Editor’s note: Park City Councilor Bill Ciraco is chronicling his exploration of public transportation in Europe in a series of commentaries. This is the third.
As wonderful as Zurich was, I was excited to get on with the rest of my itinerary. I had planned on taking the train from Zurich to Interlaken.
There are around 40 daily connections between the two. Seven of those departures are direct (no transfer) and take one hour and 56 minutes, with five stops. Trips with transfers average two hours and 20 minutes. Drive time following the same general route as the train would be two hours with no traffic or roadwork issues — seemed like a no brainer to take the train.
There is a slightly faster driving route which takes you through Lucerne — one hour and 45 minutes — which did make me think that perhaps I would rent car and drive so that I could make a stop at the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne. Given that I likely wouldn’t have the opportunity to pass through Lucerne again for quite some time I chose the latter. This would prove to be a mistake.
The objective upon reaching Interlaken was to grab a train to Grindelwald, which would take me 35 minutes with departures every half hour. With this many departures, I wouldn’t need to plan on when to arrive. The drive from Interlaken to Grindelwald takes abut 40 minutes if there was no traffic. With only a two-lane road in that winds up a mountain valley, the train is almost always the faster way.
Regrettably, I chose to stop at the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne, which meant I would need to rent a car and drive. While the museum stop was relatively worthwhile, the drive was not. It ended up taking me three hours and 40 minutes of driving from Zurich to Grindelwald, which is where I would be spending the night.
The train would have been one hour less, and I could have worked on part two of this series while traveling. Instead I spent a couple hours working after a wonderful dinner at the Hotel Kirchbuhl, which has a Park City connection in Adolph Imboden, formerly and famously of Adolph’s Restaurant.
Upon checking in, I quickly made my way down to Dorfstrasse, which serves as the main thoroughfare in Grindelwald. The sidewalks were reminiscent of Park City, very narrow. What was different was the minuscule number of cars traveling up and down the street.
People walked on the narrow sidewalks, on the side and even in the middle of the street, moving for the intermittent passing of a car. No one was hurt, there were no accidents, and the shops were abuzz. Here I could see that the adage — cars don’t buy things, people do — was true.
Having dinner on the terrace at the hotel was mesmerizing as I looked up in awe of the massive Eiger peak above me. The only sounds were faint conversations in German and English from the neighboring tables and the sound of water cascading off the mountainside in the valley below in the Luitschine River. It is in a place like this where you begin to understand the phrase, heaven on earth.
The following morning I woke early to catch the bus (free for hotel guests) down to Grindelwald Terminal, which is one stop down valley from the main train station and where you can access the Eiger Express Tri-Cable Gondola to take you up to Eigergletscher Station, where you board the Jungfraubahn train for the rest of the ride up through (yes actually through) the Eiger to Jungfraujoch — known as the top of Europe at nearly 12,000 feet. Here you will find an observatory, with indoor and outdoor viewing areas, an amazing Lindt Chocolate shop, a restaurant, a tunnel carved through the glacier for you to walk through, and a hotel.
For the return trip, instead of getting on the gondola down, I stayed on the train down to the Kleine Scheidegg station at 6,700 feet, where I switched to the Wengernalp Bahn for the trip down to Grindelwald at about 3,400 feet of elevation.
Yes. Your math is correct. You can take a train up 8,500 feet of mountain and walk out on a glacier year-round. Traveling that entire distance on the new Eiger Express Gondola for the first leg took 45 minutes. The gondola was newly added last year. It reduces the trip on rail only down from one hour and 26 minutes.
I am not looking to convince anyone who is a naysayer, but the Eiger Express Gondola is very similar to what is proposed for Little Cottonwood Canyon. And while I would prefer a rail instead, the gondola that is proposed is an effective and minimally invasive option that you need to experience to understand. It is a thousand times better than the red snake.
Next stop in my journey is Zermatt, the “car free” resort capital of Europe.
https://network.sbb.ch/en/station/ZUE/target/IO
https://www.verkehrshaus.ch/en/home.html