The Glacier Express is much advertised as one of the most breathtaking train rides that you must absolutely take, if you ever went to Switzerland. We bent backwards, took two trains to reach a station that it passes through and again took a train back from the alighting point to get to our next stop in the trip. All of that trouble just to ride it.
It was our last evening at Interlaken. After an unbelievably beautiful cruise on Lake Brienz in the evening, we reached our Chalet at about 7:30 PM. Post cooking and eating dinner, the husband took little one to sleep and I spent the next two hours washing the vessels and our lunch boxes from the day, cleaning the kitchen, rearranging washed and unwashed clothes into separate suitcases and laid out clothes for all of us the next day. In the morning, we would have time only to cook for the whole day ahead, bathe, get ready, take our bags and leave.
The following day, we were up and about from 4 AM and left our dreamy little chalet in the fairytale village of Ringgenberg at about 6:30 AM. We crossed the road to reach the bus stop, only to realise after a 10 minute wait that the early morning bus did not ply on Sundays and we had a train to catch from Interlaken at 7:40! We hurriedly hauled our heavy suitcases and the kid on the pram to reach the Ringgenberg railway station since Google told us that a train that would reach Interlaken sooner than that would stop there. Huffing and puffing, we somehow made it to the little railway station and sat down for a 5 minute wait.
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| Our 5 minutes of peace at the Ringgenberg Railway Station |
That was the first time we paused since the morning and we enjoyed the Ringgenberg scene and air for one last time. Train came, we got in, got down at Interlaken, took a mad rush to the next train, settled in, caught our breath and drank Hibiscus tea with the aid of the tea bag and hot water from the flask. The biggest warrior in all of this was my husband who kept track of where to go, when, how and what to do if something went amiss like missing a bus or train!
The train journey was as usual breathtaking as it wound through huge green mountains, lakes and typical picturesque Swiss villages. We finally reached the train station from where we were to board the Glacier Express. The train was all glass on the sides and top in order to give a panoramic view, boasted of an on board restaurant service and charged a bomb that was not covered by the Swiss pass. But the views were sadly the only ones that we did not enjoy much in our entire Swiss trip!
While it took us through the highest ranges of the Alps, it was mostly rocky, brown and coarse mountain slopes. The glass made the sun beat down all day and the glare through the glass was unbearable. We just sat with sunglasses on, catching some nice views once in a while and ended up lamenting about a whole day and herculean efforts wasted in our precious 5 day Switzerland stay.
It would be wrong to entirely denounce the Glacier Express but what with the sun glaring all day without respite and a rocky scenery that was not much to our taste, it felt like a trip in vain. Personally, we felt it was no match to the stunning lush greenery, mountains and lakes that abound all over Switzerland. The trains that we took to go from one place to another passed much more beautiful scenes than this.
Here are some of the nicer views from the Glacier Express ride :
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Later on, we read between the lines of the brochure to realise that all they promised to offer was a kind of luxury train ride where you could enjoy fine dining while riding through the mountains. What a wrong choice for us! Back home, we Indians have always been eating on board trains as they chugged past all kinds of scenery :) Maybe a lot less 'luxurious' but hey, that is certainly not an 'experience' as such for us!
We then caught the connecting train to Lucerne, our last stop in Switzerland, and it was a tired, spent and disappointed lot that went into a kind of digital fortress that we had booked for our stay there. A huge tall glass building where everything from opening the main door, lifts and the apartment required codes. It all seemed so robotic to me and I took a while to get used to it! We had chosen this place more from a functionality point of view - proximity to the bus stop, a washing facility that had a 'cupboard dry' dryer. (Through our entire trip, we had planned our places of stay in such a way that one with a 'cupboard dry' dryer facility came once every week! Our clothes management deserves a separate post in itself which I think I shall write :))
Lucerne was a typical city. We alighted in a very crowded railway station, ate at a famous Vegan restaurant there and took a long long time to decipher the right bus stop and bus number. Though all of this was just by the shores of lake Lucerne, the crowded afternoon scene did not quite scale up to the fairytale Swiss villages that had played host to us until now and I started having apprehensions that our 'right out of a dream' Swiss holiday was over. How wrong I was ! Mount Rigi, Mount Stanserhorn and Lake Lucerne gave the perfect finish to the dream that came true :)
