My whole life has cracked into trillionths
Act 2: Venice - Milan - Tirano - St. Moritz - Zurich - Paris
If you have read Act 1, you will know that we took our children interrailing in the Easter holidays, and our experience of getting to Venice from Sevenoaks did not match my carefully laid plans.
Abandoned by Deutsche Bahn in a place called Pforzheim, and pranked by OBB Nightjet who replaced all the sleeper carriages with seats without telling anyone. You guys!
But if you’ve ever been to Venice, you’ll know that its magic sweeps you away instantly, and we chalked this all up as a Great Adventure.
Besides, we had the rest of my carefully laid plan to look forward to: Venice - Milan - Tirano - St. Moritz - Zurich - Paris!
Here is what I learned, on Leg 2:
1. SPEND HOURS MAKING A CAREFULLY LAID PLAN
And then set fire to it.
Definitely don’t tell your children your carefully laid plan in advance, because there is a real danger that they’ll believe much of it will actually happen.
But don’t worry. What ends up unfolding will make you all happy, because it’s hard to hear the jaunty tannoy jingles at European railway stations and not feel like something exciting is going to happen.
2. IF YOU GET AN EMAIL WITH THE SUBJECT HEADING AUSFALL, IT’S NOT GOING TO BE GOOD NEWS
Do you think it’s to tell us that on the next train they’ve replaced all our seats with spikes? joked Steve.
Our next train was to be the UNESCO-renowned Bernina Express. A world-famous train that teeters over soaring viaducts, slices through mountains, and leans over deep blue lakes; all enjoyed from a carriage with a glass roof and TABLE SERVICE. They serve dinner on board! I envisaged slowly working our way through a nice bottle of red, arriving in St. Moritz feeling like film stars.
It wasn’t great then, to hit Google Translate and find that AUSFALL means FAILURE.
Failure to WHAT Steve? Failure to WHAT!!?
Isn’t Google Translate clever? It can swallow whole paragraphs and instantly regurgitate the lively news that the Bernina Express won’t be travelling any time soon because there has been an Erdrutsch (landslide) and the track is covered in Schutt (rubble).
Well at least they actually told us! Take note, OBB Nightjet!
Steve and I decided we would only spend one hour of our precious remaining time in Venice sorting out this little hiccup. Much like our snap decision to drop €113 on a taxi to get us out of Pforzheim, we acted quickly. This is hugely against my personality type. I like to research nine options and sleep on it. We read one internet article, and agreed: Let’s do that.
So thank you to complete internet stranger Simon Harper who proposed this scenic route to Zurich via Cadenazzo.
I did none of my usual due diligence due to the siren call of Aperol Spritz, and put my future holiday happiness entirely in Simon Harper’s hands.
3. LEAVING VENICE WILL BREAK YOUR HEART
After our final Aperol, and final souvenir purchase (a tiny yellow glass duck - yes, this is classically Venetian), we walked for the last time over the Rialto Bridge. The Grand Canal shimmered in the moonlight, and gondolas slid under the bridge as we hung over the balustrade to see if the couples were kissing, or looking at their phones; or worse: one lover was looking at their phone, and the other had their arms crossed - actually spotted!
We all felt heavy about leaving. My daughter wobbled, and as I wrapped my arms around her warm head, it all became too much and she overflowed:
My whole life has cracked into trillionths!
Yes, Venice knocked us all off our feet, and we will be back. Our daughter has vowed to live there, and have little Italian babies.
4. SIMON HARPER KNOWS HIS TRAINS
Simon Harper is a bloody genius. Yes the Bernina Express is nice, but all Swiss trains are nice, he argues. And if you avoid the tourist train, you’ll have a peaceful journey with only yourself trilling with joy at every mountain (apologies to all Swiss going about their normal lives on April 6th; I am quite excitable).
Take the right route - a couple of hours longer than the direct train from Milan to Zurich - and you slide alongside Lakes Como and Lugano, before ascending past villages with little white churches nestled in emerald hillsides, waterfalls spurting out of crevasses, towering snowy peaks, and winding hairpin tracks falling away behind as you climb.
Simon Harper promised us huge, clean Swiss train windows through which we would feel like we could dabble our fingers in the mountain streams, and Simon Harper delivered.
