I still had the route from Appenzell to Wasserauen to complete. From Wasserauen you can hike to the Ebenalp. On the route you pass the Seealpsee and Aescher, two very famous spots in the region. So I decided to combine checking off the stations with a nice hike. While the weather on the first attempt was not great and we ended up going to Gruyères, today the weather was great.

The views at the Seealpsee were really very gorgeous. From the Seealpsee to Aescher, the hiking trail started very steep. Once we reached the required altitude, the trail was relatively flat. Overall, the trail was quite interesting to walk.

From Aescher to the Ebenalp the trail lead through a cave. In there, I even managed to convince my phone camera that it doesn’t always need to do HDR and have everything be the same brightness.

Today I started my journey in Chur, taking the train across the Oberalp pass, to Andermatt, through the Furka, and then traveling through Valais until Visp. On the way back I took the route through the old Lötschberg tunnel.

It’s a very lovely route. You start with the Rhine Gorge while still in Grisons. Then, after changing trains and train operator in Disentis/Mustér, you climb to the top of the Oberalp pass. Shortly after you arrive in Andermatt, after getting rid of some of the gained elevation.

From Andermatt the Furka tunnel follows, which is quite long with 15.4 km (of course still quite short compared to the GBT with 57 km). Afterwards the route slowly makes its way through Valais. The whole journey from Andermatt to Visp took a bit more than two hours.

My train from Andermatt still had carriages where you could open the windows, which was quite nice to get some fresh air and take pictures without the annoying reflections.

Finally, one in Visp, I took the train through the old Lötschbergtunnel. The route from Brig to the tunnel, slowly gaining altitude while having a nice view across the valley, is lovely. The tunnel itself was again on the longer side with 14.6 km (the Lötschberg base tunnel is 34.6 km).

Overall, it was a very nice journey and the weather was perfect.

Today I covered a lot of stations around the Seetal area. First, I took the train from Dietikon to Wohlen via Bremgarten, which is one of those half train half tram lines.

Next, I covered the line from Lenzburg to Rotkreuz (riding from Wohlen to Lenzburg, just to immediately turn around again). From there, the S1 took me to Sursee via Luzern, along the Sempachersee.

Traveling further north to Zofingen and then turning east with the S28 to Lenzburg, I completed a circle around the Seetal area. With a nice sunset to accompany the journey, I took the Seetalbahn to Luzern. This was a lot of zig-zag across the region… Back in Zurich there was an S-Bahn wishing everyone a nice weekend, which I found very nice of it.

Today we spent some time in the area around Gruyères. We started with a visit of the Cailler factory in Broc. When arriving in Bern, one often hears announcements for a train going to Broc-Chocolatier, which I always found funny. Felt like something very Swiss to have a direct train going from the capital to a chocolate factory.

The exhibition itself I didn’t like that much. It felt a lot like corporate propaganda, where they spent a lot of time telling the visitors how well they treat the milk and cocoa farmers and that they make sure to only use the finest ingredients. Sure…

For lunch we took the bus to Gruyères. It’s a very nice old village but it’s very touristic, though surprisingly it felt less touristic compared to Zermatt. We visited the H.R. Giger museum. I expected the museum to have many more sculptures, it consisted mostly of pictures. A lot of them felt very similar, but it was still interesting to look at. Next to the train station there was also the cheese dairy where the produce the Gruyères cheese, though we didn’t visit this exhibition as well.

On the way back we took the detour via Palézieux to collect some more stations. I always thought Palézieux was a somewhat relevant city, but it turns out it’s basically just a train station in the middle of nowhere. I guess it’s a somewhat important exchange node which is why all the long-distance trains between Bern and Lausanne stop there. But given the good connections, I would have expected for some buildup to happen around the train stations. But it’s just fields right next to the tracks on one side, and only a few houses on the other side.

Today I went to Zermatt with a friend. The weather was lovely and we had lunch with a beautiful view of the Matterhorn.

On the way up from Visp there was a very sudden stop of the train on the open track, followed by a long pause. For at least 15 minutes the train was unable to continue due to some technical issues, we already thought we had to walk up the rest of the way. Luckily, the train then suddenly decided to work again and we reached Zermatt with some delay.

While the town looked nice, it also somehow felt a bit like an „amusement park“, where most things looked like mostly being for tourists and it didn’t feel like there were people actually living there. And of course there were a large number of tourists all across the town.

On the way back we stopped in Spiez to have dinner right next to the Thunersee. With the sunset the mountains turned red and gave a very nice scenery for dinner. We also saw the Sigriswiler Rothorn (to the left of the Niederhorn), where we recently filmed a Skyrim music video in a cave.

Today’s train ride brought me to Einsiedeln. The weather was very nice and I spent some time walking across the Silhsee. Very lovely views to be had.

On the way back, I stopped in Arth-Goldau, where the train to mount Rigi leaves. I didn’t have time to go on Rigi today, but as the train to the top is included in my travelcard, I will go there at some point.

In total, I have already visited 16% of all stations in Switzerland. However, most of them were around Zurich and eastern Switzerland which is quite close to home. The stations further away, for example in the French speaking part of Switzerland, will take a bit more time.