Switzerland by Rail
May 5–6, 2026
My original plan was for us to head to the Berner Oberland area for a couple of nights and take the gondolas and cogwheel trains to the top of mountains. I checked the weather and saw that even if it did not rain on us, there would be a heavy cloud cover, and all we would see would be the top of clouds. I also decided that lugging our suitcases from station to station would involve more wear and tear on us than I wanted at that point in the trip. So instead we went to Zürich and did day trips from there.
For our next-to-last day excursion, we headed to the Berner Oberland to see what we could see anyway. So we took the train to Interlaken, passing one of the lakes on the way. From there we headed to Lauterbrunnen, where one can catch many of the gondolas and cogwheel trains.
A virgin, a monk, and an ogre went into a bar …. Sounds like there could be a joke in there somewhere. But anyway, the Jungfrau, the Mönch, and the Eiger are three famous peaks in the area. I took pictures of what mountain tops I could see, but I haven't tried to identify them. It didn't rain on us there, but the cloud cover was faily solid, so we didn't take any of those trips.
You can see the cables for gondolas to the top of a mountain.
I didn't get any good pictures of the lake as we went by. This bad shot will give you an idea of the atmospheric scenery we saw on the way back, often in the rain.
For our final day in Switzerland, we took the train toward the border with Austria to a town where Mary Jane's ancestors on one side of her family had been married before they came to the US. One stop along the way was Rorschach. I sent a picture of the sign with an attempt at humor, asking what it reminded people of. I got puzzled replies from very intelligent and educated people.
The town is called Altstätten. We had low expectations, but thought at least I could get a picture of her by the sign, even if it was raining too much to explore the town. As far as we know, none of her realtives had ever been back to the town since the ancestors left.
But it turned out to be a nice day, so we hopped on a bus to the main part of town for lunch. The food was interesting, but not particularly good. I was particularly unimpressed by the local Kola Zero.
We saw both the Catholic and the Reformed churches. I headed to the bus stop and wondered what happened to Mary Jane as I saw three buses pass that would have taken us back to the station for the 4:00 train. It turned out that Mary Jane had found an open door at the Reformed church, and found some people to talk with. There were still people in the area with her ancestral family name. So that turned out to be a highlight of the trip for her. Eventually, we got a bus back to the station, and after running up the wrong ramp, we made it to the train to Zürich just in time.
And so ended our rail adventures in Switzerland. What we thought of as an afterthought to our Rhine cruise turned out to be a wonderful trip in itself.