Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

adventures / Italy / photo / Switzerland / weekend — Comments Off
29
Jun 25

Riding the Bernina Express

Today we rode on the Bernina Express which, like yesterday’s ride on the Glacier Express, is a “Panorama Express.” It connects Chur, Switzerland, to Tirano, Italy by crossing the Swiss Engadin Alps a route designed for sightseeing, a route which was declared a World Heritage Site in 2008. You go over 196 bridges, through 55 tunnels and cross the Bernina Pass at 7,392 feet above sea level.

Like many of the trains we’ve seen, this one is electrified. Unlike some, this one does not use the cogwheel style to navigate the steeper gradients. This train route, which has been around for almost 120 years, does a few picturesque loops in choice places. But the scenery is grand everywhere, as you’ll see in the next video post.

Since we’re winding down — tomorrow we head home — I should take a customary moment to brag on the trip designer. My lovely bride put this whole thing together, from schedules to excursions, to places to sleep and many of the restaurants. As ever, she put together an amazing trip.

I just carried the luggage. And sweat through the heatwave.

Here’s another one of these amazing views on the Bernina Express route. This is a panorama, so you know what to do.

(Click to embiggen.)

At one of the really high up places the train actually for precisely eight minutes. You can get out on a landing which is high up in the mountains, and enjoy this view.

This route is a four-hour train ride. It is designed for tourists and isn’t the cheapest ticket. The people across from us did this the entire time.

When we exited the train in Tirano, we were in Italy, at the central train station, which is surely sufficient for the task, but hardly as grandiose as you might picture when you think of central train stations. The web told us there would be cabs aplenty waiting outside, but that wasn’t the case on an early Sunday evening.

Our hotel was a few miles away. Too far to walk. What to do, what to do.

Just across from the station there was tourist and newspaper kiosk. I walked over there. The guy said he spoke a little English, and he spoke a good amount of it.

He called every cab company in town, but everyone was busy. He helped us pirate the neighboring restaurant’s wifi, which bothered one of the waiters, but our guy — and I deeply regret not asking his name — did not care. Then, while still selling things to people as they passed through, he called the hotel and had them arrange a ride for us. They told him 10-15 minutes, and 15 minutes later, the ride showed up. If it wasn’t for the kiosk guy, we’d still be standing outside the train station instead of this beautifully restored rustic B&B. The The Contrada Beltramelli is probably the nicest place we’ve stayed on this trip, and the food is easily some of the most outrageously good food of the whole vacation. Plus! Despite part of this structure dating back to the 17th century, the rooms have air conditioning, helpful in this heat wave.

And while we’re leaving for home tomorrow, there’s still more to see. When you’re done exploring the Contrada Beltramelli’s site photos, come back here for some nice video highlights from today’s train ride. The views are definitely worth your time.

adventures / photo / Switzerland / video / weekend — Comments Off
29
Jun 25

St Martin Church, Chur

Before we caught the train out of Chur, we took a little walking tour of the Old Town. (Pronounce it “Coor.”) Two churches were on the agenda, but one of them was closed for visitors. St. Martin’s Church, however, was a highlight.

St. Martin’s square marks the historical north-south route through the inner city. The fountain, decorated with the signs of the zodiac, and the statue date to 1716. Much of it is still original. Also, it provides you cold water, which is a treat on a hot day like this.

Next to the fountain there’s a relief for the visually impaired, that gives a perspective on the entire city. St Martin’s is in the back of the shot, in the center of the relief. You can see the patina on the steeple.

It looks like this.

The Romanesque church was built in the 8th century, mostly destroyed 600 years later in one of those city-defining fires. Using parts of the original building, it was rebuilt in late Gothic style. It’s the largest late-Gothic church in the region. and was a critical part of the ancient town’s Reformation.

I doubt this door is original.

Wikipedia has a list of 116 churches named after St. Martin (there are five saints named Martin, our guy here is St. Martin of Tours) around the world, and this one isn’t even on the list!

After that fire, the tower was completed in 1534, complete with a watchman’s room and Renaissance dome. It stayed like that for 350 years, then got a neo-Gothic upgrade, which didn’t go over well in the neighborhood. Then came the current roof design in 1918 as part of a larger renovation. the tower was given a pointed roof as part of the church’s overall renovation.

I like the little details. This leaf is hand-carved in each of the congregations pews.

Off to the side, where musicians or choir members sit, are some other stylistic carvings.

At the end of the renovation, now 100-plus years ago, the nave received stained glass windows by Augusto Giacometti depicting the Christmas story. So these are relatively new parts of the church, still.

On the walk back to our hotel, and the train station, we passed some picture windows in the stores that had some antiques of their own. This looks like a National Cash Register (of Dayton, Ohio) Model 79, a nickle-plated number that they debuted in 1897. They’ll fetch you a pretty penny at an auction today, but what a beautiful showpiece.

Anyone want to guess what this is?

Figured it out yet?

Yeah?

No?

This is a cylindrical calculator. It will work out multiplication, division and more using graphically displayed logarithms. And if you need precision, you’re set up. This calculator is accurate to six decimal places. This is a smaller model, a 10

I’ve never seen one of those before.

You’re going to see some more sites you’ve never seen in the next post. I’ll be sharing a few of the views from our last train ride, today’s experience on the Bernina Express. Don’t miss it!

adventures / Switzerland / weekend — Comments Off
28
Jun 25

Riding the Glacier Express

We rode out of Zermatt on The Glacier Express, a panoramic train through the Swiss Alps. The whole route is a 181 mile experience, bypassing the local stops, and maximizing the views with great big windows. They call it the “slowest express train in the world.”

