Off to the Land of Chocolates,Watches and the Alps

Mit der Eröffnung des Zahnradbahn-Betriebs Alpnachstad – Pilatus Kulm am 6. Mai 2006 beginnt dieses Jahr zum 50. Mal die Saison für die begehrte.....
Confused?
This is how it was exactly when me and my college mate Jayachandran landed in Zurich,Switzerland. Yes. The people hardly spoke English.All they knew was either French or German..74% of them are German and they have their own slang called Swiss German.
But before I proceed,let me begin from how it all begun....

I would have preferred to have some say on the reservations, tamilnadu elections or Indian cricket but couldnt really resist from putting this swiss trip on the blog. Now my blogs are looking to be travel centric....But I really dont mind when I have to record such an amazing tour to the Alps.

We had our tickets booked through lastminute.com( well in advance,if you are getting misled by the website name...)Once that was done,our flights and hotels were taken care off.. Half the job done.. But thats not all.. The most difficult part of such a trip is to take care of all the internal travel in a country that hardly speaks English and for two guys who hardly knew to say Thank you in German.

Thanks to the minimised work during the last week in office, I was able to browse through websites and decide on the plan. I found that taking a Swiss Youth pass to travel for four days anywhere in Swiss was going to be the best option to cover all the places..Once the plan was in place, the day it had to be executed was also there quickly.Friday May 26th...

I left office at 4 o clock and reached Heathrow Airport directly. This was going to be my third flight journey and third country I would be visiting. So it was kind of exciting.The very place made it look more exciting!! The flight was at 7 45. I met this college friend of mine in the airport. We then did some minor purchases like electric pin converters(minor point to be added here but it turned out to be very important since we had to connect to the laptops and charge our camera batteries very often) at the airport and left at the scheduled time. Wow..things were going on track..

Zürich Airport,Switzerland

It was around 11PM when we landed in Zurich. I had thought of getting the Swiss Pass then and there but it was too late.. So got a ticket to the Zurich Haupt Bahnof( means Main Station, in German).Was there enough info given in this blog about the Swiss specific terms that you might come across? Ok.. Anyways..
The currency...Swiss Francs.. ~2.2 pounds~Rs.36
The Capital-Bern---nothing to see there though
The people-French and Germans.. with a few Italians
Thats all i could gather. For more,Click here

But then after we got into the train,we realised noone really knew English.Not even the TTR. Once we managed to get out of the train,we were in a soup again.Good that I took the map print out,we could atleast point to the place and ask from which direction we get out of the station.Somehow managed to reach the Hotel with the help of the map and by playing dumb-charades with the locals there..

The Hotel where we were supposed to stay for the next 3 nights was called The X-Tra was a very good 3 star hotel with all the facilities required. With the cozy beds in front and the tired travel, we went to sleep hoping for an exciting journey to Mt.Titlis next day and praying that language shouldnt really pose a threat....

Mt.Titlis..A pre-cursor:

Just a precursor.. Will be continued in the next blog..