Trains, Chocolate, A Lake and Mountains - Switzerland In 1 Day
Leaving Geneva I decided to move to another part of the lake, to a hostel near Montreux at Territet. As the hostel reception was closed until later I put my bags in a locker and headed for the Cailler chocolate factory at Broc Fabrique, up in the alps.
Earlier on my way to Territet I changed trains in Montreux. There I caught sight of the Train du Chocolat, or Chocolate Train.
Could such a thing really exist!
The train is on the Golden Pass route, taking tourists mostly, to the famous cheese town of Gruyere and connecting on to Broc Fabroque where Cailler chocolate has a factory.
Taking a train from Montreux I sit in the dining car
and orer a glass of local wine. It comes in a bottle with a cap and costs 9 francs. You could probably buy it in a supermarket for a franc.
Regardless, I’m going to enjoy the views of Lake Geneva as the train makes turns to gain height as we ascend into the mountains that run alongside the lake. At one time you can see lake from the left hand side then the train turns and it’s out of the right hand side.
At the end of the pretty empty carriage an old Swiss French man who’s travelling on his own tries to strike up a conversation with a young Swiss German couple.
He asks them if they can speak French. The lady says that she can speak some. The conversation breaks down as she can’t keep up with him. Finally he asks them where they’re from.
‘Die Schweitz’ she answers. He can’t hear her. ‘Schweitz’ she says again, rudely. From the same country but they can’t understand each other. He leaves their table and comes down and asks if he can sit with me. We chat away in French.
He’s a widower in his 80’s and is just looking for someone to chat to. He tells me about some of the buildings that we see on distant mountain tops. Then the lake is gone from view and snow covered trees are all in view.
We’re on the side of a mountain with a deep valley is on our right. Before long we pull into Montbovan
where I change to a smaller train and on to Bulle where I catch a third train to Broc Fabrique.
The chocolate factory tour costs just 10 francs but the place is choc a bloc with families and groups as it’s school holiday time.
At the end of the tour they have all their chocolate presented on plates and you can help yourself to as much as you want.
I take some samples away with me.
I take a couple of more trains to get me back to Territet, descending to the lake after a perfect Swiss day.
Addressing The UN
As it turned out the UN at Geneva wasn’t in session when I was there so I missed out on my chance to address the General Assembly.
I did do a tour though of the second biggest UN complex in the world, after their New York headquarters.
The UN Geneva complex includes the Palais des Nations,
which was the headquarters of the League of Nations, a forerunner of the UN, which was set up after the First World War.
When the palace was constructed in the 1930’s the interiors were made up of donations from member countries of the League. So, you end up with marble from the UK and other countires, murals were donated by Spain,
and so on.
If only the member states had given the League their support as well as material gifts then things might have worked out differently. History doesn’t record that though.
Instead you got an organisation that the USA didn’t join, that Japan wasn’t a member of, that Germany left after it recorded judgements that they didn’t like and that the Italian delegation disrupted before Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie address the assembly about the Italian invasion of his country.
The League kept working through World War II, by this time led by an Irishman, Sean Lester.
I had to bring my passport to the UN, pay a fee, and be issued with a security pass to take a tour of the complex.
Geneva
I stayed in Geneva for three or four nights, which was probably too long. Too long, because virtually everything in the city was closed over Easter.
A closed city isn’t too much fun.
On my first evening in the city I went in search of a supermarket. All were closed, except a small expensive one in the main train station.
Walking along the lakeside I was taken aback by the Jet d’Eau, a water jet that bursts into the sky from the lake, at a point close to the city.
The jet shoots forth at a rate of 200km/hour, to a height of 140m. I’d seen photos of it before but I didn’t get the scale of it. It’s pretty impressive.
The hostel I stayed in was part of a national youth hostel organisation, so the place was clean and safe. It wasn’t too comfortable though. They had solid plastic furniture in the TV room.
They had a small guest kitchen, which they called a Picnic Area, which didn’t have any cutlery but in keeping with Switzerland was all clean lines and great style.
The picnic area was home to a Chinese Malay group, a mother, her daughter and the daughter’s boyfriend. The daughter was in charge and she was ready to interrogate all around.
Money was her thing. ‘How much’ this, ‘how much’ that. Eating their noodles in a sucky stlye they interrogate an Iranian guy about the cost of his accommodation.
In turn he asks them if there’ve been any anti-government protests in Malaysia. He later asks me if there’ve been any anti-government protests in Ireland.
Apparently Iranian state TV has the world in turmoil, as reported by them.
Conscious of the the high costs of Switzerland the Malays have brought packet noodles with them from Malaysia. Maybe they were right.
The Iranian guy is studying French in Switzerland but has a wish to move to French-speaking province of Quebec in Canada. ‘It’s an independent country’ he says to the Malays of Quebec.
