Austria and Switzerland by Train Holiday

Carpe Diem

My Wife and I are exploring the possibility of spending 6-7 days travelling through Switzerland and Austria by train during the Summer. We are initially interested in travelling the Glacier Express, ( Zermatt to St Moritz ( Davos)), and then decided perhaps we could travel from West Switzerland to Vienna, (or Vice Versa) and take in all the scenery that is the Alps. My Questions are:

Has anyone travelled this before?
What are the best towns/cities to stay in, along the route?
Is there enough for 6-7 Days or should we look at taking in Italy and Germany etc.

All advice would be greatly appreciated.

zagmund

Argh, I had a long, detailed post ready and it timed out. Aaargh.

Short version - Glacier Express can be OK of you are fully into making a day of it and spending relatively silly money on it compared to just taking a regular train on the same route. I mean that as a sort of "it's OK for the experience, but know you are paying over the odds and travelling the same route as Joe Commuter". Look at EC163 from Zurich to Graz - passes through plenty of alpine places that are well worth a stop off for a day or two of exploration - Kitzbuhel & Zell am See for starters. Check out www.oebb.at & www.sbb.ch for fares, and www.bahn.de for routings. Tickets are only bookable 90 days in advance, but there are some great discounts to be had. Try booking sample fares for dates 80-90 days out and you will see the sorts of fares you can expect to pay.

Bon voyage

z

Carawaystick

If you're flying to Geneva, you can get the train from the airport to Martigny and the Mont Blanc express to Chamonix* for a night.
You could get a taxi to Geneve Eaux Vives and a train from there to Chamonix and onwards to Martigny so you don't double back.

You should figure out if you want to spend a lot of time travelling, or you just want to see lots of different places and see what's there, and have short train trips.

Also plan for cog trains or cable car trips up the mountains as detours.





* I know its not in Swiss, but its very pretty, and very nearby

nibtrix

I did an Switzerland/Austria trip a few years ago, we had been to a few of the big cities before so we tried to hit some more out of the way places.

We flew to Zurich and got the train to Lucerne for 24 hours. Then we went to Weesen on the Walensee and stayed in an amazing old hotel on the lakeside (http://www.flyhof.ch/index.php/en/).

Then we moved on to Austria and spent a day and a half in Innsbruck and a couple of days in the Zillerthal (we stayed in Zell am Ziller where you can get a cable car up even higher into the mountains, plus there's an amazing toboggan coaster - http://www.zillertalarena.com/en/arena/sommer/arena-coaster.html?bl=/en/zell/sommer/zell_action.html).

From there we went to Salzburg and then flew home from Munich. We didn't cover as much distance as you're looking at but I'd highly recommend hitting at least one out of the way place on your trip. Enjoy!

Sheldons Brain

Switzerland is lovely and just riding around on the train can be great. It is very expensive though.
I had a disappointing experience though some years ago when travelling from Zurich to Innsbruck and looking forward to a lovely trip, there was low cloud and I could hardly seen the platform in Innsbruck never mind the Alps. So some flexibility to respond to weather is probably worth thinking about.

Carpe Diem

Thank you all for your respective comments. Invaluable information. I'll let you know how we get on.

mel.b

A few years ago we did Tirano to St Moritz on the Bernia Express - 1 night in St Moritz, St Moritz to Zermatt on the Glacier Express - 2 nights in Zermatt I think, then train from Zermatt to Wengen for 3 nights and finally train from Wengen to Lucerne for 1 night.

The Berina Express was lovely. I found the Glacier Express a long day and the train goes pretty slowly...if there are 'normal' trains that do the same route I would probably do that. Zermatt was great, loved it. We were in Wengen out of season so it was very quiet and a lot was shut but it was just so beautiful and a good place to Jungfraujoch from and also other spots in the area.

ebbsy

Jungfraujoch is an underground railway station situated below the Jungfraujoch col in the Bernese Oberland region of Switzerland. At 3,454 meters (11,332 ft) above sea level, this is the highest railway station in Europe, and is close to the summits of the Eiger, Jungfrau and Mönch mountains.


We did this one, it was quite an experience, and yes it was bloody expensive.