We flew to Boston two Saturdays ago to drop our youngest kid off at college and then headed back to the airport to catch our flight to Zurich. It was a great way not to think too much about our newly-emptied nest. Plus, the timing worked out to combine a work trip with vacation in a really lovely spot. In this blog post I’ll post about our arrival in Switzerland and then tell you about the rest of the trip (but mostly show you photos) in the next six posts. [part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | part 6 | part 7]
Here is all the stuff we brought with us to Boston. The purple bags are the parents’ bags, headed to Switzerland. The rest of the stuff goes with the college student (actually not very much, we bought the bulky bedding and other stuff when we arrived and we’ll send her winter clothes later). We had to buy an extra seat on the plane for the guitar and bass to make sure they wouldn’t have to be checked as luggage. But with the new heavy-duty guitar case and the extra-small plane we were on, we couldn’t fit both instruments in one seat. Thankfully, there was an extra seat in business class and the airline gave the guitar a free upgrade.
After saying farewell to the college student, we had an uneventful overnight flight to Zurich. We arrived, went through customs, grabbed lunch at the train station, and immediately boarded a train towards the Berner Oberlin region. We made great use of the handy SBB Mobile Swiss train app, which lets you plan your journey, pay for your tickets online, and gives you detailed updates on train arrival, station maps, etc. It shows you what platform your train is coming in on and how to get to your next train quickly and easily so you don’t miss your connection. We travelled on many trains on our trip, almost all of them were on time or just a few minutes late, and we did not miss any connections despite most of them being under 10 minutes. The trains were, for the most part, very clean and quiet. What’s also remarkable is the app covers almost all the Swiss transit systems, even though they are owned and operated by different companies. We used the app to buy tickets on regular trains, cog trains, funiculars, busses, and cable cars across multiple cities. If you have a travel pass, you can also add that to the app and it will take that into account and offer the appropriate discounts. We did not buy a travel pass on this trip because I could not find one that seemed to be worthwhile given our itinerary so we just paid per ride and got a few free local rides from the city passes the hotels are required to provide.
Our first train trip required four hops and took about three hours. We went from the Zurich airport to Bern, then we changed trains and went to Interlaken Ost, then changed again to travel to Lauterbrunnen, and finally, took a cog railroad train from Lauterbrunnen to Wengen. We travelled past traditional Swiss and modern brutalist buildings and through lots of farms. The final leg was up a mountain and was particularly picturesque in a train car with lots of windows.
We arrived in Wengen on a cloudy, foggy day. Wengen is one of many small towns in the region that do not allow private cars. There are golf carts and taxis (and lots of construction vehicles), but we just walked the 10-minutes through town to reach our hotel at the top of the hill.
After checking in and surveying the nearby construction we headed to a nearby hotel for a traditional Swiss fondue dinner. After dinner we explored the town some more as the fog settled in.
Throughout this part of our trip we took advice from the Earth Trekkers Switzerland blog and Rick Steve’s Switzerland book and website, as well as friends who visited this region last summer.
Next up: Part 2: cloudy day hike