Traveling the European Way - by train!

"Wrong Wheel Drive (41%)" (rduncan5678) 02/22/2020 at 04:35 • Filed to: None

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This past week I’ve been in Switzerland on a skiing holiday and have not rented a car. The entire journey (after flying into Geneva) has been via trains, busses, and trams. And even a cog railway as well! As an American living in an overly driving centric city (Los Angeles) this is night and day in comparison. On all of my other European trips I’ve used flying and rental cars to get around, with perhaps a local train or transit solution. But this time is different with the 3 hr train rides from Geneva to Zermatt and then to Zurich. On top of the 8 hour train ride I’m on right now to Amsterdam.

The journey after Geneva started out with SBB rail through some wonderful mountainous scenery and infalliably punctual trains. Smooth ride, easy to use stations, easy to follow instructions, and no problems with the language barrier were features of this trip. The Alps were spectacular from the valley and only increased in magnitude as we increased in altitude.

While staying in the village of Täsch, I took sbb daily up to Zermatt where I then boarded the cog railway up to Gornergrat to start each ski day. My ski pass included unlimited use of every train, tram, gondola, and lift between the two international destinations of Zermatt (CH) and Cervina (IT). The Gornergrat Bahn was an excellent way to get up the mountain, with expansive views and also punctual, efficient service. Cog railways are always neat and having it free included on my Ikon pass was a nice treat considering that thing has already well paid for itself at this point. I suppose the gondolas, trams, and lifts are more public transit on this trip too and even those were glamorous and we’ll organized compared to US ski resorts. There were just so many options to get everywhere on the mountain and it really was as much of a treat to look out at the view and ride the lifts as it was to actually ski.

The rest of the journey featured more SBB journeys starting with the train from Täsch to Zurich with a connection in Visp and then more of these trains between our hotel near the airport and the city center. Just a quick day in Zurich to eat chocolate and take in the scenery before the long but easy train ride back to Amsterdam where I fly home to the US from later this weekend. This last train is a Deutsch Bahn Inter City Express with a 4 hour ride from Zurich to Frankfurt, 90 minutes to grab some lunch and walk around a bit, and then a final 4 hour ride to Amsterdam Centraal. Avoiding the lengthy travels to/from noncentral airports, dealing with airport security, waking up early for obscure timed flights, and just not being on a plane are all major advantages. We even managed to book first class on both legs of this train trip for a measley 10 Franks up charge. Lovely way to travel I’d say!

Overall this is much less stressful than flying, especially not having to get anywhere early. Showing up for the train ten minutes early and feeling like I’m wayyyy ahead of schedule is nice. Rather than even when I’m 2 hours before departure on a flight I’m worried about the security line and traffic and parking and baggage check in windows and blah blah blah. So I’ll definitely do this again!

Now as far as costs go, this doesn’t really save much money but at least it was not expensive for the added convenience and limited to no downsides of traveling this way. Sure in the US not using a car would generally be severely limiting but here it really wouldn’t have helped one bit. Especially considering no cars were allowed into Zurich anyways! The SBB rail was $45 Geneva to Täsch, $17 round trip daily to Zermatt (3 days), and $65 Täsch to Zurich. Geneva transit I think it was about $10 total (plus a free ride from the airport to the city) and Zurich transit was $15 for unlimited 24 hours. Then the Zurich to Amsterdam train was $90. So all in transportation here in Switzerland cost about $280 per person for a week. We definitely could have flown back to Amsterdam in technically less time and rented a car for the duration for less money. But this way was just more of an adventure and far more relaxing.

Anyways time to get back to enjoying my train ride looking out the window to the German countryside. Here’s some photos from Switzerland!

pip bip - choose Corrour > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) 02/22/2020 at 04:47

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as opposed to the Australian way this week (2 dead)

farscythe - makin da cawfee! > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) 02/22/2020 at 05:12

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dangit...if i’d known ida come meet you in amsterdam

oh well.... have fun :)

by the by..theres a harley museum in amsterdam

Spanfeller is a twat > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) 02/22/2020 at 05:29

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Ah, Swiss trains are amazing.

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) 02/22/2020 at 06:06

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I had a similar experience in I taly. We got around purely with trains and cabs. It was so easy. We ended up spending $2 00 each on train tickets but it wasn’t too bad considering we hit up 5 cities and sp ent close to 30 hours on rails.

Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) > farscythe - makin da cawfee! 02/22/2020 at 07:29

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I'll be back in Amsterdam many times, certainly free to meetup eventually! 

Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) > Spanfeller is a twat 02/22/2020 at 07:58

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This German train is traveling at 250kph though which is neat too. 

Spanfeller is a twat > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) 02/22/2020 at 08:41

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Renfe trains do that too sometimes....But only between large cities. Alvias top out at 250 as well I think.

smobgirl > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) 02/22/2020 at 08:42

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I grew up riding trains and the whol e trip sounds great to me! I wish our light rail hours were extended here so I could use it to/from the airport more often.

Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) > Spanfeller is a twat 02/22/2020 at 09:25

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On a downhill section we definitely got up to 300 which was neat. I'm used to trains barely getting to half that in the US. And that's lucky to get going that fast without derailing. 

Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) > smobgirl 02/22/2020 at 09:29

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I wish I had a light rail to the airport. Or anything other than driving myself and parking. Meanwhile it's one of the largest airports in the world in one of the largest cities in the world. But yet a bus is the only transit available while having someone drop you off is the number one method to get there, taking an Uber is #2, followed by driving/parking, and then the bus options. No wonder the traffic sucks here... 

farscythe - makin da cawfee! > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) 02/22/2020 at 11:38

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give us a shout when it suits mate im usually free on the weekends :)

His Stigness > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) 02/22/2020 at 12:04

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I’m still laughing at my neutral ground joke. I crack myself up.

But seriously, I love Europe and their efficient (and cheap) use of trains. When I was in Germany for my exchange program in high school I could count on one hand the times we used a car. Every other time we either took the trolley(?) into Hamburg, the train anywhere else, or we walked/rode bikes around. Even as an adamant car guy, I would buy into that in a second. I lived in Elmshorn and I would move there in a second and rather take a 15 minute walk into town to go to the shops than do the shitty drive I have no to go to the store.

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > smobgirl 02/22/2020 at 12:34

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I’m currently reading a book about the railroad steeped history of the Gulch in Atlanta (below where all the stadiums are now) and I just can’t help but think how much better our transportation system would be if we expanded MARTA. Atlanta recently built a very very long elevated express toll lane above the highway through the northern suburbs when that same infrastructure but as light rail would have dramatically lessened traffic, not induced demand. Just look at this!

smobgirl > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) 02/22/2020 at 19:48

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Yeah, that’s awful. I go out of my way to avoid flying in or out of LAX but there’s hardly public transit to the rest of the SoCal airports either. Our commuter rail to the airport is good most of the time, especially with heavy construction on the highway, but the connection from my neighborhood isn’t useful enough. And w ith a huge operator shortage for our transit system  things are only getting worse.

smobgirl > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 02/22/2020 at 19:57

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I flew into Atlanta to get to a project near Chattanooga a few weeks ago and your traffic is a disaster!

I’ve been reading a bit on the sociology of public transit thanks to our current local clusterfuck and it’s really such a complex issue. Houston is the current example on a pedestal but adding rail transit is a whole other dimension, since it’s not something that’s quickly implemented. And then you have metropolitan areas like Denver or Atlanta where you need so many cities to cooperate...

(I’m glad I didn’t go into urban planning)

Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 02/23/2020 at 00:26

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Well the thing ends up being, how do you convince people to actually use transit? And with how spread out people start, it’s difficult for it to even be an option. So that light rail could end up underutilized and seemingly a waste of investment at that point. I agree, transit is the best  solution to build but really a systematic redesign of where people live and where they work is needed to make a difference. 

Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) > His Stigness 02/23/2020 at 00:30

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The train was definitely not cheap. While the train in socal has shitty schedules, it’s definitely massively subsidized. As long as you aren’t on amtrak, a couple hours on the train through la/orange counties is like $15. Same deal on NJ transit back east. Sure those services are massively shitty in comparison but you get what you pay for I guess. If gas were 160/L in the US I'm sure people would want and use transit more. 

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) 02/23/2020 at 00:35

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My county has a largish but underutilized bus network that already makes stops very close to every 0lace a station might go. The trick is to get people to use the light rail as at least the mid section of the trip, where it would be far faster than a car. The suburbs that MARTA does serve actually use a combination of bus and trains pretty efficiently.