Glacier Express: Winter can be so beautiful
Maybe that's hell. Or the sky. No matter where I look, it's all white. The world has bathed in glaring light and has lost its contours, erasing the boundary between earth and horizon. It gets a bit tighter in my ribcage, at the same time I'm totally fascinated and can not take my eyes off the white nothingness - I'm in the middle of nothingness. And then the waitress comes and serves a round of schnapps, which she leans in a high arc from the bottle into small glasses on a tray.
Winter can be so beautiful
I am sitting in the Glacier Express, the "slowest express train in the world", which connects the two Swiss winter sports resorts of St. Moritz in the canton of Graubünden and Zermatt in the Valais. Since 1930, the train has traveled almost 300 kilometers and takes seven and a half hours. Seven and a half hours in which he tortures himself up to over 2000 meters, wriggling through dark ravines, driving past torrential mountain streams, passing cow meadows, gonding over 291 skyscraper-high viaducts and through 91 tunnels and cutting up unpolluted snow. Seven and a half hours in which passengers can enjoy the full range of alpine activities without hiking, without making an effort, and still be able to enjoy the incredible panorama of the four-thousanders thrown into the countryside here in lavish numbers from their seats.
The Glacier Express is just right for me
As soon as I heard about this Alpine trip for the first time, I thought: "Just the thing for me." Theoretically, I love the mountains, provided they do not challenge me too much. As I empty my shot glass, I recognize a wooden cross and a fence outside. Finally, something breaks through the bright white surface. Five minutes ago we came out of a tunnel and reached the highest point of our journey: the Oberalp Pass at 2033 meters. Now, at the beginning of March, there is nothing but snow here, never before have I seen such amounts of it anywhere. It swallows meadows, rocks and the Oberalpsee and turns the landscape into a futuristic scenery through which our train creeps. The top of the snow cover is exactly at my eye level. It somehow looks like the cream filling of a child's milk cuts.
I would have wished for a few of these flakes before, in St. Moritz, where I spent two days and nights before my big train ride. Winter was a bit warmer here too, and at twelve degrees, even the most famous luxury resort can not afford a snow guarantee. Although, to be honest, the snow was of course not the reason for my stay in St. Moritz. I wanted to enjoy the tranquility of the mountains and see the hotels where Gunter Sachs drank champagne with ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Bardot in the '60s. Round Lake St. Moritz, where in February the world celebrity elite compares their fur coats at the White Turf horse race, along the Via Serlas, the Kö of St. Moritz, where the chalet residents live up to 150 meters in length Get rid of their gigantic annual salaries in minutes. When I arrived at the station, the chauffeurs of the five-star hotels waited for their regulars, I took a taxi. The felt 30 meters to my hotel "Steffani" cost 22 Swiss francs, the first coffee, which I had brought to my room, five francs extra - just for bringing -, and somehow I was glad; St. Moritz welcomed me as I had imagined: expensive.
This luxury disappoints
Unfortunately, it is also very gray. There was no sign of the sun when I made my way to the lake. St. Moritz consists of the slightly higher district of St. Moritz Dorf and the lower part of St. Moritz Bad. In between, not much beauty, unspectacular, slightly faded 50s to 70s architecture, only the "Chesa Futura" by star architect Sir Norman Foster, a kidney-shaped apartment block on stilts, impressed me. I had imagined the luxury place much prettier.
When I arrived down the lake, it was almost foggy. From above drizzle, from below stuck my hiking boots in the mud, Furkaund when after a while Seeumrundung left of me suddenly the "Badrutt's Palace" emerged, was my decision: coffee and cake in the warm are sometimes more relaxing than exercise. The "Badrutt's Palace" is the luxury hotel on the spot, the Badrutt family invented the winter tourism in St. Moritz, so to speak. Hotel founder Badrutt bet in 1864 with a few Englishmen that the winter here in the Engadine is at least as beautiful as the summer. The Englishmen should just give it a try, if they do not like the snowy St. Moritz, Badrutt would cover the travel expenses. The English stayed from Christmas to Easter - St. Moritz was thus a winter sports resort, the "Badrutt's Palace" the first port of call for upscale accommodation.
Also lifted was my reception at the hotel, which reminds a bit of a replica of Neuschwanstein in Disneyland and in which a suite also costs 18,000 Swiss Francs per night: One page served me the revolving door, the porter ignored my muddy boots and gave I had the feeling that I was just waiting for me, in the Knights' Hall a waiter led me to the second best table with wing chair and view of the lake. The best thing about the fireplace was unfortunately occupied by two young American mothers, including four very hip children and two nannies.
Claudia Schiffer turned the corner
Anyway, I realized that this hotel is the true St. Moritz stereotype: very blonde, very thin women on very high heels stumbled past my table, on the shoulders soft furs, in the hands nobly filled paper bags of Prada, Gucci or Louis Vuitton. A group of 16-year-old sold the time with a Magnum bottle Taittinger. An eight-member Russian family settled at the other end of the hall for a snack and at the same time converted a whole group of seats to the screened Separée. And then Claudia Schiffer and her husband and children turned the corner. What did I want more?
