Made it!!

The train

Down the valley

Up the valley

Got to Zurich this afternoon after little sleep this weekend and zero sleep on the plane. It’s a surprisingly small airport, but it has all the banks, grocery stores, and train stations that we needed. We hopped on the local train after changing some money and stocking up for lunch/dinner/breakfast (grocery stores here have impressively normal – and limited –hours). We took the local train to Zurich HB, the central train station which just happens to be right next to Banhofstrasse (translates to “train-station street”). Banhofstrasse is a major shopping street, and we found a “meadow” (aka green patch) to have lunch (awesome bread, really awesome cheese, some cool cured/thinly-sliced meat that tasted like jerky, tomatoes, and apricots). It was surprising how popular this small patch of grass was, but it made for good people watching, and there was some live music playing nearby. We filled up some water bottles for the train at these cool little fountains. According to Therese, all the water coming from any fountain in Switzerland is potable unless otherwise advertised. I’ll also mention that though I’ve only seen a little of Zurich, it seems like the cleanest large city I’ve ever encountered (thank goodness for an incredible rail system that’s entirely electric).

After lunch and a brief rest, we headed back to the train station to catch a train heading to the Ticino (Italian-speaking) region. We hopped on and started passing some beautiful scenery – Lake Zurich and the beginnings of the mountains – when the ticket lady came by (also right about the time that Ali and I realized we hadn’t gotten the validation stamps for our Swiss Passes). Thankfully, she let us stay on the train, without charge, until her shift was up. We ran into the station, got the stamps, and made it back on to the train in time. The first several mountain valleys we went through were surrounded by super, super, super-steep mountains (grassy at the bottom, but completely rock the top quarter of each mountain – and definitely river carved to a sharp V). There were several short tunnels going through the skirts of the mountains, and it seemed that all the land amenable to house building was taken. Further out from Zurich, that is less the case, but land in the valleys has still either been constructed upon or claimed for hay. At some point, we got off the train heading to Ticino and got on a train going up and over a pass near Anderrmatt. (I want to say the pass was somewhere just over 2000m high.) It was smaller and slower, but pleasant none the less.

That train took us through a long tunnel into a valley with more gently-sloped mountains (which are still huge) and then into a tiny station at Munster, VS. We walked the half mile to Therese’s place. You can see the next village down the valley, and a church beyond that. In the Midwest, you can tell there’s a town because there’s a water tower. In Switzerland, you can tell there’s a town because there’s a simple white church. Therese’s place seems to be kinda on the edge of Munster (which, for being a big town, is pretty small). Out the back, you can see the Rhone (which is still very small, having just come off a nearby glacier) and some cows grazing a bit up the mountains on that side of the valley. We made a quick dinner of gnocci and crawled into bed early.

Thus far, the mountains have been beautiful, the people have been very nice (minus one or two rather condescending guys who work for the rail system), the chocolate (from Swiss Air) has been great, and I’ve been really grateful to have Therese around for small interactions with other folks (for the record, everyone I’ve needed to speak English has been excellent at it).