Coffee in France, Lunch in Switzerland, Dinner in Italy
Three countries, three languages and seven different trains — all in 16 hours — on no sleep
No sleep till … Como?
As my Boeing 777 touched down at Charles de Gaulle airport an hour early, I had already been awake 18 hours.
I was kicking off a nine-day trip, one would be part solo train travel, part family get-together in the town where my grandfather was born nearly a century ago.
Eager to cross the Alps by train, I chose to fly into Paris a day early and travel by land to Rome.
This is my account of my southbound trip to the Alps (you can read about my northbound trip aboard the Bernina Express here).
I started my journey where I start most transatlantic trips — enjoying a double Jameson’s at Bobby Van’s steakhouse in JFK’s Terminal 8. (My Priority Pass membership covers the cost, so I won’t be tweeting about how expensive it is).
I fly standby as a registered companion of an employee, sometimes in the front of the plane, sometimes in the back. People have told me that once you fly business class, there is no going back.
But on this flight, I had a middle seat in Main Cabin Extra, with zero complaints.
I was just thrilled to be flying to Paris.
Rather than try in vain to sleep, I watched two Woody Allen movies — Vicky Cristina Barcelona (one of my favorites) and Blue Jasmine (not one of my favorites) — and four episodes of Schitt’s Creek, and soon enough, we were making our descent.
Landing an hour early, I thought I might have a shot at an earlier train out of the city, one that would give me time to enjoy the Swiss Alps at a more relaxed pace, rather than racing to reach the Italian border by bedtime.
Once off the plane, I darted around people as best I could through immigration and to the Charles de Gaulle metro station, catching a commuter train to Gare de Lyon, and from there, a high-speed TGV through the French countryside to Mulhouse.
One of the best decisions I made on this trip was opting for a first-class Eurail pass. Days later, crossing the Bernina Pass, the first-class pass gave me a nearly panoramic view of the alpine crossing.
Here, it meant wider seats in a less-crowded car.
For being a densely populated continent, I am always amazed at how wide open the Western European countryside is.
France has 306 people per square mile, three times more dense than the United States, which has only 96 people per square mile — and yet the ride through eastern France was full of rolling hills, free-roaming white cattle and round bales of hay, interrupted every 15 minutes or so by a small town.
The route map looked like a trip through a kitchen, past Chablis and through Dijon, and that was about the time I ventured out of my lower-level seat and upstairs to the restaurant car.
I was so happy I did.
What a great setup, similar to a bar, with seats facing the windows. I had my morning coffee watching the blurred countryside, as two women practised voice lessons at the bar, holding up sheet music and singing in harmony.
At Mulhouse, I hopped a train to Basel — where the language shifted from French to German — and then changed trains again to head south toward the Alps.
The interregional train out of Basel had some of the largest train windows I had ever seen. But the only food and drink service was from a vending machine.
As the clock approached noon, I was approaching one of the most picturesque cities in Europe, Lucerne.
I checked train schedules, checked Google Maps, and made a last-minute decision to hop off for an hour.
I stashed my bag in a train station locker, and ventured across the mouth of the Reuss River to the Rathaus Brauerei for two beers and a small plate of sausages and sauerkraut.
Situated on a lake with the Alps towering in the background, Lucerne was beautiful, with baskets of flowers in bloom everywhere.
But it was also full of tourists, and pricey.
My sausages and beer cost more than $30. Had I ordered the veal cordon bleu, I would have paid more than $50.
I could have spent more time soaking in the city, but the Alps were calling.
The windows on my next train were not as grand, but the train was wide open, giving me the ability to move about.
Pulling out of Lucerne, we skirted lakes left and right, with the Alps in the distance — and then we began to climb. A recent derailment in the 35-mile-long Gotthard Base Tunnel meant that all trains here took a more scenic route.
I initially had a perfect spot, by the window, solo, and no one across from me, so I could take photos framed by that window and chairs — until a woman sat down, put a hood on her head, a mask on her eyes and feet up on the chair to sleep, ruining any further photos.
Fortunately, a better spot awaited me.
Unlike the previous train I was on, which had only a vending machine (that would not dispense alcohol without swiping a European ID), this train included a bar car, where I ordered a Blanc de Blancs sparkling wine.
I told the attendant that while I could not speak German, I could get by in Italian.
He said his Spanish was better than his Italian.
“Yo tambien,” I said.
He was from Mexico City, and his mom lives in Phoenix, so after my trying to order in Italian, we had a nice conversation going back and forth between English and Spanish (this being Europe, he of course also spoke German).
I subsequently enjoyed a small bottle of Swiss merlot, with cups of olives, salami, cheese and breadsticks on a gray tablecloth in the bar car as we continued through the Alps.
At Lugano, another picture-perfect city on a lake, I opted for one more quick stopover, first lighting a candle in the Cattedrale di San Lorenzo to give thanks for a safe arrival. I took a quick walk by the lake, and then a funicular back up to the train station.
Within an hour, I was again back on a train, continuing to Chiasso, on the Italian-Swiss border, where I would spend the night.
My hotel, the Bahnhof Haus, was literally a stone’s throw from the border. It was clean and simple, with a kind staff and a restaurant attached — and a fraction of the cost of a hotel in Como.
Awake for nearly 30 hours at this point, I really needed some sleep — but instead, I took a seven-minute train ride to Como, for a small bowl of paccheri with baby octopus, tomatoes, olives and capers at Ristorante Lo Storico.
I declined a second course and dessert, paid my bill, took a short walk past the lake, and then headed back to Chiasso.
At the restaurant adjacent to my hotel, I ordered a Braulio on ice for a nightcap, and while that was enough, I couldn’t resist sampling a bottle I had never seen before — Amaro dell’Eremo, made by local “frati,” or monks.
I was in bed before 10 pm — hard to believe, after all I had seen — and by 7:30 the next morning, I was on a train to Milano, making a 7-minute connection to a southbound train to Rome, where I would meet my parents before driving east to Abruzzo.
My first choice for this journey had been to take one high-speed train from Paris to Torino, a more direct route through the French Alps, but a massive mudslide last week cut off that rail connection. This route through Switzerland was my Plan B — and what a great Plan B it was.
Do you have a favorite train route or story? Drop a note in the comments. I would love to hear it. Also, if you’re a fan of slow train travel, check out my site, slowspeedrail.com (yes, I did a master’s capstone project on train travel).
