Another morning, another dash over to Frankfurt HBF. But this time we weren't getting on a German train, thank goodness -- the best thing about being in Germany is leaving Germany! I'm really not a fan of Germany, and it seems that German people really don't like me either (or maybe they just really like yelling at tourists for doing the "wrong" thing, something I've never had happen in Italy).
This train would have actually taken us straight to Milan in about 8 hours, and we had discussed that when we initially decided to take the cheap flight to Frankfurt... but instead we decided on a much more scenic itinerary that would take several days to get there. I wasn't entirely sure what kind of train to expect on this tri-national route since it was just listed generically as "EuroCity" everywhere I looked, but I was very happy to see a Swiss train here -- both because Swiss trains are very nice and because that meant I would be getting to ride a high-speed train from each of the five countries I was visiting. (Trenitalia also runs some of these EuroCity trips, though I'm not sure if any of theirs run all the way to Frankfurt.)
Four hours of not much scenery later, we're in Zurich for a whole 10 minutes to switch onto the first of many regional trains and set us up for the scenic routes to come. (I have a whole document that I put together to arrange these complex train trips, which is helpful to refer back to when writing these posts! It didn't help much in Germany though, considering the cascading delays we kept hitting the day before this.)
These regional trains aren't super fancy, but it's always nice to sit upstairs!
A short ride later, we're in Lucerne (no, not the Safeway kind) for a luxurious 15-minute connection to the star of the day, the Lucerne-Interlaken Express. Sadly, this is a modern panoramic train so no opening windows here, but we were able to get some of the few unreserved seats in first class (the downside to traveling on a Eurail pass -- it's much cheaper than buying trains on their own in Switzerland, but if you want to buy seat reservations it's pretty pricey). By the way, these interior pictures are all going to be taken from weird angles because most of the time my parents are in the seats directly across from me, and I definitely don't want them in the picture!
And of course there are mountains to look at too, though nothing as stunning as what I saw in February.
Coming into Interlaken, there are even more beautiful lakes to see. That's not a mega-yacht in the last picture, it's a very fancy ferry -- which I think is actually free with Eurail too, but you know how I don't have much love for ferries. (Though I imagine Swiss ferries would be a bit less chaotic than what I experienced in Italy on the previous trip!)
Finally, from Interlaken, it was time to head towards our destination for the day, Murren. This requires a series of three short rides, starting with a quick ride on another part-time rack railway (which I completely missed was going to be a rack railway when planning this trip -- that was a nice surprise!). That takes you up to Lauterbrunnen, where most people transfer over to a further series of rack railways that go to Jungfraujoch, the famous highest-elevation train station in Europe. But that's extremely expensive, not covered by Eurail, and not even all that interesting since a lot of it is in tunnels.
But if you go up the other side of the valley, you'll find something that is covered by Eurail: a cable car! In fact, I believe this is the only cable car fully covered by Eurail (as of when I looked this up over the summer, it is the only one in Switzerland, though there are a few others that give Eurail discounts; I haven't investigated other countries, but Switzerland seems like the only place that's likely to have them).
The cable car replaced an earlier funicular, which was closed due to slope instability, with a short section of track at the bottom left in place. I'm not actually sure if there are any funiculars covered by Eurail.
After a short, but extremely scenic, cable car ride...
It's on to an extremely short ride on a normal train for the last couple miles to Murren. This tiny rail line is weird in its own way -- it's up in the mountains, completely disconnected from any other rail line, and there aren't even any good roads up here (Murrren is a mostly car-free town)... so I'm really curious to know how they managed to get these new train cars up here a few years ago!
And with another scenic train view, I think that's it for this post -- we'll pick up in Murren next time!
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