Contents
- Preface
- San Francisco
- Amsterdam
- Amsterdam, Helmond
- Amsterdam, Zandvoort, Haarlem
- Amsterdam, Bruges
- Bruges, Brussels, Cologne, Berlin
- Berlin
- Berlin, Potsdam
- Berlin, Wansee
- Berlin, Prague
- Prague
- Prague, Karlstejn, Vienna
- Vienna
- Vienna, Salzburg, Füssen
- Füssen, Neuschwanstein, Munich
- Munich, Innsbruck
- Innsbruck
- Innsbruck, Zürich, Lauterbrunnen
- Lauterbrunnen, Jungfraujoch
- Lauterbrunnen, Schilthorn
- Lauterbrunnen, Spiez, Zermatt
- Zermatt
- Zermatt, Martigny, Chamonix
- Chamonix, Mont Blanc
- Chamonix, Mont Blanc, Courmayeur, Aosta, Turin
- Barcelona
- Barcelona, Sitges
- Barcelona
- Milan, Venice
- Venice
- Venice
- Venice, Milan, Cinque Terre
- Cinque Terre, La Spezia
- Cinque Terre, Pisa, Lucca, Florence
- Florence
- Florence
- Florence, Siena
- Siena, San Gimignano, Rome
- Rome
- Rome
- Rome, Sorrento
- Sorrento, Vesuvius, Pompeii
- Sorrento, Positano, Amalfi, Ravello
- Sorrento, Capri, Naples
- Naples, Bari
- Patras, Athens, Mykonos
- Mykonos
- Mykonos
- Mykonos, Paros, Santorini
- Santorini
- Santorini, Athens
- Athens
- Athens, Amsterdam, San Francisco
Prev :: Monday, 19 September 2005 :: Next
18. Innsbruck, Zürich, Lauterbrunnen
Photo Gallery
The morning train to Zürich was very scenic, although the clouds again prevented me from seeing the higher mountains. There are some really long tunnels here — several kilometers at a time. Part of this rail journey was replaced by a bus, due to landslides caused by the severe flooding this area had received just a month before. Apart from this, I actually never saw any evidence of flood damage, though the news stories had led me to wonder whether some of my destinations might have washed away entirely or been filled with mud. The owner of the Pension Paula did say that if the river Inn had risen by even a few centimeters more, much of the city would have been badly flooded. That's a close call!
I arrived in Zürich just after noon and spent a few hours there, which seems more than enough for Zürich (except that I would have liked to have seen the Kunsthaus, but didn't have time). The first observation about Switzerland is that the food is expensive. At one point I spent $20 on fast food (well, it was pretty good fast food, but still)! Oddly, the hotels don't seem much more expensive than anywhere else. The Economist likes to talk about their Big Mac Index, using purchasing power parity to compare the prices of Big Macs; an interesting second-order statistic would be the ratio of hotel prices to food prices. I'd love to know why this ratio is so hugely variable from country to country. In Prague or Amsterdam, it's huge — maybe over ten Big Macs per room. In Switzerland, it might be only three! As in Prague, Switzerland has the annoyance of money changing — they still use the franc; some places take Euros but by no means all. The exchange rate was roughly the inverse of the Euro's, around 1.25 francs to the dollar, so at least the prices are not quite as high as they first appear.
The over-sized clock towers of Zürich are nice. Coming out of the train station, I was surprised at how dense and crowded the city was, and with a certain grittiness that almost made me think of New York. I wasn't in the land of Heidi, yet. I walked south along the commercial west bank to the lake, and then back through the narrow lanes of the east side. Met an interesting traveler of Indian stock from South Africa who now teaches English in South Korea. I bought astonishingly priced but merely decent hot chocolate for us at Schober (not sure why the Rough Guide calls this one unmissable!). We also stopped by Lenin's house of 1916, and the decidedly capitalist-looking shop next door has a cute little red mug of him.
The Swiss version of German is really different. It's almost completely unintelligible to me. Somehow I don't like the way the dialect sounds very much, and I prefer the lilt of Hochdeutsch (although I started to notice that when juxtaposed with other European tongues, this one can begin to sound pretentious after a while). As in Bavaria, Swiss people invariably greet you with Grüß Gott (literally "greet God"), which always sounds a little scary to me.
Later in the afternoon I continued on another two hours through Bern (which looks lovely, perched above a river, but I didn't stop) to Interlaken, a large place sandwiched between two long lakes. Here I switched to the little train that makes it's way up to Lauterbrunnen (Rail Pass only gets a 25% discount from here), a much more pleasant little village in a spectacular valley. It's unbelievable how much the topography here resembles Yosemite Valley — sheer cliffs rising 1000m with waterfalls tumbling over. My hotel room was amazingly perched right in front of the best of these, the Staubbach Falls (Hotel Staubbach, €46). So I literally just had to look out my window to see splendor on the order of Yosemite! The low clouds were still hanging around, obscuring the tops of the cliffs and everything above... But it's a good place to stay. The only drawback is that the walls are quite thin; a couple with unpleasant young child were next door. I think almost all the other rooms were booked out by a Rick Steves tour — perhaps not the ideal travel companions. But they did show the very silly James Bond movie shot on the Schilthorn nearby (On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the only one with Lazenby, and Telly Savalas in the Dr Evil role) that evening, so that made for a fun time.