Day 4 - Interlaken to Chur

Had a long deep sleep in a squishy bed. The alarm woke us at 7am. We had a delicious breakfast in the hotel sitting in the morning sunshine. We’ve been so lucky with the weather so far. The forecast was rain every day and it’s been sunshine every day!

Interlaken was waking up and looked beautiful as we set off for the station to catch the 9:08 to Brig. This meant getting back on the Golden Pass Express line and changing in Spiez before catching a regional train. Brig is where we pick up the next train - The Glacier Express. The whole reason for this trip.

We had a 50 minute wait so walked into Brig for a coffee. All the shops were closed on this Thursday morning. We couldn’t fathom why, then sitting outside a cafe in the main square we heard a band start to play and a marching band appeared. There was clearly a religious festival of some kind and the band and procession of old soldiers, nuns, scouts and various town dignitaries gathered in front of the church a few feet from where we sat.

I don’t think Brig would take a lot of exploring but it’s a very quaint little village with cobbled squares and cafes to sit in. We went back to the station to get ready for the next train. VERY exciting!

The train arrived on time and we boarded and found our seats. The train was already full since it had started at Zermatt (we were picking it up about 40% of the way into its journey from Zermatt to St Moritz) but easily found out reserved seats.

The train crosses the river Rhone a few minutes after leaving Brig, and continues its way east into the Upper Rhone Valley. At end of the valley, in Oberwald, the train reached an altitude of 1366 m.

We had pre-ordered a meal on the train and we were served a bit too quickly, so by 11:45 we were eating salad and stroganoff!

The table on the other side of the train was made up a South African couple and a German man and his son. They were speaking very loudly about all the things they’ve seen and done. It would’ve been nicer if there was a little less chat and a little more looking out of the window.

The first stop was Andermatt. There seemed to be a lot of building work here and a look at the brochure told us that it’s a Swiss Alps holiday resort under construction. The landscape changed afterwards largely to meadows, flowers and cows.

After leaving Andermatt we travel along the Oberalppass, where we were pulled up to the highest point of the trip.

It was all down hill from there! Next stop Disentis, at 2pm. We’d been on the train for two and a half hours and it felt like 30 minutes.

Disentis is the largest Romansh speaking communal in Switzerland. We learned that there are four official languages in Switzerland: German, French, Italian and Romansh (a descendant from the ‘vulgar Latin’ spoken in the Roman Empire). German is by far the most dominant language.

Rain set in at this point and was running down the windows of the carriage, but as the landscape is pretty similar in this stretch it wasn’t a problem. As we descended, we were joined by the upper River Rhine - two major European rivers in a matter of hours!

Once we passed Disentis we were soon back at sea level, beside the increasingly wide river and rock walls and the occasional cave carved out over the centuries. We got out of the train at Chur (pronounced Ker) to absolutely baking sunshine, wide cobbled streets and a little walk to our hotel.

Hotel - in the loosest sense - there wasn’t a great deal of choice in Chur, so it’s more of a hostel. We share a toilet (!!) but we are slap bang in the old town, so easy access to all there is to see.

The Glacier Express was a wonderful experience. Beautiful scenery and a real ‘once in a lifetime’ experience.

We took a little walk around Chur, by now it was around 5pm, and finding the museums and galleries closed 😮, sat in a little square with a cold beer for a while. No idea why sitting on a train is so tiring! We have a little more time here than in some other stops we’ve had.

Chur is the capital of the Graubünden canton and the oldest city in Switzerland. The old town area is a car-free maze of small streets, packed with cafes and restaurants, arty shops, hairdressers and wool shops, as well as small hotels, including ours.

After a shower and some time with our books, we went out for dinner. There are so many more restaurants here than everywhere else we’ve stayed so far, so we went for … Sri Lankan! Veggie curry for me and roti with lamb for Andrew. We then had a slow walk around the town and off to bed for an early night.

xx