Mt. Rigi Cog Railroad and Cruise from Vitznau to Lucerne

Yesterday afternoon, we took the train to Arth Goldau on Lake Lucerne where we picked up the cog railroad to the top of Mt. Rigi. This historic railway opened in 1871 and was the first European mountain railway. The railway offers views of the Jura mountains, the Black Forest and the Vosges. 

 

 The cog railway is electrified, not diesel. The photo to the right shows the cog in the middle flanked by rail lines. 

 

 Yesterday was my birthday, so I was given a card signed by the group, a Swiss magnet and a box of chocolates! I was very touched.

Some views along the way:  

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There were lots of different milk cows grazing. They all had cowbells around their neck which rang as they moved. It was a delightful sound. They bring them up to graze and then bring them down when it gets cold. It's a celebration of sorts in the towns when the cows "come home."

Someone said this was not a hot tub even though people looked quite warm in the water. It looked inviting to me.

We took the boat below back to Lucerne. It was a beautiful ride. I had a glass of Prosecco to toast my birthday with my new friends.

This Ferris wheel is for an upcoming celebration in Lucerne. 

 

 

 

 

On to Interlaken

This morning we visited the Lion Monument which was carved into a gigantic rock face. It commemorates the events of August 1792 when an angry horde stormed the Tuileries Palace and killed hundreds of Swiss guardsmen serving Louis XVI.

This afternoon, we will take the Golden Pass Express to Brienz over the Brunig Pass to Interlaken.

Transportation Museum

 We hopped on a public bus for a quick ride to the Transportation Museum. This gigantic hard rock gripper tunnel boring machine on the left below greeted us as we went inside. As you can see by the people at the bottom right, the machine is huge. 

The museum is also gigantic with exhibits on flight, cars, bicycles, trains and any kind of transport you can imagine. I would compare it to the US Air and Space Museum or the National Museum of the Air Force in Dayton, OH, which you could literally spend a week in. We barely touched the surface, but our tour mainly focused on train exhibits and the construction of the tunnels we will be traveling through.

                                                                                        Lobby of the museum.

In the winter especially, some people put their cars on the car train to go into the mountains for skiing. The price for winter is usually double that of summer.

There was an opportunity to join a tunnel boring shift, so I quickly suited up to earn some extra Swiss Francs for souvenirs.

There are lots of tunnels that crisscross the Swiss Alps. The Gotthard Pass itself already has two — the first, also for trains, was built in 1882. But the Gotthard base tunnel sets a record, exceeding Japan’s 33.4-mile Seikan Tunnel as the world’s longest — and it also bores deeper than any other tunnel, running about 1.4 miles underground at its maximum depth.

The tube bores through the Gotthard massif that includes the 8,200-foot Piz Vatgira on the way to Italy. It is part of a broader, multi-tunnel project to shift transportation of goods from roads to rails as many are  concerned that heavy trucks are destroying Switzerland’s pristine Alpine landscape.

The aim is to cut travel times, lighten the traffic and lessen the air pollution from trucks traveling between Northern and Southern Europe. The two-way tunnel can handle 260  freight trains and 65 passenger trains per day. 

Other exhibits included cable cars, early airplanes, Piccard submersible, and any and every other form of transportation.

After the tour, we decided to take a boat back to the Lucerne city center. The stature below entitled, "Joie de Vivre," was appropriately situated on the edge of Lake Lucerne.

My new friends, Juke and Fred, as we wait for the boat.

Our Swiss Pass cards enable us to use any form of transport - bus, train, boat, and trams to get around Switzerland.

 

Boat back to Lucerne.

Train station stop.

And finally this photo of grass growing on top of nearby roofs. I understand this is done to help cool the buildings. I have encountered very little air conditioning. Rooms have fans, and the windows open, but to me, the rooms are quite warm if not downright hot. Note to self: consider traveling in winter.

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.