A few beers and a meal out on the last night with all my new friends (they had to share a room with me, therefore equals new friends) brought the end to an epic week. Zermatt is a beautiful area, the changeable weather was a bit of a shame but really just added to the experience and being in the mountains you can't really expect any less! After 10 days I feel like I well and truly explored everything my weary legs would let me. On to the next adventure!
Rach, Laura and I caught the train to Zurich the next morning with plans to do some decent exploring before all leaving for further destinations that evening. Despite being a major city in Switzerland, Zurich is very much in keeping with the traditions of the country, all of them, like everything closes on a Sunday kind of traditions. Damn.
We wandered the streets of the old town area, much to my disappointment even the supermarkets were closed so I couldn't spend all my remaining francs on swiss chocolate. Very upsetting.
We had noticed that there were quite a few people wandering around with Ironman t-shirts and backpacks. After some investigation we discovered the Ironman was on! A rather long walk led us to the transition/finish area which was humming with competitors and supporters. For three sporty gals we'd hit the jackpot, a great time waster and they even had food! We spent a good proportion of the day there, watching ridiculously fit people deliriously cross the finish line and trying to decipher the Swiss German commentary. A wander up to the university and look out over Zurich old town got us through until Laura's bus departure to Prague.
Rach and I wandered back to the station to find that Sunday is not as disappointing in Zurich as we had initially thought. There is in fact an entire mall under the train station, complete with open supermarket! We managed to successfully spend 38 francs on dinner, breakfast for the next day and a ton of chocolate. Finally 10.40pm rolled around and with full bellies we headed for our night train to Vienna.
I had taken charge of all the bookings for our time together and thought the night train would be a cool thing to experience plus save us a night of accommodation and a day of travel. With 8 hours ahead of us on the train I was hoping for the best sleep I'd had in a week, the lack of pillow and lights on sensors in Zermatt had been an issue for me.
It was definitely an experience! At some point while struggling with the booking form I had managed to get us into a 6 person cabin, rather than the planned 4 person. With all the rooms being the same size, about the size of the bathroom at home, 6 people was a squuueeeeze. Rach and I were on the top of the 3 tier bunks, a young couple and father-daughter combo joined us before we set off into the dark. Once the air conditioning started working I managed to get past my fits of giggles at the situation and thought it might be ok. Then the swaying started, slowly at first with a few jerks around corners before the constant jolting began. Being on the top bunk helped to accentuate the movement, just what my queasy, motion sickness prone stomach needed! My thoughts of a good nights sleep went out the window and plans to sleep in the corridor by the bathroom became a very real possibility.
In the end drugs saved the day/night! Little blue tablets were my saviour in the form of Phenergan. I had originally brought them with me to help me sleep on the plane (thanks for the suggestion Judith/Mum!) but being good for travel sickness too it killed two birds with one stone. In no time I was crawling into my bunk (so small that was the only way to get in it) feeling significantly improved and VERY sleepy.
Moral of the story was night trains are good if you want to travel cheap but it's worth forking out for a 4 person or even 2 person cabin. In my case, given the motion sickness I'll probably take the high road (literally) next time. I like train travel but I also like keeping my food in my stomach!
No comments:
Post a Comment