European Epic # 12: Chocolate, Cheese, and Snow

Here's the world-famous view to which I awoke on September 13.

No bonus points to anyone who guesses right, especially if you have been there before me!

On September 12, just before 1:30 pm, my TGV Lyria train rolled into the station at Basel,  and I returned to Switzerland for the first time in nearly 40 years (July of 1979 to be exact).  In saying that, of course, I am not counting several cases of connecting flights through Zurich airport!

Basel is one of the best railway stations I've seen for doing anything you need to do.  The escalator up from the platform drops you off in a shopping concourse.  One end connects with a larger mall, the other with the main hall of the station.  In less than an hour, I had gotten a late lunch, changed some money for Swiss francs, and boarded my next train.  That Swiss Federal Railways train took just 2 hours with stops to traverse Switzerland from north to south, dropping me off at the town of Visp in the Rhone River valley.

I made it this far once before, in 1979 -- but I was still young and impecunious, and the money ran out.  I was travelling on the ubiquitous Eurailpass, and it's not accepted by the privately-owned railway that operates up to Zermatt.  If you plan to travel all around Switzerland, definitely get a Swiss Travel Pass.  It is valid on most trains, buses, and ships (on the lakes) and also allows for half-price tickets on a number of mountain railways.

Some people are surprised to learn that Switzerland is not all mountains.  This relief map shows how the northern half of the country consists of rolling hills and valleys, and even some sizable flat stretches -- well, flat-ish.

Once you hit the mountain country, though, the going gets tough and the Swiss get going.  We had hardly climbed any distance above the lake of Thun at Spiez...

...when we plunged into the 34.5 km Lötschberg Basis Tunnel, a new short cut that saves hundreds of metres of slow climbing to the old tunnel, and allows trains to zip right through the rugged spine of the Bernese Alps in just 15 minutes.  It first opened in 2007.

At Visp, right by the southern portal of the tunnel, I connected onto another railway company, the Matterhorn-Gotthard Bahn, for the 65-minute journey up to the renowned mountain resort of Zermatt.

This is a steep line, and has five sections that operate as a rack railway (a toothed rail between the two regular rails, and a series of gear wheels under the locomotives and passenger cars which engage with the toothed rail for both traction and braking).

These pictures show the narrow, steep-sided gorge which the railway has to traverse to reach the upper valley.  Remember that in those narrow spots, there's also the road -- and not to forget the turbulent river which was there first.

Once I reached Zermatt, just at 6:00 pm, I simply walked 3 minutes from the station down a very slight incline to my hotel.  Talk about a great location for the summer tourist -- some of the Zermatt hotels and apartments are anything up to a 10-minute taxi ride from the station, and can be quite a long way up some very steep hills.  You won't find any chain hotels in Zermatt, apart from a pair of Best Westerns, but there are dozens of choices -- as well as holiday apartments, condominiums, hostels, at all kinds of price points.  You name it, it's here.  The crazy thing is, they all look alike -- Swiss Ski Chalet Moderne, as I like to call this style of architecture.

Anyway, the Hotel & Solebad Arca is a charmer.  Family-run, warmly welcoming, with a spacious, modern room and a sizable balcony.  I paid a very reasonable price for a room with the Matterhorn view.  There's a generous included buffet breakfast in all room rates.

And there is a very unusual feature for a hotel at this moderate price level. The hotel has a large spa on the lower ground level, and massage appointments can be arranged. There's also a sizable heated swimming pool with a low percentage of brine and a lengthy underwater lounging bench packed full of water jets. This is most relaxing after hoofing all over town, climbing every mountain, or fording every stream. I bet it's really popular during the skiing season. It's free to hotel guests.

After checking in, I spent a bit of time relaxing on the balcony, and watching the many moods of the Matterhorn as twilight slowly set in.

It's an interesting by-product of Zermatt's location in such a deep, narrow valley, that the sun vanishes behind the mountains at about 5:20 pm right now -- but the official sunset time for the day I am writing this is at 7:43 pm.

As I sat there on the twilit balcony, I realized a startling fact.  Zermatt is uncannily quiet.  No private cars allowed, and no internal-combustion engines -- except by special permission from the government (usually for construction equipment).  The idea was to avoid blocking the spectacular views of the mountains by excessive air pollution.

There's a huge parking garage at the next-to-last station of the railway, Täsch, and frequent shuttle trains operate from there up the last steep grade to Zermatt.  Tourist coaches have to offload at Täsch as well.  Of course things get louder and more crowded during the daytime, when all the daytrippers are in town, but even then it's far from noisy.  Zermatt is so quiet that I was inordinately shocked, while eating dinner on a patio, when someone fired up a gas-powered street sweeper next door -- the sound was painfully loud.

Transport around town is by foot, by bicycle, or by little electrically powered mini-vans, taxis, and pickups, and 20-passenger electric buses.  The vans really are mini in no uncertain terms, as you can see in the photo.  The quiet little "whoosh" sound of those vans is the signature soundtrack of Zermatt.

