Funicular, Bus, and Trains Galore!

My last stop in Europe was Geneva. I had a different railway ticket this time - rather than book a seat on a specific train at a specific time, I had a ticket valid for travel on one date between two points (well, between four points, as it specified which route I should take from Lugano to Geneva - via Locarno, Domodossola, Brig, and Lausanne).

I had asked the previous day at the Zurich railway station about how this ticket worked - and had a nice enough staff member who printed a recommended timetable that connected the trains quite well - four of them in total: from Lugano to Locarno (with one change), then via a short walk to catch the FART (is this a comment on how the train runs or the effect of the food they serve in the dining car?) to Domodossola (which is actually in Italy), where I pick up a final intercity train all the way through Brig and Lausanne to Geneva. Not too bad - leaving at 10.30am and at my final destination around 4.30pm. The bonus here would be seeing the scenery by daylight (remember it's dark by 4pm!).

So, this time taking the funicular right outside the hotel, I was ready to start the journey a little early arriving at the station just before 10am (I think the picture I've included in the Travel Blog Gallery is Lugano Railway station, but they do start to look the same after a while...), where I took an earlier train to Locarno (hey, I'm liking this ticket already!).

All went well for the first leg to Locarno (I had one change at a station that saw me returning in the same direction (!) but not to panic - this time it was through the valley rather than in the mountains above it). I found the underground FART train station to Italy off to the side of the Locarno station. Unfortunately, the notice about the cancelled train was at the bottom of the down escalator - by the time I read and translated from Italian that this train was replaced by a bus for the next three days, then returned to the top of the escalator - I was just in time to watch my 12.30pm bus pull out of the station! Now I understand why the other train passengers seemed to make a beeline to that unnamed bus stop, which turned out to be the connection (no signs at the bus stop of course!).

So much for the advantage of being on an earlier train!

So, the next bus was at 2.30pm. I would never make the other connecting trains I had planned... With all my luggage in hand, I wandered down to the lake and had a coffee and some cake (because everything seems better with either cake or ice-cream). The view did go some way to making up for being stranded in a little village for two hours!

And, as is often the case with these unplanned things, the replacement bus ride from Locarno to Domodossola was around Lago Maggiore (shown in the picture accompanying this blog) and truly spectacular. There were views like this the whole way.

Even if the road was not wide enough for a bus and a car to pass, let alone two buses (both at crawling pace as the window of the other bus passes by with inches between the passengers' anxious faces!), most of the journey had spectacular enough scenery to distract from the "European" driving. Even when we left the lake and headed along the freeway, the Alps and blue sky were amazing.

We were waved across the border by a nonchalant border security guard - thank you, EU!- to arrive at the snowy town of Domodossola where it was a short crunchy walk to the railway station. I was a bit concerned as the next Train to Geneva seemed to be at 6pm - surely I wouldn't have to wait 4 more hours in transit? A quick query with the station master saw me acting on his recommendation to take the next train to Brig, and try my luck on an earlier connection there (in the end I didn't wait more than 10 minutes at either station. Yay!).

And the views were a winter wonderland of secret valleys. I managed to catch a couple of high-speed shots in the Blog Gallery.

That is, when I wasn't inside a tunnel. I think one of the tunnels we went through was the longest in the region - at least we were in the dark for around 20 minutes before arriving suddenly at Brig.

All in all I arrived 90 minutes later than I had originally thought - which given I waited 2 hours in Locarno, and started 30 minutes earlier isn't too bad at all. The final trip around Lake Geneva was also lovely, with the sun setting over the far shore as we pulled into the very pretty Lausanne. The comedy was provided for free, as the mother next to me and her friend sitting opposite tried to get the baby to look at the sunset out the window - but the child was mesmerised with my typing fingers and the glow of my laptop screen. Even without understanding their French, the exasperation of "No, look at the SUNSET" came across clearly!

Sure enough the end of the journey was done in the dark, and I arrived into Geneva around 6ish, having crossed Switzerland from East to West, and inadvertently adding another country - Italy - to my itinerary.

I had intended to include Geneva in this post - but the tale of trains together with having far too many pics of Geneva would make this too long. So I will write about Geneva next!

We are getting there, and I promise I will finish the journey online for you all.

'Til then - Aveline. xxx