FIRST impressions stay inside your head and those of Switzerland are likely to be a multitude of majestic, screensaver-worthy landscapes. The Alps cover more than half the country but with only 10 per cent of the population what you see is a cornucopia of snowy peaks, mountain passes, and dreamy farms where, yes, those are cowbells around animals’ necks. Nature looks undisturbed and perspicuous. The tourist industry hypes it as jaw-droppingly awesome but, through the windows of train carriages, it feels more contemplative than that.
Not being up for long and strenuous hikes, it was on the train journey from St. Moritz to Zermatt that the full-on experience kicked in for me. Very few train rides are accorded the status of a World Heritage Site but The Glacier Express, the “slowest express train in the world”, earns this distinction as it climbs, descends and threads its way across the Alps at an average speed of 24mph.
Hotel Waldhaus
The 45m2 windows, about the size of the living-room area in Friends, provide wrap-around views and as the train gently clickety-clacks over a 65-m-high viaduct your imagination supplies the necessary choo choos – this is Thomas the Tank stuff – and the tunnels (over 90 of them) through bare rock just keep on coming. A literal high is reached at the glacier-formed Oberralp Pass (2044m) and one of the two springs of the Rhine. The luxury option on The Glacier Express is its single Excellence Class carriage: meals with wine-pairings, plush armchairs, Tisca carpeting and its own bar.
Outside the Spa at Hotel Waldhaus
At the start point of this journey, my sense of inverted snobbery was satisfied when the Hotel Waldhaus’ pick-up at St. Moritz railway station whisked me away from the super-chic skiing resort and along the shore of Lake Silvaplana to the village of Sils-Maria 10km away. This was where the philosopher Nietzsche found inspiration – “philosophy is living in high mountains” – and returned summer after summer to write many of his best works. Visiting the house and seeing his rented room is a pilgrimage of sorts, as is following the walk around the wooded peninsula to the rock where he experienced the Zarathustra revelation. Hotel Waldhaus, family-run since 1908 and five minutes from Nietzsche’s house, has fin-de-siècle character by the bucketful – a grand drawing room and terrace, high tea with a live classical quartet, original furniture – but also a super-modern spa and generously-sized indoor pool.
The utterly still and solemn jaggedness of the Matterhorn (4478m) is like Japan’s Mount Fuji: gazing at it provides an experience of the sublime, as something impossibly real. From Zermatt, the terminus of the Glacier Express, half an hour on a mountain railway takes you to the summit of Gornergrat (over 3000m) from where the Matterhorn is in your face. There are also views of it from some of the rooms (telescope on a tripod included) in The Omnia in Zermatt. This hotel, with half floors and staircases seemingly every which way, feels at first like being inside an Escher creation but a comfy sofa in front of a real fire soon restores equilibrium. The restaurant brings Michelin-star creativity to its menus, including a vegetarian one that has a leek cooked at 3000 for 13 minutes. You see the burnt-black coating before its removal allows for gorgeous tastings of inner layers with roasted hazelnuts and grapes.
The Restaurant at Dolder Grand
The first part of the journey back to Zurich from Zermatt provides its own Alpine thrills as the train passes alongside towering blocks of stone and chuff-chuffs down a valley past river rapids. After days of being drunk on scenery, Zurich’s sobriety is welcoming and it’s a relief to stand in the lobby of the The Dolder Grand and take in the cool Warhol hanging above reception. A Magritte bronze sculpture, four pieces by Takashi Murakami and a 14thcentury three-legged pine table for cheese-making are other works that turn the Dolder Grand into a mini-art gallery. The hotel’s gourmet restaurant deserves its two Michelin stars; its menu for non-carnivores is the finest in the country.
A Salvador Dali original at the Dolder Grand Hotel
Hotel Atlantis by Giardino is easily reached from the city centre but is surrounded by woodland; the proximity of a dairy farm adds to the sense of being insulated from urban stress. A walking path behind the hotel brings accesses a high point for splendid views of the city spread out below you.
Cafe Odeon in Zurich
Zurich, having none of those ‘must-see’ sights that guidebooks insist on listing, is a city where your own interests have full rein. Visiting Café Voltaire, where Dadaism was inaugurated, proves disappointing but not Cafe Odeon, where James Joyce and Vladimir Lenin were frequent customers. They could have been here at the same time – think Tom Stoppard’s Travesties – and hung their coats side by side on the coat stand that remains in situ. Joyce and Nora Barnacle are buried together (Dublin Council notwithstanding) in Fluntern Cemetery, a tram ride away. The art collections and exhibitions at Kunsthaus make it deservedly Zurich’s foremost cultural attraction and stained-glass windows by one of the artists on display there, Marc Chagall, can be seen up close at the lovely Fraumünster church on a bank of the Limmat river that flows placidly through the city. Come evening, from a window table upstairs at Haus zum Rueden, there are atmospheric views of the church and river. Another non-touristy place to enjoy good food with relaxing vibes is Restaurante da Angela.
And for another burst of Swiss scenery, it is only an hour’s train ride to the picture-perfect city of Lucerne where the views atop Mount Pilatus justify the frighteningly steep cog railway that gets you to the summit. Nietzsche climbed Pilatus with Wagner, singing and philosophising on the way. A day trip to the city is feasible but a room at the old-school Grand Hotel National facing the lake and a riverside meal at Restaurant Balances help embed the scenic charms of Lucerne in your memory bank.
Every aspect of Switzerland seems impeccably organised. My first experience of this came with the Zurich airport pickup with Blacklane and it was confirmed many times over. The country’s people are unnervingly civil – there must be more to it – which makes visiting the country a genuine break from life back home. Trains invariably depart and arrive with the precision of a Swiss watch and on the solitary occasion one was delayed pulling into a station for an imminent departure there was a palpable sense of consternation. The delay was less than five minutes; any longer and anxiety levels would have gone off the scale.
Lady’s First Hotel single room
My last night, staying at the congenial Lady’s First Hotel in Zurich, summed it up. Established as a safe house for poor girls arriving from the country, it now welcomes all genders but keeps rooms and a wellness area on the top two floors for women only. There is a bar but it’s unstaffed and an honesty box is left for guests to pay for their drinks. Switzerland may be mostly scenery but it has a lot else going for it as well.
Lady’s First Hotel doors
by Sean Sheehan
Further information is available from Switzerland Tourism