Switzerland: Another Day in Paradise

It is another weekend, another trip. This completes the hat-trick of weekend trips ever since we landed in Prague. Our “Europe trilogy” for the summer of 2010 was completed with the best of them all, the dream destination for many – Switzerland. This one was not going to be a one-city visit; it would involve travel through a whole country, so a one-day leave was required. So I took the Friday off and set off for Switzerland on Thursday night.

We boarded the bus from Florenc, Prague at 9 PM. It wasn’t the best bus to go for a ten hour overnight journey but there was probably no other option. The bus stopped at a place one and a half hours into the journey where we grabbed a couple of Filet-o-Fish from the McDonald located there. That would last us through the night. In addition, we picked up a Mexican-chicken sandwich from the Relay store for later consumption. Soon after that break, we entered Germany and after a while I spotted the great Allianz Arena on the right and a huge Mercedes factory on the left. I realized we were passing through Munich. A BMW showroom caught our eye as well.
After a lot of difficulty (in an attempt to stretch my legs), when I got some sleep, I was woken up by the border police checking our passports at 5 AM in the morning. Visa is common but the borders still remain. We reached Zurich at around 7 AM. As per instructions from our friends who visited the Swiss earlier, we walked across to the main train station opposite the bus stand and started looking 
for the tourist office. We learnt that the tourist office opens only at 8:30 AM so we decided to do the other necessary stuff to be ready for a long day across the Swiss countryside. We exchanged currency, freshened up in the paid toilets of the station and grabbed a quick breakfast (those sandwiches purchased the previous night).
Once the tourist office opened, everything was clear. We decided to go Mt Titlis and then to Lausanne where we planned to stay at my college friend Rajnish’s place. The railway service is superb here and everything was planned out and explained with precision by the tourist office. We bought a three-day railway pass for around EUR 130 for which we will be covered for any rail travel throughout the country for the next three days.

Swiss Countryside from the train – Luzern to Engelburg

Firstly, we boarded the train to Luzern which was an hour from Zurich. From Luzern we went to Engelberg through the beautiful Swiss country-side. Every time I looked out of the window, it felt like viewing a postcard. Engelberg is the base for Mt Titlis and we had to buy tickets for the cable car at the station. You get a 50% discount if you have the three day railway pass so we could get two tickets for EUR 106.
As soon as we reached the base from where the cable cars take you up, we were greeted with familiar words “Samosa Vada Pav, masala chai”. For a second, I thought maybe I was missing Pune too much and hence hearing those words but then saw it was for real. The place was packed with Indian tourists and hence the stall that served those Indian delicacies. I realized and wondered that the Yash-Raj and DDLJ effect was still alive even after 15 years. This was just the start. There was more to come on the way.
I could not let go off the ‘samosa’ and ‘masala chai’ especially since we had nothing after those sandwiches for breakfast. The cable car ride was fascinating and thankfully due to the clear glass, I could click some out-of-the-world photos from an aerial view of the Swiss countryside. 

The snow-capped peak of Mt Titlis

After three different types of cable cars (one of them rotating and hence called ‘Rotair) each of which took us several feet higher, we reached the snowy peaks of the Alps. And soon we were at the peak of Mt Titlis with a blue board informing us “10000 feet above sea level”. It’s a full-fledged five storey building out there which has restaurants, souvenir stores and other places to hang out, the top-most level leading us onto the snow capped peak.
As soon as we reach out into the snow, the first thing that catches our eye is, of all things, a DDLJ cut-out where Raj and Simran are dancing to the “Mehndi lagake rakhna” number. Would you believe it? No wonder the place is flocked by so many Indian tourists (ourselves included since we had clear instructions that Mt Titlis is a top destination in Switzerland).
The snow covered mountain looked beautiful and as usual all tourists including us kept the shutter-bugs working overtime. There were a couple of restaurants up there (an Indian one included of course) but we decided that we will have our lunch at Trubsee, a lake side place which we spotted while coming up. We did that on our way down and on the buffet menu was rice, dal fry, chicken masala, dhokla and the ever popular “gajar ka halwa”. What else could you ask for? We reached the base at around 3:30 PM and were superbly on track as planned, thanks to the superb system. In fact, we gave the 3:45 train to Luzern a go and tried to relax a bit in the beautiful countryside. I even caught up with some lost sleep on one of the park benches.
We took the 4:45 train to Luzern with the intention that we will laze around and set-off for Lausanne at around 7. However once we reached Luzern at 5:56, we saw a train to Lausanne right on the next platform scheduled to depart at 6. We wasted no time and boarded the train. Everything went unbelievably to plan and we were far ahead of schedule.
We reached Lausanne at around 8:15, which meant that we covered the whole length of Switzerland. Rajnish met us at the McDonald opposite the station. His place was just 15 minutes and 2 metro stops away. However, we decided that we would look around the city and check the places to hang out the next morning since Rajnish will be at his work place. Lausanne is a small town on the banks of  Lake Geneva. We took the metro (looked more like a mono-rail) which was automatically operated without having any driver and had one straight route of around 10 stops. We traveled towards the lake which was the last stop. Since it was already evening, we could see the lights across the lake. On one side were the lights of the city of Geneva, the second largest Swiss city and on the other side were the lights from France.
We reached home about an hour later. Rajnish was a super cook during our hostel days and we all remember how, with limited and most primitive of resources (tiny kerosene stove), he used to cook chicken for thirty people. Needless to say, the standard has even gone up higher after all these years. We started chatting in the kitchen while he started chopping the onions and in no time we had aloo-mutter-paneer ready along with parathas. The time taken for this complete exercise was almost the same time I generally take to make an omelette. In the meanwhile we met his flat-mates Jim and Seb. Once done with dinner, we thought of hitting the bed in the living room.

