Looking out the Bernina Express windows is like seeing the pages of Heidi, Switzerland’s most famous children’s book, come to life.
For many, this classic story about an uprooted orphan who longs to return to her beloved Swiss Alps is our first introduction to the majestic mountain range, considered one of the largest and highest in the world.
Decades after reading Heidi as a child, I finally got to see the Swiss Alps during a week-long visit to central Switzerland in September on the distinctive red train. As the only train that crosses the Swiss Alps, the Bernina Express brought me past small farmsteads, clear mountain lakes and autumn meadows on a 144-km UNESCO World-Heritage-listed journey.
One of the easiest ways to travel in this Alpine nation is by train with the Swiss Travel Pass.
The Travel Pass gives travellers unlimited access to not only the country’s panoramic mountain trains but unlimited use of public transportation in more than 90 towns and cities (seat reservation is required for the panoramic trains).
My train travels began in Zurich with a commuter train bringing me to Switzerland’s oldest city Chur, just an hour away, and considered the gateway to the Swiss Alps.
From Chur, I travelled on two of the panoramic train lines — the Bernina Express and the Glacier Express, doing part of the route that takes passengers between Zermatt and St. Moritz in just under eight hours. One-way on the Bernina Express takes four hours.
Both routes are part of the Grand Train Tour of Switzerland, a 1,280-km journey merging five panoramic rail routes that brings visitors through four linguistic regions of Switzerland, crosses five Alpine passes, two biospheres and along the banks of 22 lakes.
While I didn’t do the entire Grand Train Tour, I added another one of its routes to my itinerary — the Luzern-Interlaken Express, which passes five lakes and takes two hours to reach the charming and historic city of Lucerne.
Since the Swiss Travel Pass is flexible, I was able to make stops while travelling on both the Bernina and Glacier Express to spend time experiencing Swiss culture, cuisine, and local attractions, like the Great Aletsch Glacier, part of one of Switzerland’s 13 World Heritage sites that is 2,869 metres above sea level, and ride the Gelmerbahn — Europe’s steepest, open-air funicular 1,860 metres above sea level in the Jungfrau region, at the foot of the Bernese Alps.
Although the Bernina line ends in Tirano, Italy, I opted to get off at a small village called Le Prese near the border and enjoy lunch at Raselli Sport Hotel, before taking a tour of the Raselli family’s nearby herb farm that produces 15 per cent of Switzerlands’ herbs and 20 per cent of the herbs that go into Ricola cough drops.
Other highlights of my Bernina Express trip were passing through the 65-metre-high Landwasser Viaduct, an engineering marvel built of natural stone that runs directly into a tunnel, and stopping at the Alp Grum station, about 2,000 metres above sea level.
I returned the same day to Chur to overnight in this charming city with a history dating back 5,000 years before boarding the Glacier Express. Most of my time in Chur was spent exploring the city’s medieval Old Town, with its narrow, twisting alleys and historic buildings, many from the 1400s with pastel painted designs on the front.
Like in most Swiss towns, the cathedral is one of Chur’s most significant buildings. Built in 1271, the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption is notable for its 8th century crypt, one of Switzerland’s oldest surviving architectural structures is worth a stop on a tour of Old Town.
Most frescos inside are from the 14th century but one is also from the 18th century “because every bishop wants to leave his footprint,” says our tour guide Marlen Helmi Brunold.
Back in the main shopping area of Chur, Brunold points out more modern pieces of art like a part human, part machine sculpture outside the city’s museum by Chur native Hans-Ruedi Giger, who won an Oscar in 1980 for the design of the Alien for the film of the same name. Gigerplatz Square in Old Town is named in his honour, with a fountain where you can make out alien etchings on the bottom of the fountain while refilling your water bottle.
After the guided tour and lunch at the popular Kaffeeklatsch cafe downtown, I boarded The Glacier Express to Brig, home of the World Nature Forum, a fascinating museum in the Alps which explains the Swiss Alps Jungrau-Aletsch, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, encompassing 824 square kilometres of land.
Anya Walker, from World Heritage Experience Switzerland which promotes Switzerland’s 13 world heritage sites, said studies show while many foreigners are coming in droves to see them, locals aren’t visiting what they have in “front of their homes.”
Walker said the organization’s goal is to help everyone appreciate these sites, which include four natural sites and nine cultural sites. The Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch, a protected area near and around the Swiss Alps, is listed under the natural category in UNESCO.
“One of the most special things that nature left us is the glacier,” she said of the 20-km long Great Aletsch Glacier. “This region is my home, my place of energy, especially this viewpoint where I can see the glaciers. When I see the glaciers, I feel good again … The glacier is our life. It’s our water. And the water gives us energy for power.”
After visiting two viewpoints to see the glacier, including passing by the lovely, car-free village of Bettmeralp, accessible only by cablecar, I next travelled to the Jungfrau Region and stayed at a historic hotel adjacent to Grimsel reservoir owned by KWO, a Swiss energy supply company.
The centuries old Hotel Grimsel Hospiz, was built in1932 beside a dam after the original hotel below was flooded. It is one of four hotels operated by KWO, which also runs the Gelmerbahn funicular and provides other activities for the approximately 300,000 annual visitors to the area, such as power plant tours and maintaining summer-only hiking trails.
The company, which produces enough energy for one million people living in the Jungfrau region, operates 11 mountain huts along its hiking trails, that range from four to 25 km in length.
The next day, we took a bus to the small town of Meiringen for our final train trip in the area to Lucerne, a popular tourist location with a beautiful lakeside setting and medieval Old town. Its landmark, historic structure is Chapel Bridge, considered the oldest and second longest covered timber bridge in Europe. It was built in 1365 as a weir connecting the old and new part of the city. While Chapel Bridge is always a magnet for photographers, it is especially picturesque between May and October, when the city hangs 278 flower boxes from it.
Adjacent to the bridge is the octagonal Water Tower, built in the 13th century that once had a dungeon on the bottom level and a torture chamber on the top.
Besides stopping to photograph Chapel Bridge and the Water Tower, a visit to Lucerne isn’t complete without doing a boat cruise on Lake Lucerne, surrounded by mountains and reminiscent of a fjord landscape. Lake Lucerne navigation company (SGV) offers visitors a choice of a diverse fleet of ships from historical steamboats to modern yachts and catamarans.
In Lucerne, I’d also recommend visiting the Swiss Museum of Transportation, with interactive displays and varied exhibits on all manners of travel. Also, a fascinating art museum called The Rosengart Collection Lucerne, with 132 works by Pablo Picasso, 125 works by Paul Klee as well works by 21 other classical modern artists. The museum’s collection comes from international art dealer Siegfried Rosengart and his daughter Angela Rosengart, who both personally knew Picasso and many of the other artists whose works they collected and later donated to Lucerne.
Kim Pemberton was hosted by Switzerland Tourism, which did not review or approve this article. Follow her on instagram at kimstravelogue.
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