The Glacier Express wends its way through the Switzerland familiar to everyone, even those who have never been there: the mountainous land seen in movies and picture books with forests of spruce, birch and larch; the Switzerland of dewey meadows, quaint chalets beside the Rhine and the Rhone, grazing sheep, ruddy faces and the mighty Alpine glaciers.
In winter, snowbanks hug the observation cars, forming a panorama of marshmallow slopes dotted with the Day-Glo togs of skiers, who are everywhere.
A ride on the Glacier Express is scenery distilled-essence of Alps-and the Swiss rail industry serves it up with a generous helping of creature comfort. Beauty and setting alone would qualify the Glacier Express for its standing as one of the great railroad journeys of the world, but it offers more than pretty pictures. Four of the five shiny red cars each hold 36 cushy seats. Passengers sit around small tables beside high windows. In first class, an additional panel of glass at ceiling level helps ease the strain on craning necks.
A restaurant car caters to the sort of people who make reservations weeks in advance so they can stare at a pot of fondue or a platter of cold cuts while the top of Europe goes by.
Still, the scattering of unimpressed folks aboard the Glacier Express reminds us that it isn’t simply an amusement-park ride for tourists. The trains, for example, depart and arrive with strict precision. They proceed with all due haste, considering the roller-coaster terrain.
“Express,” however, is something of a misnomer. The Glacier Express does stop now and then, and it took six hours to cover the 134 miles on my leg of the journey, between Chur and Zermatt. Despite that necessarily deliberate pace, the people at Verlag Furka-Oberalp-Bahn–one of three companies covering the route–consider the Glacier Express serious transit, a vital link in the railroad, bus and ferryboat network known as the Swiss Travel System.
Although the Glacier Express conveys passengers past one scenic marvel after another–an all-day lollipop for scenery lovers–I learned that many Swiss use it primarily because they want to go somewhere. That may sound like a truism in a discussion of train journeys, but Americans abroad often catch trains only when they want to feed some nostalgic craving left by their own diminished Amtrak system. Whenever they simply need to cover ground, they fly.
The entire run for the Glacier Express, east to west from St. Moritz to Zermatt, covers 186 miles in 8 1/2 hours. The timetable makes it impossible to travel its length and return on the same day, but the train still suits the purposes of practical commercial travelers and other regulars who hop from one town to another on various errands. Most of the oohing and ahhing on the Glacier Express comes from tourists and first-timers.
The two Swiss gentlemen sitting next to me played cards, drank wine and scarcely looked up–salesmen passing the time between calls, I gathered after determining that we could not come up with a mutually understandable language.
Across the aisle, Gerard Novel, another Swiss gentleman, gazed in wonder at the vista, frequently through the viewfinder of a video camera. Novel said he and his teenage son had transferred to the Glacier Express after traveling from their home in Zurich. They planned to go only as far as Disentis, where the son would begin his studies at the town’s 430-year-old monastic high school, a prestigious institution. For Novel pere, the trip was a revelation.
“My colleagues in the pharmaceutical business come from all over the world,” he told me. “I often work in Japan and other countries. Everywhere I go, everyone I talk to knows this train. And here I’m from Zurich and I’d never been on it. It was embarrassing. This is wonderful, isn’t it?”
Yes. And Disentis looked wonderful when the train stopped there. Like most communities along the right-of-way–Chur, Trun, Tschamut, Hospental and Andermatt, just to name a few–Disentis appeared to exist primarily for postcard glorification. Snow blanketed the peaked rooftops. Steeples rose above the valleys. Householders had flung open the cunningly whittled shutters on their gingerbread houses to reveal those bleached lace curtains that must be a zoning requirement for anyone living in rural northern Europe.
The entire trip repeats the show with endless variations. Vast mountain walls of creased granite and shiny slate suddenly pull aside to reveal a village so precious as to strain credulity. After a while, the occasional tire store or electric-relay station comes as welcome relief–a reality check, an assurance that the world’s not perfect and travel on the Glacier Express isn’t a dream.
Novel’s son’s shoulders slumped dejectedly as he and his father walked across the Disentis depot platform. They would live only about 65 miles apart during the school year, but those are 65 humanly impossible air miles–the route of the jackdaw, not the jet; peaks and canyons prevent commercial flight.
