The Glacier Express to Awesome

I am so blessed to have amazing friends. If you are reading this, I consider it a blessing that you would take time out of your day to get a preview of my life abroad. However, one friend in particular has greatly exceeded my expectations and flown all the way from Los Angeles, California to spend 10 days with me in my world. So this blog is dedicated to a Miss Nynette Marceth. Without her I would have taken the Galcier Express to the Matterhorn, but instead we took the Glacier Express to Awesome.

Saturday morning Nynette and I boarded a short train to Chur, Switzerland where we had a 30 minute layover (including a quick photo op of a Denver Broncos Banner randomly hung in the street) before the departure of the Glacier Express. As Nynette's travel book puts it, there is nothing "express" about the Glacier Express. The train crawls at a top speed of probably 30-40 mph and travels through one of the most picturesque treks in the Swiss Alps. It daparts from St. Moritz/Davos and 6 hours later arrives in Zermatt, Switzerland, the famous town at the base of the Matterhorn.

The Matterhorn at Noon

For obvious reasons, this particular train ride is a popular experience for tourists (such as Nynette and I). But no highly touristic experience is complete without the token Asian tourists (excuse the racist generalization, but don't pretend you don't know what I am talking about). For some reason Asian tourists, with their mega zoom lenses and baseball caps purchased at the local souvenier shop, somehow make everything more entertatining. I don't know if it is because they take pictures of everything and thus the rest of us are able to notice things that we may have missed otherwise or if it is because they travel in multi-generational herds, but no tourist experience is complete without these fabulously interesting people. This train ride was no excuse. About two hours into the ride, Nynette and my train cabin, which originally was virtually empty, was invaded by a family of Asians. At first, the kid playing video games on his iPad with the volume on blast-out- your-eardrums made these new travelers a nuisance, but after the concept of headphones was discovered Nynette and I spent the remainder of the train ride trying not to pee our pants laughing at an Asian man who was singing along out loud to his iPod without a care in the world. Another Asian man we are sure was randomly taking pictures of us throughout the ride and finally mustered up the courage to ask to take a picture of us...with the sequential picture setting that ended up being a dozen picture montage of us awkwardly smiling for the camera. Not to worry though, because I got revenge by returning the favor when the man was napping. Nevertheless our tourist experience on the train was completed by our fellow travelers. Between the scenery, great conversation (7 months of catching up to do), and comedic relief of the Asian tourists the ride was well worth the 54 Swiss Francs.

We arrived in Zermatt at around 4pm which was pleanty of time to check into our hotel before exploriing the ancent town. I had previously booked the hotel online soley based on the price and comepletely ignored the location so with the help of Google Maps via my Blackberry I was pleased to discover that it was on the side of the town closest to the mountain. However, I think Nynette and I can both agree that we could have gone without the Level 4 vertical ice pick climb we had to endure to get to the place. Ok, that was a giant exageration, but for two girls who constitute exercise as the distance to and from the snack cabinet, the hike was definitely a butt burner. After discarding our backpacks in the hotel room we headed back down the cliff to explore Zermatt.

The Matterhorn at Sunset

The first order of business was to eat dinner so we stopped at the first restaurant that had Racklette on the menu for only 7 Swiss Francs. We shared our meal, which was d-e-licious and then continued on to the center of town. We wandered past old chalets, wheat storage structures that have since been abandoned, and of course a million souvenier shops. We came to discover that the preceeding week was "Zermatt Unplugged" which was a compilation of performances by various upcoming artists as well as a few famous artists such as Seal, OneRepublic, and David Grey. Unfortunately the showcased artists performed earlier in the week, so instead of paying 67 Swiss Francs to watch a no-name band, we decided to sit outside the paper thin tent, listen to the music for free and play "Your Team, My Team."

Nynette and me

If you are with a good friend and have time to waste I highly recommend this game for endless entertainment. There is no winner, there is no loser, just hypothetical teams. You begin by people watching for a while and then you start accumulating your "team." You can add people to your own team as well as place people on your opponent's team. The rating scale is completely objective and there is no score keeping. The goal of the game is to estimate that you have more awesome people than lame people on your team. For example, if you see a tall dark and hansome man walking down the street with an irresistable swagger (refer to previous blog), it might be a good idea to snag him onto your team before you opponent snatches him up. Adversely, if that same man were to, say, trip over a crack in the sidewalk and roadrash his face upon impact with the concrete, it might be a good idea to force him onto your opponent's team before he ends up on yours. Here are some unfortunate souls who ended up on my team that night:


After playing "Your Team, My Team" until the moon rose well above the mountains, we decided to make our way back to the hotel for the night. Something you may have noticed in looking through my travel pictures is that I strongly believe that you can't express how much fun you are having in a photograph unless you are jumping. So when Nynette and I discovered the thermometer reading 6 degrees celcius, it was only natural for me to want a jumping picture below. Unfortunately, Nynette is, let's just say, an amature. After teaching her how to properly jump for the photo I got a goodie on the third take. Taking a jumping photo is somewhat of an art because you have to time it perfectly when the person is airborn or you get a lot of pictures of the person looking constipated. When it was Nynette's turn behind the camera all hell broke loose. I was jumping so many times with failed lense captures that there came a point when Nynette and I were sprawled out on the sidewalk laughing so hard everyone walking by thought we were both wasted drunk. A few people (pictured above, as they ended up on my team) stopped to inquire about our strange behavior. Finally, after a half decent picture was taken, we called it a night and headed back to the hotel.

The next morning Nynette and I woke up at the ungodly hour of 6:40am to take pictures of the sunrise on the Matterhorn. It turned out to be well worth it:

The Matterhorn at Sunrise

We went back to sleep until about 9:00 when we woke up, ate breakfast, showered, and started our day. One thing I would like to mention about European adventures in general, is that there are things that happen in Europe that would never happen in the USA. For example, building codes don't really apply to buildings built in the 1800s and are converted into hotels at a later time. So in Zermatt, it was no big deal to cram a bathroom in the atic of the building with ceilings so low that I literally had to shower on my knees because I couldn't stand up. Oh Europe, how I love you.

After the interesting shower experience, we packed up our things, checked out of the hotel and decided to go shopping. We wandered around Zermatt taking pictures, ducking into shops that caught our interest here and there, and buying a few things. Mainly postcards. At about 3:30pm we had seen enough of the little town and decided to head back to Zurich. On our way, we realized that we could hop off the train at any city on the way home and just catch another train back to Zürich at a later time. So that is what we did....