Some post-trip final thoughts, complaints, regrets, or whatever else I come up with.
- If you’ve got the time and inclination, plan your own trip. I considered using Swiss Voyages for trip planning, but decided against: expensive ($1800/person), inflexible (their choice of hotels, no options for additional trains), we pay for Zurich-Chur and Zermatt-Zurich travel, more luggage dragging. We paid roughly the same for a longer, more involved trip. The planning required an committed effort – I’ve never planned a trip this complex – but ultimately it was worth it.
- English apparently is a de facto fifth national language of Switzerland. In those few occasions when English wasn’t understood, my school-boy German sufficed. If all else fails, use Google Translate.
- I can’t praise the Swiss Half-Fare Card enough: we saved almost 3x its 120CHF/person price. The price varies by season and may have recently been raised, so you’ll need to consider your rail plans. For us, an unequivocal success.
- Swiss railways maintain high standards for being on-time, perhaps a minute or two late but nothing required any replanning.
- The panoramic mountain lines have different advanced reservation rules: Glacier Express can be scheduled 365 days in advance, Bernina Railway a mere 93 days, despite both routes are operated by Rhätian Bahn. Seats are pre-reserved on Bernina for travel agencies and are released 27 days prior (the fact leveraged for the one last trip).
- The Zurich 9 O’Clock Day Pass allows travel throughout Zurich for a reasonable price….and the Swiss Half-Fare Card can be applied! For our Lindt World of Chocolate outing, we took suburban rail to Kilchberg and then back to Bürkliplatz on a Lake Zurich boat, no additional charge.
- Most days were gray and overcast – perhaps not noteworthy for late September in Switzerland – but when the sun did appear, wow! The Matterhorn on a sunny day with blue clouds is a site to behold.
- Air passengers are allowed to book connecting flights through Schiphol with a minimum of 50 minutes between flights, and airport staff facilitate getting passengers to their gates. The airport experience for people is wonderful. Checked luggage and bags, however, aren’t as fortunate: in the last year, three of our bags have not made the connecting flight and arrived on whatever subsequent flights. At times, the airline claimed to not know where the bag was (we told them (thank you, air tags). My new guidelines are no less than 90 minutes between flights.
- Luggage on Swiss trains is either unexpected or un-welcomed, as not one train had sufficient, dedicated luggage racks, above-seat racks were too narrow or nonexistent. Often luggage was shoved wherever possible: in-between seats, in the aisles, near the doors, whatever presented itself. It’s as if luggage is a national nuisance.
- Purchasing a second eSIM for data is an unequivocal success for faster mobile data; however, texting is hit/miss as Apple contacts must be configured to use the secondary eSIM while Android contacts continue to use primary. And weirder shit occurs when connected to WiFi. I can’t always explain what’s happening.
- I am doubting the wisdom of Bernina round trips or Bernina/Glacier on consecutive days. Two really long days of looking out train windows at decently similar scenery. Perhaps I was affected by the persistent overcast, gray skies, but 16 of 36 hours on trains may just be too much.
- Delta Airlines, I beg of you, please change your meals. The lasagna and chicken meals are barely edible the first time, much less third, fourth, fifth time. I need to look into what’s kosher/halal/low sodium/whatever is available as a pre-order.
- After 27 years together, my wife and I continue to good travel partners. No senior citizen tour groups for us, thank you very much. Time to start planning the next trip!