We didn’t take the whole journey, but stopped in Chur, which gave us most of the scenic views. We ambled our way to the Hotel of Three Kings, where we stayed on the second floor, after temporarily breaking the elevator. (All the luggage went in, something shifted and jammed the doors. The attendant had the special trick key to solve the problem. The rooms didn’t have air, which is important just now, but they did have fans, which were helpful. Chur — pronounce it “Coor” — is Switzerland’s oldest city. We’re only here for the night. We have one more scenic train ride to take tomorrow. But, first, enjoy a few of the views from the Glacier Express.

Tomorrow is our last train ride, taking us to our last stop on this grand adventure. We’ll ride the Bernina Express. Come back and see the views.

adventures / Friday / Switzerland / video — Comments Off
27
Jun 25

Video of the Matterhorn

Here’s a bit of video from our afternoon on Gornergrat, looking over at the Matterhorn, six miles distant. There are some 24 peaks around there of similar altitude, meaning the views are spectacular everywhere you look. And you’ll get a small sense of that from this video. Enjoy.

Tomorrow we take a scenic train ride, so there will probably be a lot of photos. Come back and see the sites with me.

adventures / Friday / history / photo / Switzerland — Comments Off
27
Jun 25

Across from the Matterhorn

We walked from our hotel through Zermatt, 5,310 feet elevation. We boarded a train to go up. Up to the Gornergrat ridge, which sits 10,285 feet above sea level. There are two stops, and then you’re there, at the top of the world, it seems like, except for what you can see opposite.

It ain’t bad.

The high mark, of course, is the iconic Matterhorn summit, just over there.

Mountains, being great skewers of time and space and distance, are always misleading. The Matterhorn is actually six miles from where we are standing.

Here’s a broader view of the view. This is a panoramic shot of sorts, so you know what to do.

(Click to embiggen.)

And here’s a slightly better closeup. Doesn’t look like anyone is climbing it today. At least on this side.

Tomorrow, Europe’s highest open-air theater (really, a flat spot with a screen and several rows of chairs, which we passed on the way up) is opening for the season and they are showing “The Matterhorn Story,” a play that depicts the first ascent of the mountain, in 1865. It debuts tomorrow. We’ll be gone by then.

Where we were today was above the tree line. But there were a few things growing that high up.

Oddly, I didn’t have most of the same thin air effects I was complaining about on our visit to Jungfraujoch. I must have acclimated in the last 48 hours.

(I did not.)

Way up there is a humble little chapel, dedicated to St. Bernard — patron saint of the Alps, skiing, snowboarding, hiking, backpacking, and mountaineering, if you go in for that sort of thing.

I’m not Catholic, but I’d like to find out how a person who lived in the 11th century and canonized in the 17th century picks up snowboarding as something to protect. Snowboarding just dates back to 1965, after all.

Anyway, the altarpiece is carved wooden figures in a relief-style with alpine flowers above the altarpiece. The tabernacle is decorated with grapevines, the altar table is made of stone slabs with a cross.

There’s also a little hotel and restaurant and gift shop up there. A development waiting for other developments, unless it’s a one-night novelty, I’m sure. As a guest, your options are the views, the observatory, two short tourist experiences and going back down the mountain. One of the tourist things is a beautiful 10-minute movie that shows you the four seasons on the mountain. The other is a three-minute VR presentation of paragliding over the Matterhorn. We’ve seen people doing this all over, and made jokes with the in-laws about getting them in one of those rigs.

We got close.

I sat in one of those chairs, too. (Not pictured.) I joined the flight in-progress, so I went through it again, just to see everything. It was shot on a nice 270 degree camera, so you can see a great deal. Almost just like doing it! I was hoping my mother-in-law would stick her arms out and soar through the sky …

There’s also a nice display of a first-generation engine at the Gornergrat summit. (There are two others a bit further down, as well.) These are historic and legendary pieces of the Swiss railway system — albeit “reinterpreted” for their installment in 2023. The signs don’t tells us what was reinterpreted, but I’d like to think they looked exactly like this when they first took on their job of going up and down the mountain in 1898, when they opened this system. Today, it is the oldest, still-operational, electrical cogwheel in the world.

Even still, these engines had a shorter trek than their modern descendants. The original rail station was about 230 lower than today’s peak spot. Regular folks did the walk. Others, of means, were carried up in sedan chairs.

Hopefully they felt self-conscious about that.

Mark Twain said “Nowhere is there such a display of grandeur and beauty as can be seen from the Gornergrat summit,” but he got up there some other way. He wrote that in 1878, before this railway was completed, which wasn’t too long after the place started appearing in the travel guides (1856) and topographical maps (1862).

Cogwheel rails work on a rack and pinion system, which allows them to shorten the distance by mastering steep inclines. Static friction of the wheels provide the propulsion. The part in between the rails is the key, and in this case a setup like this handles inclines, the sign says, of 200 percent. Carl Roman Abt was the engineer that developed this setup, which has some clever ingenuity in design and reusability.

This is how it all connects together. It’s powered by a 275 volt three-phase current. TO save power, the engines act as generators when braking, so when it is descending, the engine is producing electricity. Recuperation allows that energy to be used on the next ascent. Today, three trains going downhill produce enough power for two trains heading up. (There are two trains an hour up here, too.) The rest of the power comes from Zermatt’s power grid.

If you look closely, you can see the teeth from the cogwheel system here. Since its earliest days, this has been an electrical system. The only steam engine that ran on these lines was the locomotive that helped in the construction. When it’s task was completed, they sold the thing to Spain.

Twelve photos, a history lesson and 900-plus words, so let’s call it here. In the next post, I’ll share some video from the Gornergrat summit. Don’t miss it.