Swiss adventure, Part 1: Do you know the way to St. Moritz?

Crossing the Landwasser Viaduct near Filisur, Switzerland. (Photo by David Lassen)

A meet near Preda, Switzerland. (Photo by David Lassen).

St, Moritz. (Photo by David Lassen)

On a normal Friday, I would have turned left out of my apartment parking garage and headed to the Trains magazine. This day was anything but normal: I turned right and headed to Switzerland.

OK, so the right turn actually sent my on my way to Chicago and O’Hare airport, where I would catch my flight to Zurich. But there was no mistaking it for a normal day. 

Having handed off our upcoming special issue “Chicago: America’s Railroad Capital” to the art department the day before, my calendar was finally free for this two-week trip: Eight whirlwind days in Switzerland, featuring a press tour of the new Gotthard Base Tunnel organized by Swiss tourism, followed by a trip to Berlin for InnoTrans, the massive, biennial international rail exposition. I’d tacked three vacation days on to the front end of the trip, and Swiss tourism had helped set up the train-centric itinerary for those, as well.

First, of course, I had an ocean to cross. The flight was … well, it was a flight. Editor Jim Wrinn has spoken highly of Swiss Air from his past experiences, but honestly, when you’re flying across an ocean in coach, the only thing that really separates one flight from another is if you happen to have an empty seat next to you so you can stretch out a bit. Last year, when I came to Germany for our Trains Magazine Tour, I had that good fortune, and was able to sleep. This year, I didn’t, and I wasn’t.

I will say this, though: Our flight was scheduled to arrive at 10:45 a.m., and the hyper-detailed itinerary from Swiss tourism’s Michaela Ruoss gave me three options for train departures from the Zurich airport, the first of them at 11:18 a.m. “There is no chance,” I thought, “that I will be through customs and have my bag in time for a train 33 minutes after arrival.”

Well, as it turned out, we landed at 9:55, and I had cleared passport control, picked up my bag and breeze through customs without stopping (thanks to the “nothing to declare” line) in less than a half-hour. I actually ended up on a 10:47 train, which had me at Zurich’s main station nine minutes later. That gave me a little more than a half-hour to look around the station, spend the first of my Swiss francs (on water and a newspaper) and head out to the platform for a few pictures before catching the 11:37 a.m. train to Chur.

I’m traveling on a first-class pass, so I staked out an upstairs window seat on the double-decker train, alternating between admiring the scenery, checking the itinerary, and reading up a bit on where I’m headed in my Rick Steves guidebook. (I’ve been a fan of the Steves books since my first trip to Europe in 2004).

We were, of course, on time reaching Chur, where most everyone on board made an across-the-platform transfer to the meter gauge Rhatische Bahn, which would take us to St. Moritz.

The two-hour trip that followed is one of the signature Swiss train-riding experience, as illustrated by the fact it’s on the route of both the Bernini Express and the Glacier Express, two of the country’s four signature scenic rail routes. (We’ll talk about the others eventually). This was a regular train on that route, which actually had one significant advantage over the two express trains: The windows open. I probably didn’t avail myself of that advantage as much as I might have if I hadn’t been closing in on 24 hours without sleep, but I did slide my window down in time to get an ideal photo of the train crossing the Landwasser Viaduct, a spectacular curving bridge leading (in this direction) directly into a tunnel. I spent a little more time in a vestibule window thereafter; among the resulting photos is this meet.

The weather was perfect most of the way, but after we made our way through the 3.6-mile-long Albula tunnel — at 5,970 feet, the highest underground alpine crossing in Europe, according to my guidebook — we crossed into a different climate zone. It was gray and drizzly the remaining few miles into St. Moritz, and showery for my one evening in the fabled winter resort town. (The 112-year-old tunnel, by the way, is being rebuilt. The construction site at Preda was holding an open house the day we passed through and was overrun with visitors.)

I had wanted to go to St. Moritz for two reasons: One, it is an Olympic city, having hosted the Winter Games in 1928 and 1948, and as a former Olympic reporter, I enjoy visiting host cities whenever possible.

More to the point for this audience, it’s the starting point for the Glacier Express, which I will ride on Sunday. First though, I had an evening of seeing how the other half lives, staying and dining at the Hotel Steffani, which I can safely describe as fantastic. Europeans are the experts at modern decor, and my room was a perfect example: Mostly natural wood surfaces with a huge glass-and-stone bathroom with both a full tub and a (much needed by me at this point) shower.

I walked around town a bit, finding it to be mostly what I expected (a collection of high end shops and hotels, had dinner at the hotel’s “Lapin Bleu“ (Blue Rabbit) restaurant, which features local game (I had venison “hunter style,” on the owner’s recommendation that the venison was fresh,” and turned in relatively early, knowing that the world’s slowest express train awaited me the next morning.