Playing with the Federal Train Set

Two epic journeys under our belt now: yesterday we went and had a look at Schaffhausen, which stands in an odd bit of Switzerland on the wrong side of the Rhine, involving a train ride through a dollop of Germany with Swiss railway stations....  (We lunched in a pizzeria in a historic building that had been bombed by the Yanks in consequence of its being north of the Rhine.)  Still, beautiful place with a lot of 16th century and earlier frescoed buildings, well maintained.  From there to the Rhine falls, where they have built some new viewing platforms out over the 1000 litres per second falls - quite frightening, but one comes to rely on Swiss engineering.  Thence to Winterthur, where we paused for a shandy per man, and then on a kind of country tram through the pretty and understated Zürcher Oberland to Rapperswil to catch the boat back to Zürich.  We expected an ordinary lake motor ferry, but got the 1914 paddle steamer Rapperswil, the only steamer on the lake yesterday.  Sat on deck for schnitzel and chips, with local rosé, while the old ship laced its way back up the lake to Zürich.  Transport count: 3 trams, 7 trains, a boat and a bus, and needless to say everything connected perfectly.  It involved a lot of steps and stairs: but we are getting back in training, given the four and a half flights up to the flat.

Today's jaunt involved a modest two trams, four trains, two funiculars and one of those kitschy tourist road train jobs (in Lugano).  We did the spectacular Gotthard line - wonderful scenery and spiral tunnels: you see the church at Wassen three times as your train tacks up or down the mountain side.  It won't be the same when the low-level Gotthard tunnel comes into service, so I hope there will be some investment in the tourist potential of the old line.  Lunch in wonderfully laid-back Lugano, where it was mercifully not too hot, nor humid.  We toyed with adding a few twiddly bits on the way home from Lucerne, eg a boat ride or the rack line to Interlaken, but opted for the fast train back to Berne.

The backache and a touch of Montezuma's Revenge (both on the mend) have slowed me down a bit.  [Come to think of it, it might have been Schaffhausen's Revenge on the Allies...]  So we're setting ourselves less challenging goals tomorrow, including a couple of hours on a boat on the Lake of Lucerne.  Wednesday is set to be stormy, so we'll have our day off, to look at a museum or two in Berne, a bit of shopping, maybe, and to plan something modest for Thursday.  We need to use up the last day of our pass: Martyn thinks Berner Oberland if the weather is as forecast.