The hostel again provides me with a free transport ticket for urban transport in Geneva, including small yellow ferry boats that cross various points of the lake close by the city.
The Bears Of Bern
Trying to figure out my next travel option in Basel train station I enquired about my options at the tourist office.
In the end I bought a three day train ticket from them for something over 200Euro. On the days that you don’t use the ticket you can travel for half price.
To get the best value from one of my travel days I decided to stop off in the Swiss capital, Bern, for a couple of hours and then make for Geneva.
Bern was full of tourists as it was Easter Saturday. The city market was full of things Easter related, there were bunnies, chicks and eggs everywhere.
The city has a nice feel to it and a nice look to it. It maintains an olde worlde feel in keeping with the proportion and character of it’s buildings.
The national parliament is right beside the market area. A balcony behind the parliament gives good views of the hills and green river running below them.
I’d heard about the bears of Bern from another traveller in the hostel in Basel. Bears are a big thing in the city, in fact they are it’s symbol.
They’re also associated with the history of the city and for this reason live bears are kept in a park beside the main river in the city.
A new enclosure has been built for them in the last couple of years. They’re a big crowd puller in the city.
At 4pm I catch a train to Geneva. As we approach Lake Geneva or Lac Leman as they call it in Swiss French we’re treated to stunning views of the lake and the partly snowcapped mountains that are ranged behind it.
Once again the area beside the train station is home to dodgy, mafia-esque type characters. While they’re not causing me any trouble they do nothing to enspire confidence or improve the character of the area.
I walk to my hostel.
Switzerland Is Closed For Business
At Easter, Switzerland pretty much closes up. I arrived in Basel, in the north west of the country) on Good Friday and just about everything other than the train station was closed.
Easter Saturday, Sunday and Monday were about the same.
It gave the city a strange feel. Supermarkets other than a shockingly expensive one in the main train station were closed.
The hostel I’m staying in is in a former industrial estate. The units have been converted and are now used by artisans among others. The industrial stlye of the hostel building gives it an unusual feel.
The staff though are most welcoming and this takes away any unwelcome feeling that the industrial nature of the building might convey.
The hostel gives me a ticket that gives free use of the city transport services. Just about every subsequent hostel I stay in in Switzerland does the same. From what I can make out it’s a government measure to encourage the use of public transport.
Whatever the reason, it’s most welcome because Switzerland is expensive. But you all know that. You don’t need to be told it again.
The free city transport lets you see cities in a different way. Generally I don’t use city transport on my travels as I figure it’s an unecessary expense and to explore on foot let’s you see things at a different pace.
In Basel I use the trams
to cross the wide Rhine river (which seems to really split the city because of it’s width) a couple of times and to discover the city’s old Gates.
(ferry crossing the Rhine)
(city gate)
Having consulted my map I decide that Geneva down in the south west should be the next place I head for.
Online I see that a 2nd class ticket to Geneva or Geneve, en francais or Genf, auf deutsch, for 35 Swiss francs. The trouble is that they show the lowest price ticket available, which is a child’s ticket, the adult fare is double that.
Switzerland, you’re beginning to frighten me with your prices!
Little Luxembourg
Luxembourg it turns out isn’t all that small. There is the city of the name but also a country called Luxembourg with it’s own train system and a scattering of towns and villages before you reach any of it’s neighbouring countries.
The country even has it’s own unique language, Letzebueresch or Luxembourgish. Some Germans say it’s German, as they speak it in the German city of Cologne. Luxembourgers say it’s it’s own language.
The city of Luxembourgish was the only part of the country that I visited. Walking a long walk from the train station across a couple of distinctive high bridges to the hostel I wondered if I’d made the right decision to even bother visiting the city at all.
As it happened I extended my stay, partly to recover from the long 3km walk from the station and partly to see something of the city and to get to understand it a little.
My tiring walk puts me in bad form and a little resentful. It makes me feel like shouting at an older, balding, man in an open top sports car that I see in town ‘you’re not in San Tropez, you know!’.
But it turns out that the city of Luxembourg has a likeable easy charm to it. It has a distinctly French look and feel to it. The people do too. In many respects too though they display German characteristics.
It can’t be easy being stuck in between two powerful countries. In history, Spain and The Netherlands have shaped the country over the years.
Luxembourg, the country, though, has tread it’s own path, when it’s been allowed to. It played a lead role in the formation of the European Union and it’s predecessor organisations.
These days some of the apparatus of the European Union is headquartered in the city, lending it a ‘the capital of Europe’ feel.
It turns out there is enough to keep the tourist occupied for a good couple of days in the city. Their public museums and galleries are very well resourced, although they still charge an entrance fee.
One thing which is great to do is to visit the Casemates,
a partially recreated labyrthine succession of tunnels and defensive towers that were used to defend the city. It only costs 3Euro to go inside and be transported back in time.