5. THE UPPER THRESHOLD FOR UNDER-12s LOOKING AT STUNNING MOUNTAIN SCENERY IS 2.5 HOURS
After which you can let them watch Captain America on a tiny tablet, huddled under a parka to shield the screen from the inconvenient Alpine glare.
Attempting to persuade yourself otherwise is unnecessary. Give yourself a break! Get something peculiar from the on-board vending machine, rest your head on your husband’s shoulder, and enjoy the chance to chat while the snow-capped mountains rear up and then fade away.
Your children can look out of the window again when they’re in their 40s, and taking their own children on a slow meander through Switzerland. The seeds have been sown.
6. YOU’LL BE GUTTED IF YOU ONLY HAVE 24 HOURS IN ZURICH
Another outcome from our route re-plan was that we were gifting ourselves an extra day in Zurich. I had fairly neutral expectations of Zurich - I knew there was a lake; I knew it was expensive; I expected we’d find enough to do for our planned 24 hours. Finding a fondue place wasn’t going to take too long was it. But now we had 3 nights and 2 whole days.
Thank goodness for that!
Zurich is AWESOME. GO! In fact: Let’s all move there. While we were on a boat on the lake we all picked our favourite waterside homes, and watched groups of friends run along jetties in the sunshine and jump into the water together.
7. IF YOU START YOUR DAY USING A PANCAKE ROBOT, IT’S GOING TO BE A GOOD DAY
Our hotel had a pancake making machine. I asked my son to draw a picture of it for my holiday journal, and I will share this with you, because if your day starts like this, you’re onto a winner.
Fuelled by robo-pancakes we tackled the following in 48 hours:
Landesmuseum! Lake cruise! Tram to Grossmunster! Rodin’s Gates to Hell! Cable car! Glorious hike to Uetliberg! Swiss chocolates! Raclette! Ferris wheel! And huge beers!
8. THE TRAIN FROM ZURICH TO PARIS WILL LEAVE ZURICH ON TIME, AND WILL TAKE YOU ALL THE WAY TO PARIS
This may not seem very remarkable, but it was the first train to actually do as advertised since we’d left St Pancras.
We know Paris quite well, but that didn’t stop us acting like lunatics and going up the Eiffel Tower in a high wind, because every epic train journey across Europe should end up the Eiffel Tower.
My top Paris tip though was something we did for the first time ever, and was utterly enchanting: hiring little sail boats in Jardin du Luxembourg and nudging them across the pond with sticks. Such a simple pursuit, but we could have done this all afternoon.
Sadly we had a train to catch.
9: WHEN 70% OF YOUR TRAINS HAVE AN AUSFALL, NOTHING CAN BREAK YOU
On our last hop home - a simple Eurostar from Paris to London - our children didn’t even notice the train grinding to a halt somewhere outside Lille and sitting there for 2 hours.
They didn’t notice the nervous announcements from Gilbert, our train manager, who had to flick through his Train Delay Vocab Handbook and land on the phrase, ‘Indeterminate Delay’, to make all parents on board die a little inside.
Not us! Steve and I waited for the children to ask us why the advertised 2 hour journey from Paris to London had already taken closer to 4 hours, but they didn’t bat an eyelid. We all ate the eclairs we’d bought at the patisserie earlier and planned our son’s upcoming birthday.
I’ve heard the SAS send cadets on 9 day tours of the European train networks to test their grit and resilience.
My family are definitely through to Round 2.
10: YOU WON’T GET ANY NEEDLEWORK DONE
Inspired by Harry Judd and Harry Judd’s Mum in Race Across the World, I packed some needlework! This is how much I got done:
I also read half a chapter of one of the two heavy books I carried everywhere.
I under-estimated how captivated I’d be by watching Europe rattle past me through train windows, from vaporettos, from Swiss boats, from the lift soaring up the Eiffel Tower, and yes, even from the taxi from Pforzheim to Stuttgart.
Spending nine days looking up and out, rather than down and in. Pressing OK on the pancake machine and watching the metamorphosis of batter to warm pancake. Holding a beer so heavy it made my wrist hurt. Crying with pre-emptive nostalgia on a bridge in Venice. Watching the sail of a toy boat bloom in the breeze and cheering as it glides across a Parisian pond.
If you want to feel the kaleidoscope of every human emotion, and feel it deep: go interrailing. It’ll crack you into trillionths.
Another great trip report! Love the little duck! You’ll have to take it with you now every time you visit Venice! 😉
What a trip ! Did you not sample any euro loaves ?