Blue rinse brigade hell.

September 21, 2012

On our final day in Wengen we took things easy with a wee train trip up to Schynige Platte with the intention of seeing some more fantastic views and maybe a short walk, lunch and then home in time to pack.

This is the websites description of the trip sounds lovely…”Those visiting Schynige Platte with the cogwheel railway will feel transported back to the days of belle époque. The nostalgic railway takes 50 minutes to travel up the 7 kilometre stretch. The wooden benches in the carriages and the rolling stock from the 19th century recall a bygone era.”

In reality, for us, this translated to….”You will travel on a tiny carriage with wooden benches that kill your legs and back. You will travel at a snails pace, and will be trapped in the carriage for 50mins of hell with elderly people eating smelly sandwiches and nattering away to each other in multiple languages. Some weird Swiss guy will shove his camera in your face looking for compliments on how well his photos have come out, and someone’s baby will let out a piercing scream every 10mins that sounds like some scraping their nails down a blackboard”

That was the LONGEST 50 mins !! However the views, as ever, made up for it ! It was stunning. We could see both valleys that we had visited over the week, and an uninterrupted view of the mountain range. The other thing that helped us recover from the journey was of course the promise of a lovely lunch and beer. After which we went for a small walk around the top and then caught the next train down.

At least the journey down was a little more fun. We were in a carriage with a English couple from Kent and an American couple from Ohio, both very interesting. The guy from the English couple was an engineer that worked on the channel tunnel and told us that when the two sides met in the middle, the two holes were only 25mm (1 inch) off from each other !! amazing when you think the tunnel is about 30km long.