Waldstatterhof Key and A Little About Swizerland

The room key weighs about as much as two phones - really. Maybe so you don't lose it? I didn't do this the first day, but apparently, you're supposed to leave your key with the front desk, and they put it in your mail slot. Today I left it - too heavy for my small purse.

 Peter Fry did a great job discussing our train trip (marked in red on the bottom right photo).

Switzerland has a vibrant public transport network.

There are no high-speed trains in Switzerland, not a great deal of demand that would make it worth the expense. 

 Switzerland has 9 million people. It's a federal state with 28 cantons (states); parliament is called a federal assembly similar to US Congress. It is the size of San Bernadino County in CA or the size of MA and CT together.

I may have mentioned that I found it odd in Lucerne, that signs, menus, etc. do not show an English translation. It will be interesting to see how it is in some of the smaller towns and also in Zurich.

But I learned today that there are four National languages - German (66%), French (20%), Italian (10%), Romansh (10%) with LOTS of Swiss dialects. News on TV is presented in a combination of standard German and weather and other topics will be presented in dialect. (Swiss German).

Playing cards are also very different depending on the area. Here's a map of the different playing cards districts.

Jass is a popular card game in Switzerland. But the cards will differ depending on what area you're playing in. It's played with a deck of 36 cards (A, K, Q, J, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6) Swiss-French or Swiss-German cards (A, K, O, U, B (= 10), 9, 8, 7, 6). The Swiss-German packs have an Ober, Under and Banner instead of the Queen, Jack and Ten of the French pack.

 
Lots of cultural diversity, too.

A world record was set on the Albula train line in Fall of 2022. It was one mile long with 25 passenger cars. Each four cars had to have an engineer. Radios didn’t work. They used phones strung with wires for engineers to communicate. 

Some trains have an undercarriage which tilts a bit so it can go faster on curves. They've been working on this for 20 years.