Switzerland

In October, we went to Switzerland. We decided the best way to see it was by train. Jim didn't want to drive and we didn't want to ride a bus tour. They have panoramic cars on the tourist trains and even if you are on a regular train, it is still wonderful. You can relax, walk around, have coffee, nap, read or look at the beautiful scenery.

Neat, clean, comfortable and colorful.

We took this picture of the train you see from the same train. It was going around some very sharp turns and then went down the middle of the street like a streetcar. There was a small river, a road and steep alps on both sides so there just wasn't any room for train tracks.

When people think of Switzerland, they think of beautiful, small villages with church steeples. Yes, it looks exactly like that!

An it looks exactly like this, too. There were clocks everywhere. We were told that John Locke (or was it Calvin?) told the newly converted Protestants in Geneva that making jewelry was bad, but that it was OK to have a nice looking watch. The Swiss watch industry was born!

If you don't think of villages in Switzerland, you think of the snow-capped Alps.

Or maybe you think of the beautiful green forests on the lower slopes. We were there in the fall, so got to see some of the changing colors.

We were surprised to see so many fields of grapes. Swiss wine may not be famous, but they seem to actually make a lot of it.

We spent the entire trip trying to get a decent picture of a cow with a cowbell. This was the best we could do! The train was moving all the time and when it was stopped, there were no cows. Almost all the cattle and a lot of the other stock had bells.

This was Saas-Fee. You may have never heard of it. Everyone has heard of Zermatt, but this was quieter and had a lot fewer tourists. In fact, half the place was shut down for holiday for the staffs of the hotels and restaurants. When the new winter starts, they get busy and it doesn't stop until about October.

This is the view from our hotel room.

And this is what the hotels look like. No real high-rise places.

We went up the local cable car. An amazing number of Swiss towns and villages have one (or more!) cable cars leading up to their local skiing areas.

This is the view back down from the top. The busses go inside the barn to let you out. The winters are quite harsh and they don't shove you out in the snow. It is also common for the busses to have back racks and trailers for all the ski gear.

People were still going up and skiing and snow-boarding! It probably hadn't snowed here in at least four months.

Here is one of the results of all that snow. These are avalanche barriers and the Swiss government has a looooong term project to prevent avalanches.

This is a close-up of the barriers.

There are a lot of hikers and bikers. They are up high and they are down low. The yellow signs were at the top of the cable car and gave directions and distances for all those hikers and bikers.

Jim playing tourist in Interlaken.

Jim playing tourist in Italy. We always stop for gelatto when we go to Italy. Part of our trip went through a small part of Italy (Tirano). Notice how narrow the road is and how wide our bus was. We have the little Tuk-Tuk cars here in Karachi, but they don't have white-wall tires.

Our "train" for part of the trip was a boat. You buy a train ticket, but you still ride the paddle-wheeler.

This is what we will most remember about Switzerland: clean and green!