Montreux

Chateu De Chillon

Next morning all our plans went for a toss as needless to say we woke up late. All the tiredness of the previous day made us sleep that much longer. But, I guess that’s excused as you cannot run around all the time on a vacation. We first went to the lake side (the same place which Rajnish showed the evening before). It was too late to take a boat ride so we walked around the beautiful place. The Lausanne Olympic museum is located there so I decided to visit the place, even though museum visit was a strict no in our travel plans. It was a fascinating museum with various Olympic memorabilia like torches, medals, photos of past games. In another section we had  stuff like Usain Bolt’s vest, Cathy Freeman’s boots and the one which I cherished most – Dhyan Chand’s stick used in 1936. In order to maximize time outdoors, I rounded off my museum visit and we soon headed for Montreux by train. It’s a small town by the lake side which has a famous castle named “Chateu de Chillon”. The lake side over there was even more beautiful with a view of the Alps. We walked along the lake side and had a burger lunch in one of the cafes. Following lunch we took a 7-min bus ride to the castle. As usual we did not enter the castle. We saw the beautiful castle from outside and returned back to the station. Meanwhile, Rajnish called us and told us to wait as he was driving down to Montreux and he will pick us up on the way, after which we will go for a drive to the countryside. There could not have been better plan than a drive through the Swiss countryside by car. We left Montreux on Rajnish’s blue Peugot at around 4:30. It was slightly late but we thought we would still see a lot of daylight. We drove and reached a place called Saanen (Purpose for that was that a scene of DDLJ was shot at the station there). Rajnish had not had his lunch so he had a quick one (something called Rosti, a potato dish) and then we were on our way to Gruyere which is famous for a cheese factory. We managed to see some tones of cheese through the glass just as the place was almost shutting down. By this time it was already dark so we set off for Lausanne. For the third successive Saturday, we had food at an Indian restaurant (to spare Rajnish of another kitchen adventure). This one was close to Rajnish’s place but unfortunately not an authentic one so it wasn’t a shade of the ones we visited in Brussels and Amsterdam.

The next day we planned to visit Interlaken en route to Zurich from where we had to board our bus to Prague at 8 PM. Again, we woke up late and reached Lausanne station only at 11:30 AM and added to that we found out that there was no direct train to Interlaken. We had to go via Berne, change trains which would take us to Interlaken in approx. 2 hours by 2 PM. It didn’t sound too bad. Interlaken is famous for its two lakes and Mt Jungfrau which is the highest point of Europe. Having already visited Mt Titlis and the fact that going up to Jungfrau would take a whopping EUR 140 per head, we were not that keen. So our primary objective was to visit the lakes.
The train from Berne to Interlaken looked really special. It was beautiful and so was the scenery outside. There was a dining car so we decided to finish off lunch in that one hour journey. Both of us had scrambled eggs and coffee. We learnt that there are two stations in Interlaken – West and Ost, one for each lake. We were confused as to where to get off; so that we can make optimum usage of the short time we had (since we had to leave for Zurich latest by 6 PM). We chose to get off at West and immediately realized that we got it wrong. The place was beautiful, we took a bus towards the lake but it seemed quite far off. The stop where we planned to get off turned out to be the incorrect one. So, in fear that we might waste more time, we boarded the return bus which would directly take us to Ost. We walked up to the lake near Interlaken Ost but there was no time for a boat ride as it was quite late. So we just spend some time on the lake side and returned to Ost station to board the train back to Berne en route to Zurich. We reached Zurich at around 7:30 PM, well in time for the bus. Unfortunately, the bus was late by an hour so we just waited for it in the stand. And after holding itself back for 3 days while we basked in the glorious sunshine, the skies opened up forcing us to take shelter. The bus finally arrived an hour later by which time the rain got heavier. We got last row seats but just thought of getting on with it. We reached Prague, the next morning on time at around 6 AM. I had a nice sleep for a couple of hours before heading off to office.