Go west, young man

On the Glacier Express

Obviously, the title doesn’t refer to me, since even more than a half dozen years ago, at the time of this trip, I was no spring chicken.  Nor does it reflect the direction we were headed, since we were spanning the space from Zermatt to St. Moritz, which gave us an easterly bearing.

This is the Glacier Express, Switzerland’s famous tourist train.  It was some sort of anniversary of the train that year, perhaps the 75th, but I do not recall.  In any case, I thought it would be nice to take a break from the Far East and travel both west and seventeen years forward along the continuum for a change of scenery.

Speaking of scenery, you will notice that, despite the great visibility afforded us from our not-so-cheap seats, we still had to shoot our photos through glass and from a moving platform, and the resolution of the still photos I was taking with that video camera I’m holding was, unfortunately, quite limited. So, with that in mind, enjoy your trip.  I’ll be restricting the narrative to a minimum so as not to distract.  Oh, one more thing — if you happen to reserve a ride on this train, ask about dinner reservations, too.   We didn’t know about the dinner, so we had to settle for a box of Toblerone.  At least it wasn’t ear-wax- flavoured jelly beans or chocolate frogs.

Switzerland in late May

 

Town along Glacier Express route

 

Mountain meadow

 

Another town scene

 

Nice digs

 

Still plenty of snow

 

Older house

 

This onion-shaped architecture was quite common

 

Every community had a church with a steeple

 

Other passengers enjoying their view

Another gorgeous view

Hanging valley

Another picturesque hamlet

 

This one just screams, "The hills are alive ..."

 

Painter table house(?)

This Kronenhof is obviously not THIS KRONENHOF, but it’s probably a hotel, anyway.  Next to it is a building entitled Maler Tischhauser, which, if translated literally, means “Painter table house.”  Probably just a name, I’m guessing.

Pizza sounded really good after getting no lunch!

We were drooling after we spied this pizza place — and it was still quite awhile before we were to arrive in St. Moritz.

A wee bit of information about St. Moritz: It’s one of the few places left where you can find people who speak Romansch.

Hope you enjoyed it.  Next time, it’s back to Nippon.

Now, here are tonight’s special messages for our friends across the channel:

John has a long moustache.  John has a long moustasche.  Mary’s cat is ill.  Mary’s cat is ill. Artichokes are three for a dollar.  Artichokes are three for a dollar.  A table leg is short.  A table leg is short. My balloon is missing. My balloon is missing. Our grey goose is dead. Our grey goose is dead. The dairy has no cheese. The dairy has no cheese. Paulo has a large bull. Paulo has a large bull.