarity didn’t last for long, before I had finished breakfast it was already almost fully cloudy again.

Andermatt - St. Moritz - Bernina Diavolezza

One of the most well known train routes in Switzerland sightseeing-wise is the Glacier Express, running from Zermat in the west near Matterhorn to St. Moritz in the east. And again the sights come with a high price, well over 100€ for the whole trip (and again not covered with Interrail ticket). Last spring I did a day trip with a car from Italian North-Western town of Stresa to Zermat, driving on roads following the Glacier Express tracks in that part - so this time I chose to enjoy landscapes on the eastern part of the track. There’s only a rather short passage from Andermatt towards St Moritz (until Disentis) that isn’t covered with Interrail ticket, so I was able to do the trip without breaking the bank.

Andermatt was already quite high (around 1,5km) and had loads of snow, but the track took a steep rise again heading east and the views got more and more arctic by each twist of the track. From Andermatt the train was full of skiers, but they all left on the next stop so I was again left in privacy of an own train car enjoying snow-filled sceneries left and right of the train, with windows pulled down for better photo-ops. The high point of the track is Oberalppass, at 2033m where the sights are absolutely arctic: snow everywhere even in April. From there the train starts heading downwards and the amount of snow in the landscape little by little goes down to zero, still offering gorgeous Alpine views.

I highly suggest paying for the Andermatt - Disentis part if you’re traveling with Interrail pass - I don’t think it was more than 10€, but it offered perhaps the most exotic, arctic views I’ve ever seen.

What really amazes me about the Swiss landscape, is how much the landscape can vary even in short passages. From the classic Alpine hillside villages near Disentis, there’s a huge change continuing eastward towards Reichenau: suddenly the train is passing a sweeping river with staggering rock formations on the opposite side with pine trees growing in almost vertical cliffsides. Quite unlike any other scenery I’ve so far seen in Switzerland. And then as the route starts to rise again towards St. Moritz we get again more and more snow.

From Reichenau onwards I was on the Bernina Express track, which is an UNESCO World Heritage site and again one of the most famous train tracks in Switzerland. And for a reason. There’s a great variety of gorgeous landscapes, lots of height variation too and beautifully constructed bridges. And it’s all covered with the Interrail pass, so a must for all interrailers in Switzerland!

Hotel Badus, Andermatt. 68€.

Andermatt

Having been seriously underwhelmed with the larger Swiss cities like Montreux and Interlaken and at the same time having been enchanted by the small towns & villages seen from the train window, I decided it was to overnight in a smaller, more remote location.

I chose Andermatt, which was an a convenient location route-wise and seemed also to be rather exotic with high altitude and small size. I got to Andermatt slightly too late to enjoy the views, I was only able to catch the captivating last moments of the blue hour when getting out of the train. A small town in a valley surrounded by the peaks from all around, with huge amounts of snow all around. Really cold in the evening! And the overwhelming blue in the sky and the mountains again. Beautiful. But by the time I had checked in to the small hotel and was out in the town again it was practically dark already.

There wasn’t much to do after dark in this small town in off-season, so I just enjoyed a nice sandwich and couple of glasses of very nice local red wine in the hotel’s bar, while making plans for the following days.

(The daylight photo is from the following morning on the train ride out, showing the size & location of Andermatt nicely….)

Interlaken - Luzern - Andermatt

The route eastward from Interlaken is almost ridiculously pretty. Especially the part following the shore of Brienzersee, with the azure color of the lake and peaks of the Alps rising high right on the other side of the lake and picturesque small villages on the lakeside. All of that is almost unreal in all of it’s prettiness. It’s almost if someone created the scenery from their imagination and went over the top with the prettiness to a degree where it becomes unrealistic. But there it was, right outside the train window for me to enjoy while eating a take-away döner kebab and downing a beer. (I wasn’t able to get a single decent photo from that part of the journey, so you’ll just have to use your imagination picturing the scene…)

After the lake the tracks follow a flatland valley right to the end until Meiringen, and then make an U-turn and start a steep incline towards Brünig-Hasliberg. This part is also gorgeous, offering stunning vistas to the valley previously traveled, together with harrowing narrow & deep gorges right below the train tracks. I was surprised by the degree of the incline the train did, considering that it least seemed like a perfectly normal train meant for much flatter geography. I’m not sure if there was some sort of cogwheel mechanism in use, but at least on Interlaken station the very same train was on standard tracks.

The overwhelming beauty of the landscape shifted into more normal rural & suburban landscape when the train closed in on Luzern, a rather large city. At some point the views finally got uninteresting enough so that I had a chance of sifting through the huge amount of photos already captured during the short time in Switzerland.

