Sunday, June 23, 2006
Switzerland has the best train system in the world. Period. Now I realize that is a categorical statement made by someone who has not been on the majority of the world’s train systems, but I would stand by it none the less. For one reason, I have been on enough bad ones to see the contrast to this one. And I’ve never even been on the really bad ones; the ones where the train will come today, meaning sometime today for the “when today?” is unknown. I also stand by the statement because most things can only be improved so much, a perfect score is a perfect score, and Switzerland gets a perfect train score.
The first impressive convenience they offer are these pocket-sized schedule books - about the size of a Swiss Frank note folded in half. They have these little pocket miracles for every city in the country. The little booklet not only tells you the departure and arrival times and stops for every train coming and going into that city, it also tells you the type of train and type of service. There are few things worse than walking into a station, grabbing the first train you see to your desired destination instead of the one leaving in half an hour later only to find out once you are on the train that it will take four times as long because it stops at every city. Regional trains probably cause more sea-sickness than a cruise ship with all the lurching as they stop and start every five minutes and clatter and bang and roll in between.
These little booklets take all the guesswork out of everything. You can, at your leisure, scan the day’s schedule not by time, as most schedules are organized, but by destination. The best you usually get in other places is a large poster – three times the size of Shawn Cassidy or Bo Derick or whoever you had on your wall during middle school – listing trains in order of departure hour with the hour in large font and double bold, the main city in bold, then the intermediary cities in print so tiny you have to crawl up on someone’s back with a magnifying glass to get close enough to read it. The types of train are usually in some indecipherable code and generally there is not space to list all the intermediary stops. If you happen to be going to a city that has only two or three trains a day you can put money down that you’ll spend an hour searching the poster for the name of the city and discover, upon finding it, the train left five minutes ago. Depending on the country you are in, these posters run between a 20 and 70 percent updated accuracy ratio. While they can be helpful, they are far from convenient as they are AT the train station. Now of course you can check the schedule when you arrive and make a plan for when to leave, but if something comes up and you want to change the plan, as I always do, you are out of luck. Of course there’s the internet – if you can find a connection, and if the country has a decent internet timetable (Italy’s is the WORST). In Switzerland you arrive, grab the little booklet as you pass the ticket counter, throw it in your wallet and you always have all the train information to get in and out of that city right at your fingertips.
As if this isn’t great enough, in reality you don’t even need the darn things because the train system is so efficient. I don’t understand how the Spaniards could do so badly what the Swiss do so well. There are never reservations required because there are always plenty of seats available. There are no sold out trains because the next one probably leaves within half an hour instead of four hours from now. After my third day of day tripping with the Swiss train system, I quit checking schedules because I never, not once, ever waited more than fifteen minutes for a connection. EVER. Not into the little towns, not even for the single hundred year old cable car that went up the side of a mountain. Trains run generally a half hour or hour apart and they run ALL DAY LONG on that schedule. For example, the trains from Fribourg to Bern (the closest major city) run at :04 and :34 beginning at o’rooster am and running until sometime after midnight. Amazingly, the trains back from Bern to Fribourg are the same. So you know always just get to the station at four or thirty-four minutes past the hour and you can get to and from Bern and Fribourg. With trains running in and out of every town with this kind of consistency, you never have to wait more than a few minutes for the next train or connection.
If there doesn’t happen to be a train because the area is less accessible, there is a bus system instead – just as effective, just as timely, just as easy. If you have to take a combination of trains and buses, no problem - the bus station is on one side, the train station on the other. Much to my surprise and appreciation, bus transportation is even included in your rail pass in Switzerland. Not only do you not pay supplements for trains that you have already paid for, but you don’t even pay supplements for buses that you haven’t!
Now I will make a caveat that this was my experience for a week of traveling the main tourist areas of Switzerland. Maybe it was just these areas, maybe I was inordinately lucky – but I doubt it. I can’t say it is that way in every part of Switzerland, but it certainly was everyplace I went – from large cities to small towns and everywhere in between. How they can coordinate that many trains with such perfection and convenience for the traveler is beyond me. I wish we would hire a few Swiss to coordinate the stoplight schedules in America though! They could probably solve the rush hour traffic problem overnight.