Parts of the tunnels have stairs that go deep, down into the fortress. The spiral staircases are most interesting.
Much of the defensive forts that were built to defend the city had to be dismantled according to the Treaty Of London of 1867.
Other parts of the city defences have been recreated and transformed into museums and some are free to visit.
The National Museum which charges 5Euro admission is an unnecessarily big affair. Built about three stories underground there’s a lot of repetition in it.
The City Museum, which is free for a couple of hours every Thursday evening, otherwise 5Euro, is again a well resourced affair.
They were running a temporary exhibition while I was there entitled: ‘Poor Luxembourg?’. With among the highest GDP per capita figures in the world I imagined that the exhibition would be quite small.
Instead they produce a wide historical look at the poor of Luxembourg dealing with non unionised manual labourers and short movies about poverty and crime & punishment over the years, none of the mostly black and white movies is from Luxembourg.
In contemporay terms they deal with prison conditions and poor housing in the 1970’s and today. They recreate a government shop where unemployed can go to buy basic commodities at a third of the price in supermarkets.
On Good Friday, after a month on the road I take a train to Switzerland.
Into The Lion’s Den
If you ever arrive in Frankfurt by train you will want to have been up early and to have had a good breakfast that morning and be ready for an assault; if not on your body then on your sensibilities.
The city square in front of the main train station is packed full of dodgy characters, most with beer bottle in hand.
Thankfully the hostel was a stone’s throw from the station. No stones were thrown in the vacinity of the station that day but they were thrown near the European Central Bank headquarters which is in Frankfurt.
Frankfurt is in essence the heart of Euro-land. The day I arrived there was a protest taking place. I only saw the repurcussions the following day.
The hostel I’m staying in is full to bursting. I feel sorry for some of the non-Europeans staying there. Frankfurt it turns out isn’t a place that’s of much interest to tourists.
But for whatever reason tonnes of Korean and American and Australian backpackers, amongst others, were lining up to come to the city.
One of the highlights that the tourism office for the city lists are the skyscrapers of Frankfurt. They’re pretty humdrum it turns out.
Something else you can do in the city is to take the Ebelwei Express tram, which does a tour around the city.
On the tram they give you a small packet of pretzels and a small bottle of the locally produced apple wine, which isn’t that nice.
The tram ride is pretty nice though.
Frankfurt for me has a similar feeling to Brussels. They both have similarly closed skyscrapers, awaiting redevelopment or whatever and run down parts of their centres.
It’s Palm Sunday so the cathedral is thronged. There’s a museum in the cathedral which is 3Euro to enter. They have recreations of the crowns and regalia of the Holy Roman Emperor. They also have much church silver and regalia.
There mustn’t be enough space in the cathedral museum as they’ve built another museum across the street from the cathedral.
It houses the exact same stuff that’s in the cathedral museum. Both museums are covered by the same entrance ticket.
I visit the recreated Rothschild Garden, which along with the now demolished villa the Rothschild Family had to sell up for cheap and virtually escape from during the NAZI period.
The Garden has a strange layout and feel to it. It’s not bordered by fences or railings but by skyscrapers.
After a couple of days I’m ready to leave Frankfurt. I go to the train station which still has it’s collection of ‘end of the world’ characters outside and within it, not quite Mad Max, more Mad Europe.
I buy a ticket to Luxembourg. I have to change train a couple of times, at Wiesbaden, Koblenz and Trier. We pass by vinyards on the side of the Rhine and the valley becomes steeper after a while with castles and castellated houses.
At St. Goarhausen there’s a corresponding town on the opposite side of the Rhine. A similar small train runs along the other side of the river mirroring us.
We pass by some houses virtually on the track that look like they haven’t been altered in two hundred years.
From Koblenz to Trier we pass alongside the river Mosel, again with similar vinyards up along the sides of the valley.
At Trier train station they have a photo of their famous son, Karl Marx, welcoming us to the city.
The only way that I’m aware that I’ve entered Luxembour is that the signs at the train station have changed, they say ‘sortie’ the French for exit. Before long I’m aware of the Luxembourgish flag flying as well.
I wrote the book…….at my desk in the Embassy, and even at the wheel of my car as I crossed the Rhine back and forth by ferry, sometimes parked alongside Chancellor Adenauer’s huge armoured Mercedes (or was it a BMW?) as he made his stately way to work.
The excitement in Chancery when I was able to report what newspaper he was reading, and the Embassy Press Section was always quick to deduce which leader-writers might have influenced the great man’s mind, but I suspect none did: he was long past being influenced.
Sometimes I caught his eye, and occasionally it seemed to me that he even smiled at me in my little Hillman Huskie with diplomatic plates.
But he resembled by then an ancient Red Indian chief and his expressions did not follow the patterns of other mortals’.
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