OK, I actually don't like Swiss cheese (meaning the ones with the holes), but they have some nice other cheeses. And Heidi chocolate milk is the best chocolate milk on the planet. But I digress...
The train was a bit longer than I had expected, thus leaving me in Bern, the capital of Switzerland, exhausted and probably vitamin deficient. Tip: Eat plenty of fruits and vegggies, and protein when travelling. OK, so the first night was a bit of bust because my body went into shock from unhealthy eating, but there was an American band playing country rock outside our window, and the huge crowd was going nuts! It's amazing to see what makes it out of the US and becomes popular in other countries. Country rock, for example. Beverly Hills 90210...another example. Anyway, I was explaining how I felt to one of my roommates, Lucky (yes, that is her name), and I said, "I feel like I've been hit by a truck." She responded, "I was hit by a truck, and that ended my professional dancing career in New York." O...K... You never know when an innocent cliche is going to offend someone. But, since her accident, she learned so much about anatomy that she has become an anatomy and physiology professor at Arizona State, but she really wants to move to Boston to choreograph. After she gave me an Vitamin C pill so that I could at least get up and put my stuff away, we talked all night about theater. Good times.
The next day, I fulfilled one of my life dreams...to travel on a glass train! I had only heard of these train cars with huge windows all over in Canada, but it turns out that they have the Golden Pass Panoramic train through the Alps, and it is gorgeous! I went on a train to Speitz to Zwimmerman? to get on the panoramic train and travelled down to Montreax, which is a town up the lake from Geneva. It was a beautiful day and the lake with the Alps all around it is just breathtaking. Took a ferry up the lake to the Chateau de Chillon, which Lord Byron made famous and is a very neat little castle on the lake. From the Chateau, I caught a boat that took me up the lake an hour and a half to Lausanne. Caught a train home, and I call that a really nice day trip! Bravo to the book Europe by Eurail which suggested this itinerary. Probably the most gorgeous scenery day I have been on. If you go to Switaerland, go to the Golden Pass. Beautiful
On the suggestion of my aunt Sandy, I took the next day trip to Lake Lucerne, intending to continue a tradition of taking a picture at the top of Mt. Pilatus. Sandy, I tried! Honestly! But it was raining. The weather report said that it was going to clear in the afternoon and be bad in the morning, which was true, but the mountain gets cloudy in the afternoon regardless, so they wouldn't even sell me a ticket. Sounded like a really neat trip by boat, then by the steepest cogwheel funicular on a 40 minute ride up the mountain, then down by a sky lift. I was so excited...I guess another time. But, Luzern, the town, is lovely, even in rain. I started out on their famous covered bridges with beautiful paintings under the eaves. Walked up on the ramparts to some of the old watch towers on the edge of the city, and then down through the old town. All the platzes (can that be made plural?) are surrounded by buildings with huge facade frescoes making colorful panoramas all over the city. Walked up in the rain to the Dying Lion, the "most moving piece of rock in the world." Maybe true. It was very moving. To all those people who worked in the Ag, this was the random poster that was on the wall for so long that we couldn't figure out what it was! Saw an old 19th century panorama painting of the French troops coming into Switzerland for their internment from the Franco-Prussian War, and then headed back to the info center in hopes that the mountain had cleared a little bit. Nope, no luck. So I hopped on a train back to Bern and convinced some girls in the common room that they needed to watch Drop Dead Gorgeous, a terrible, but somewhat hilarious movie. Good way to relax for the night.
Next morning, got up, went to my favorite grocery store in town and then walked the streets, up to the bear pits (which are very sad...two brown bears are just sitting at the bottom of this pit while tweens through food and other things at them and annoying tourists take pictures of them...they looked so sad and lost) and around to the glockenspiel (another let down) and to the Einstein house. The house where E=mc² was born had a great movie about Einstein's life and a very small, but thorough exhibit. Very enjoyable. Off to the train station to go to Zurich!
That night in Zurich...it rained...it poured. But I still made the trek to the two main churches, which are quite stark compared to others I have been to, but one had Marc Chagall's famous stained glass windows. I will admit, they were different and worth seeing. However, there was nothing else in the city worth seeing that day at least. I went over to the Design Museum to see an interesting exhibit called "On Time" about the history of time keeping and Swiss watches. I think the curator was showing some friends around, so he was watching me for my reactions.
I think overall, I liked Austria more than Switzerland, but I would come back with a car to drive through the Alps.
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