As if life could get any better – SwissCom, their main mobile telephone company, has made every train station a hotspot and participates in an internet network that includes USA T-mobile users amongst others. As the train pulls into the station, I can flip open the computer to receive and send email and maybe even research a point or two before the train pulls out of the station the other side. The other major internet alliance that I joined includes Boingo. They have all the hotels, McDonalds, and Starbucks. Now granted the roaming charges are a bit high for both these networks, but the bottom line was I could at a minimum check and send email for a nominal cost in any city, anywhere in the country, even from my couchsurfing host’s balcony on the fifth floor on the edge of the train side of town!
For those who prefer to travel from one overnight spot to the next, stopping at some sightseeing point on the way, lockers become a necessity rather than a convenience. Unlike Italy and Spain, almost every Swiss train station has lockers, even ithe smaller towns. There were several times I wanted to stop off in Spain – for example at El Escorial between Madrid and Avila or Toledo between Madrid and Seville but couldn’t because there was no place to stash my suitcase. In Switzerland you can take a cross country train, pick any city to stop off for lunch or a quick sightseeing tour and be 90% sure you can toss your bag in a locker, wander to your heart’s content, and return to catch a train to continue on within a few minutes.
Personally I prefer to pick a central spot and day trip out – the ol’ spokes on the wheel approach. The incredibly efficient train system and easy access to internet made this a practical possibility for me. From Fribourg, which is more or less in the center of the western half of the country, I could get to Geneva in the west, Basel in the north, the Bernese Overland area to the south, and to Zurich in the east and everywhere in between in less than two hours. Not only are the schedules plentiful and convenient, but the only time I ever paid additional in an entire week of traveling by train and bus everyday was in the Bernese Overland which is serviced by a private rail company. You do get a discount on their tickets if you have a railpass, but the prices are still pretty hefty. They have three day rail passes just for their private system that are well worth the price and if you love the outdoors or like to hike, the area is well worth the three days.
Perhaps it is thanks to the efficiency of the country, perhaps it is the unassuming, non-imposing personality of the Swiss people, but there is a deep sense of tranquility here. Granted I did not step foot in Zurich except to change trains, so I wasn’t exposed to their only “real” city. But even in Geneva which is a well-sized and well-known European city, there was a calmness not normally felt in cities its size. Except in the shopping district, there seemed no more hustle-bustle in Bern than in Fribourg, a fraction of its size. Maybe it is just the fact that with their train systems, they can have the convenience of a car without the cost and stress of a car. Maybe it is the fact that the secretaries and medical transcribers and manicurists average about 30 Swiss Francs an hour ($24 US) and yet rent is comparable to the states (though food costs more). Maybe it is this fairytale land of cragged peaks, rolling hills, and blue green lakes of every shade and hue and magical bells that are always tinkling in the distance. Maybe all the Alpine air just makes people breathe easier (or maybe not breathing exhaust all the time does). Maybe they’re just all happy now because it is not snowing.
Maybe it is all the water. The Swiss have a fascination with water. Americans go to “the beach” or “the lake” or “the pool”. The Swiss go to water, any water, any where. You will see them up and down the sides of rivers, playing volleyball on embankments made of large round stones, laying their blanket across beds of rocks, splashing each other in the two feet deep water. If there is enough room to sit, there will be a Swiss sitting there, reading a book by the side of the river. In Bern people go on their lunch break, put on their swimsuits, jump in the river, float down half a mile or so, then walk back up to the jumping point, shower, put on their clothes and go back to work. Can you imagine an American running down to swim in the river on a lunch break? If there is a lake, there are sailboats, and swimming corners, and people walking along the sidewalks. Swimming pools are teeming all summer long. I’ve never seen a people so drawn to water. You could dig a hole in the center of town and when the rain filled it the Swiss would congregate around it. Perhaps it is because they are landlocked by ocean bound neighbors. Perhaps the country’s little efficiencies make it so that people can tend to life’s responsibilities and still have a little energy to actually enjoy life, to gaze out over the land beyond or splash in its water and remember our connection with nature, our place in ‘God’s’ world as opposed to man’s.
Whatever creates this tranquility, this connectedness, it warms my heart to see that man can live in modern times and still retain his connection with tradition and nature. For this Switzerland definitely gets an A++
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