The other funny thing about Zermatt is that it has some intriguing minor identity issues.  It's Swiss, all right, with a German name, and located in a traditionally German-speaking area -- but in the French-language canton of Valais, and right on the Italian border (the Matterhorn has to be the world's most widely-recognized border marker).  The visitors, of course, come from every corner of the planet.  Many of the tourism workers do as well.  I keep hearing people on the street and in restaurants mixing up words from multiple languages in one sentence.  Restaurant menus do it too.

The weather forecast for the 13th was for rain showers, but I awoke to a radiantly sunny sky.  I raced through breakfast (I had slept in a bit), and managed to catch the 9:25 train on the Gornergrat railway.  Here's where my Swiss Travel Pass paid off, as the return half-price ticket to the summit cost me only 49 francs (about Cdn$66) instead of 98 francs.  Nuff said.

The Gornergrat is a mountain summit southeast of Zermatt, with eye-popping views in several directions.  The railway going up there is also a rack railway, but one that really means business.  At a visual guess, I'd say it's probably climbing at between 20% and 25% angle of inclination throughout.  For those not familiar with these terms, 25% means that the track rises one metre in altitude for every four metres of forward motion.

The Swiss are the acknowledged world experts of building railways, cableways, chairlifts, and ski lifts for climbing mountains -- and why not, since they've been doing it for so long?  The Gornergrat rack railway is the highest outdoor railway in Europe, and is now well over a century old.

Enough technical detail -- here's what you see at the summit, which is 3,089 metres, or 10,132 feet, above sea level.

The huge Gorner Glacier is the second-longest in Europe.  The chain of mountains surrounding Zermatt contains many of Europe's tallest peaks.  And what's on the other side of that chain of mountains?  Italy.  The Matterhorn isn't the only outsized border marker.  But there it is, right behind the train posing at the terminal station.  It looks like it's "right over there" but the peak is still 1400 metres higher and about 8 kilometres away.

Of course, enquiring minds want to know if I was really there -- and I was, with the Matterhorn coyly peeking over my left shoulder.  All day long, the mountain was generating its plume of cloud.  Or, as the old-timers here used to say way back when, "He's smoking his pipe."

On the way back down, you get this view of how such a railway has to be laid out in big broad curves and switchbacks to keep the gradient of the line within manageable limits.

You also get this sweeping view of virtually all of the Matterhorn, from summit to valley floor -- or you would if the clouds would cooperate.  This iconic peak's summit is 4,478 metres or 14,692 feet high, which places it almost 3,000 metres higher than Zermatt village.

A look back north through that narrow mountain canyon which contains Zermatt's link with the outside world.

And finally you drop down through the "suburbs" and return to the base terminal.

Back down from the mountain at 11:30, I walked along the main street, peering into some shop windows -- I gained ten pounds looking at this one.  Even worse, they were making the chocolate here in all these different varieties, not just selling it.

There are times when Zermatt is just plain weird.  Here are three examples.

Things That Make You Go "Hmmm" # 1:  Why would someone come to a ski resort like Zermatt to shop in a store dedicated to fine quality ladies' dress shoes?  Those shoppers could have gotten ten times the selection or more in Milan, and if they'd stayed on the mainline train they would probably have gotten to the stores in Milan before the rack railway could even reach Zermatt!

Things That Make You Go "Hmmm" # 2:   A cyclist wearing a full-body, streamlined racing cycling suit and then covering it with a baggy t-shirt about 4 times too big.

Things That Make You Go "Hmmm" # 3:  These two well-known brand names, both of which (for different reasons) seem decidedly out of place in a Swiss ski resort -- but especially Rip Curl.  I mean, the nearest surfing wave is a couple of hundred kilometres away on the other side of the Alps.

The second day dawned cloudy and misty, but still dry, so it seemed like a good opportunity for a walk around town again.  This time I went a couple of blocks downhill from the main shopping street to the banks of the river, named the "Matter Vispa."  Every inch of this river (and tributary streams) flowing through Zermatt is contained in a narrow concrete and stone channel like this.

Along the riverbank, I saw just what Zermatt needs most -- another modern hotel/apartment building under construction in the approved style.  But right next door to this one were two unmistakably old and authentic Swiss mountain structures, still with their original slate roofs.

A little farther along, I turned back uphill to the old church.  The tiny cemetery behind the church is reserved for climbers who have lost their lives on one of the mountains around Zermatt -- most often the killer was the Matterhorn.

Back up on the main street, I saw this sizable bronze sculpture illustrating the origins of the classic Swiss alphorn.  Such a tree, by the way, grows out of a crack in the mountain rocks and then turns its trunk to grow straight up -- which gives the alphorn its classic shape.  I've yet to see anyone actually playing an alphorn so far on this trip.

Settling down on a patio for lunch, I ordered a quintessentially Swiss meal under a quintessentially Swiss name:  "Walliser fondue."  "Wallis" (pronounced "Vallis") is the German name for Valais canton, but "fondue" is an unmistakably French word.  The insulated bag contains boiled potatoes -- I assume that's what "Gschwellti" means in Swiss German.  And the wine was Italian.  The cheese fondue was fantastic, of course.  Now my weird sense of humour is urging me to shout "Gschwellti" instead of "Gesundheit" next time someone sneezes.