By rail, some 185 miles of track would separate the Novels, but in Switzerland, such a stretch seems formidable, too. Mountains cover 60 percent of the country, and Switzerland in its entirety takes up just 16,000 square miles, about the size of two New Jerseys. A relatively small population, 6.8 million, rattles around in there, and it’s no wonder some residents feel isolated. All considered, Novel the younger would be living a long way from home.
At every station, skiers shoulder their way into the picture frame, slightly distorting the pastorale with their flamboyant clothes and equipment painted colors unknown to nature. Near the lofty Oberalppass (6,684 feet), a bunch of them pelted the train with snowballs.
I first encountered skiers in Chur, a medieval town in the lap of the mountains, where cozy-looking houses modestly defer to the mighty Romanesque cathedral of St. Maria Himmelfahrt and the steep bluffs beyond.
Well before the 10:55 departure time, an army of skiers clustered in the quaint old Chur station, hefting their garish implements and in some cases clumping up the steps to the platform already shod in their heavy plastic boots. They appeared ready to jump off at such meccas as Emergalen, the Riederalp and the Bettmeralp, and start racing downhill before the train could make a complete stop.
At Realp, the train enters the Furka tunnel, 10 miles of darkness before the next big scenery display. The railroad proclaims it the world’s longest 1-meter-gauge tunnel. It opened in 1982 and accommodates the special narrow wheel-carriages of the mountain trains. The locomotives run on electricity, so the tunnel is just high enough to accommodate the rooftop cable rigs. At steep passages along the route, electricity is not enough, and a rack system on the track allows the Glacier Express to pull itself along.
In the tunnel, my table companions put down their playing cards and looked out a window awhile into a black expanse of nothing. That behavior seemed odd, but I suppose a few minutes of absolute void is something of a novelty on a trip filled with glorious sights. Strangely, my eyes were drawn to the window along with theirs.
We emerged, blinking, into more mountains, more fields of snow and towns mounted handsomely in their snug vales: Oberwald, Ulrichen, Munster, Reckingen and Niederwal–whose native son Casar Ritz built the Paris hotel synonymous with luxury.
Mountains began to exert their presence even more, with peaks reaching nearly 10,000 feet and ice fields proclaiming the presence of the great Aletsch glacier, which is, according to global-warming experts, shrinking at express speed–about 11 feet a year.
As the Glacier Express ratcheted up into more steep passes, the evidence of geological power became almost frightening. Piles of boulders hundreds of feet tall fanned out nearly to the tracks, marking past landslides that must have been horrendous. Canyon walls in the narrow Nikolai Valley gripped like chilly pincers as the train strained along craggy stone shelves just wide enough to hold us aloft.
Then we leveled off into the outskirts of Zermatt, past a churchyard white and woolly with sheep at an auction, past darkly stained barns, sprightly cottages and self-consciously picturesque hotels. Finally, the Glacier Express bumped gently into a buffer at the end of the tracks inside the Zermatt depot.
We trooped off into a village square teeming with horse-drawn carriages, electric taxis (no automobiles allowed here) and skiers blissfully congratulating themselves for having reached Alpine nirvana.
I walked up the main street. It was ice-paved and sprinkled with cinders, lined with cunning terraced cafes, fragrant pastry shops, parka boutiques and cuckoo-clock architecture.
Ahead loomed the very trademark of the Alps, gleaming in afternoon sunlight and tipping its jaunty, wind-carved peak. A billboard couldn’t have conveyed the message with any more clarity:
“Welcome to the Matterhorn. More heights await you.”
GLACIER EXPRESS DETAILS
The Glacier Express trip between St. Moritz and Zermatt, Switzerland, takes 7 1/2 to 8 1/2 hours and covers 170 miles of track. It crosses 291 bridges, goes through 91 tunnels and travels straight across the Alps, usually following the Rhine and Rhone river valleys.
Advance bookings are mandatory. From the United States, reservations may be made up to two months in advance and not later than two weeks before the desired departure date, either through a travel agent or Rail Europe–800-438-7245.
Add a $12 seat reservation fee to the basic fare, which is $154 first class, $94 second class. Seats in the panorama cars (newer, with more glass area) are distributed on a first-come, first-served system. Lunch in the dining car costs an additional $34 and must be reserved in advance. The Swiss Pass and Swiss Flexi Pass cover the basic fares. Holders of various Eurail passes pay up to $88 extra for certain segments of the trip.
For details, contact: Swiss National Tourist Office, 150 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60660 (312-630-5840; fax 312-630-5848).
