Inter Rail 1984 Day 18

Wednesday 19th September 1984

 Awoke to the awful sound of Jon's alarm clock at 5.00am. Milan Central Railway Station is very, very impressive and imposing. Enormous high ceilings in all the halls and great long pillars. However it took me 15 minutes to find a loo that was open and spent 200 lira to have a pee. You had to pay more if you wanted to wash your hands with soap!

ohn Zurich Got latched onto by a strange type who seemed to want a plane. Turned out he wanted a map. He was going to Hamburg. He told some tale about having two kids in Marseille, 2 kids in Vienna and two in Italy. He'd just been arrested and "stabbed and kicked by the police". He used to be a taxi driver in America. I ended up taking a photo of him and he gave me his address to send him a copy in Vienna. We managed to get away by making up some excuse.

Our next train was in the station so we got in, pulled the seats down and did our pretending to be asleep trick which worked yet again. We left bang on time. Were travelling through the mountains in next to no time. The route took us from Chiasso, passed Lake Como and Lake Lugano, then up through the very centre of Switzerland and the scenery was breathtaking. At one point we were as high as the top of Ben Nevis. The waterfalls, snow-capped mountains, funicular railways, Swiss-style chalets and and cottages and cows with cowbells made for an unforgetable journey, especially when the sun came out.

There were umpteen tunnels and a lot consisted of doing citcles inside or around mountains, as we climbed over the mountain tops and up mountain sides. Good job nobody got in our carriage as we were constantly up and about, wandering from side to side, trying to get the best views and/or photographs. We eventually arrived in Zurich at 11.50am. Changed our remaining lira and Austrian schillings, got our tickets stamped, and after 1 walk in a particularly uninteresting direction, found ourselves walking along the riverbank.

Called in for a takeaway hamburger (a Beefy) then got rid of all our stale bread and biscuits by sitting on the river wall in the sun feeding the many ducks that were swimming up and down in the fast current. Had a go at the Telegraph cryptic crossword but gave up as I couldn't concentrate. Having wandered to the end of the river section and said hello to the Zurich Canoe Club, we doubled back on ourselves and into the city shopping centre

We had just enough time and shrapnel to buy some chocolate. The train that took us to Mulhouse was a very modern new SNCF 2nd class thing. Nice for sitting in but useless for sleeping in. Arrived in Mulhouse about 5.00pm. Changed money and got ticket stamped. Checked out the town for about and hour and a half looking for a nice restaurant to have out evening meal in. Had a beer or two as well. Eventually found an Italian place and ordered a salad nicoise for me, a mixed salad for Jon, 2 lasagnes and 2 pitchers of house rose. The salad was great and the lasagne came boiling hot, so hot it was sizzling. The meal was delicious and relatively cheap

Caught the train to Monaco from Mulhouse station at 9.20pm. Got a compartment with 5 people in, mostly Arabic types. Jon slept on the floor and I slept on three of the seats. A bit cramped and noisy. Only just managed to avoid a major attack of cramp in the middle of the night.


Bernhard Simak

Lake Lugano

SwissMountains