About my St. Moritz enthusiasm, I almost forgot my cake - which would have been a shame: Chocolate and chocolate cream alternated in layers, surrounded by golden sugar grill on raspberry mirror, in addition to a cake stand with about 50 different chocolates - homemade. I have seldom taken more delicious 3000 calories.
Admittedly, the food on the Glacier Express, which was served to us about an hour ago, was not quite as good, but classic: Bündner Fleisch and Geschnetzeltes. Unfortunately, it is no longer served in the dining car, but on the square, after all, but on cloth towels, the cutlery set across, so it does not slip away. But because of the food I'm not sitting here. Our train is heading towards Andermatt, and the gear wheel drive is going down 600 meters in backloops. If anything has ever looked like toy trains, then this one. All around me huge snow-capped peaks, in the distance a few snowshoe hikers pushing fresh tracks into the white. The clouds break open and clear a clear blue sky - everything is different here than before crossing the Oberalppass.
Since the landscape was rough, when we drove behind Chur by the Rheintalschlucht with their mighty rock walls. It was exciting when we crossed the most famous Landwasser Viaduct at Filisur, between us and the thundering water at 60 meters depth only this narrow bridge and a few stone pillars. It was exhausting when we drove 400 meters between Bergün and Preda through only a few kilometers through bends and helical tunnels. We saw Bergün from three perspectives and our stomach felt like we were at the fair. And it was exciting, as we drove through the Domleschg Valley and tried to discover the castles and locks that stick there in the rocks. And now it gets dark, because we drive into the Furkaund Base Tunnel, which is over 15 kilometers long and thanks to which the train can drive all year round and in the winter does not have to surrender to the avalanches. Some of my fellow travelers use the tunnel for a power sleep, my bank neighbor tells me about her short stay in St. Moritz.
She is from Chicago and spends a week skiing in Zermatt, then a week in Marbella - a fast-track European contrast program. She proudly shows me her new strawberry red ski suit, which she bought at "Jet Set", St. Moritz - who wants a "real" snow outfit, must go there. Of course, I was there as well, shopping after being seen finally the second main occupation in St. Moritz. Among other things, I've tried a white Blaufuchs jacket - I was fine, but cost a whopping 3200 Swiss francs. That would have put me a long way off the piste, and even the fact that I did not ski at all would not have mattered. The saleswoman told of the people who buy at least two new station wagons per season - to run through the place or through the hotel. A ski slope would never enter these people.
After the Furka tunnel, we drive leisurely through the Rhone Valley, quickly manage a climb of 125 meters and cross the I-knows-not-so-many bridge. For what I saw on this trip from the Alps, walking holidays were not enough until the end of my life. And everything sitting down, in cozy warmth, in cozy upholstered furniture. Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to Zermatt now. Unfortunately, in terms of the weather, Zermatt is not much friendlier to me than St. Moritz. The sun has long since disappeared when I take the electric taxi through the car-free Zermatt to the hotel "La Ginabelle". The mountain tops are in the clouds, and I'm disappointed: no Zermatt landmark for me, no Matterhorn to see. But even if the real Matterhorn is denied me for once, in the place it is omnipresent.In the souvenir shops I can buy a complete home furnishings with the mountain on it: fridge magnets, beer mugs, snow globes, ashtrays, tea towels, alarm clocks, napkin rings, paperweights, bed linen. , , I confine myself to four full of nougat filled Matterhörner.
I stroll through the village for a while, take a look at Hinterdorfstraße, a kind of open-air museum: Here are old Valais farmhouses from the 16th and 18th centuries, on stone feet, so that they do not sink into the snow. At the time it was definitely very small and narrow and modest lived, what can no longer be said of today's Zermatt. Hotel stretches to hotel, skiers populate the streets, and I'm slowly through with city strolls and shopping. I treat myself to a whirlpool visit followed by a pedicure in my hotel, then a visit to the restaurant "Walliserstube". "Good choice and genuine Swiss food," I think, while I'm just landed in probably the only fish restaurant Zermatt. Very absurd, but because I'm hungry and because the fish, the host Andreas Bieling shows me kindly, really looks very fresh, I stay seated. And be rewarded with the best sole I have eaten in a long time. When I look at the many pictures of the - as expected - Matterhorn on the walls, I get a tip from another guest at the next table: get up very early, then you have the best chance to see the Matterhorn in all its glory ,
Glacier Express to the sky
At half past five I wind up the next morning from the blanket. When I step out of the hotel door, the air may have a degree, my breath makes small clouds, and I pull the scarf up over my ears. But then I see it. It stands majestically in front of a deep blue horizon, its tip glows golden: the Matterhorn in the rising sun. At least now I know that the trip with the Glacier Express was worthwhile, because this is clearly the sky.