Nearing Andermatt, the landscape gets more mountainous and interesting again. Close to Göschenen there’s an especially spectacular stretch of spaghetti rails with a gem of a small Swiss village in a deep valley. The standard track, which is covered with the Interrail ticket, only goes as far as Göschenen. I had to change trains there and pay for a ticket for the final part of the journey, 10mins & 6€ or so from Göschenen to Andermatt.

Interlaken: Kleine Scheidegg

Continuing the route from Lauterbrunnen towards Kleine Scheidegg starts a steep incline on the hills, revealing gorgeous views to the valley where I previously stopped over. There’s a mixture of clouds and mist in the air, sometimes blocking the views but again offering a very mysterious feeling together with dense forests of fir. As the train rises even higher, the trees start to disappear and for some time you don’t see much more than the white of the clouds just outside the train window. Then you start getting a glance here and there of the sun, with blinding intensity, and some glimmers of snowy mountain peaks. And then. Then the clouds are left below and you arrive at 2061m high Kleine Scheidegg with the most breathtaking landscape I’ve ever seen. There’s just a palette of blues and whites of such intensity, with the sun shining so bright and warm it sure feels to be much, much closer now. The peaks of Eiger, Esimeer, Mönch and Jungfrau offer a staggeringly dramatic shapes rising up to the heights of even 4+ km. There’s also a buzz and fuzz of downhill skiers and snowboarders, with jägermaisters and bratwursts, but all that fades away from my attention. I’m just absolutely overwhelmed with the scenery. Mind. Blown.

I start walking up the snowy hill towards the peaks, beside a not frequently used downhill track. For the most part the snow is crisp enough to hold my weight, but on couple of occasions my foot drops knee-deep in to the snow. There’s a lot if it still here, despite the merciless sunshine. As I rise higher, I notice that three guys have overnighted here in a tent and are just getting their gear packed up again - what an absolutely magnificent location to set up a tent overnight!

Some minutes of walking uphill still and all the noise of the ski-center recedes completely and I’m all by myself there on pure white snow, with the most magnificent landscape I’ve ever seen in front of me. This is the high point of my trip, literally and figuratively. For  experiences like this I travel in the first place. This is pure clarity. This is zen. This is probably the closest thing I as an agnostic will ever get to a feel of a religious experience.

If you’re looking at the pictures and thinking I’m exaggerating about my reaction, believe me when I say that no photos (of mine or anybody else’s) will ever do justice to the vista.

So: if you’re ever even close by to Interlaken, don’t go home without coughing up the Francs for the ticket to Kleine Scheidegg! Can’t seriously think a better use for 60€. (And I’m actually pretty sure the 170€ for even higher up location on top of that mindblowing scenery would probably been worth every penny too. Have to do that another time!) 

Interlaken: Lauterbrunnen

There isn’t much to do or see in the city of Interlaken itself, and it doesn’t even offer very good views to the Alps due to the buildings so it was clear I needed to get out of the city ASAP in the morning, before changing scenery again later in the day. All the tracks from Interlaken towards the Alps are not covered with the Interrail pass, and there aren’t even any reductions offered. The ultimate ride to the highest railway station in the world, Jungfraujoch (3+ km), costs an incredible amount of 170€. I didn’t want to blow that much money for a trip that had to be rather quick even, so I took instead a ticket to Kleine Scheidegg and back, costing around 60€. The ticket offered unlimited amount of stopovers on the station between Interlaken and Kleine Scheidegg, and you could go in on one track and come around the other so it seemed like a good deal.

I first stopped for an hour in a small village of Lauterbrunnen, which features numerous practically vertical waterfalls of 20-30m height. It’s in a narrow valley, with the almost vertical cliffs with the water falls on the other side and steep Alpine hills on the other. It was still rather dark around 11 o’clock with the sun being blocked both by the mountains and misty clouds, so it was a very atmospheric sight - very Twin Peaks’esque! There would’ve been paths leading to the waterfalls (even under them!), but the were not yet open at this time of the year. That seems to be quite common in springtime, the summertime hiking paths are not yet open even though the snow has melted in most places already.

Hotel Weisses Kreuz, Interlaken. 75€

Had a bit of a scare when arriving to Interlaken and to the my supposed hotel, which was totally shut down. As in all doors and windows shut and no signs offering any explanation. The situation got even more hairy as I rechecked my reservation confirmation email: it was showing an almost similarly named hotel ca. 100km away

Apparently TripAdvisors.com’s link to Booking.com had gone to a wrong hotel, and I hadn’t checked the details again on Booking.com when making the reservation, as there usually is no need for that - it is the hotel I already selected on Tripadvisor.com

Good thing that Booking.com has also a really good phone service: I was able to settle the situation with a rather quick phone call, and they even found me new hotel just around the corner at about the same price. Which ended up being Weisses Kreutz, pictured here.