Portfolio - Special Edition Switzerland

46 Special Edition Switzerland Swiss Travel System It’s one of only three trains inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List (the others are in Austria and India). My journey on it will take me past Roman- era churches and Celtic archeological remains and bubbling hot springs, national parks, glaciers, mossy forests, palm trees, and more castles than a Game of Thrones season. The entire Rhäetische Bahn rail network, located in Canton Graubünden, includes 84 tunnels and 383 bridges, and stone viaducts that make it a masterpiece of rail ingenuity. To ride this train is to understand Swiss engineering, European History, natural history, physics, and gravity all at once. So close are the elements of nature, and so connected is the region’s heritage, that you cannot ride for a single stop without coming face to face with some of it. Fleeting glimpses of the landscape move fast across my window, and before I can take a picture, the next tableaux appear. A gushing waterfall is suddenly replaced by a hemlock forest, which is replaced by a snow capped mountain and then a church. Unfix your gaze from the window for three seconds, and you’ll have missed something epic. I’m not a train geek, I swear. But I live in Switzerland, where it’s hard not to be eternally impressed with the country’s trains, which routinely careen through century-old tunnels, chug up and down alps, blaze past rivers and lakes so dreamy blue, you feel as though you could fall in from your seat. Ask any local or expat in Switzerland, and they will probably agree that Swiss trains are one of the best things about living here. But how do our trains differ from the rest I ’m sipping a coffee in the panorama car and counting castles outside my window, each planted atop a snowy hillock in Switzerland’s Canton Graubünden like a lonely chess rook. While I think there are seven or eight castles visible from the train, I’ve only counted three so far. Each is a portal to its illustrious past, with a noble history involving Hapsburgs, Romans, Swabians, Allemani, Carolingians, and renegade Helvetic and Rhaetian celts. Each tells a story of this rugged and fantastic landscape, pressed up against the Italian border, but defined by invisible seams that separate Romansch-speaking alpine communities from the Swiss-German and Italian speaking lowlands. I’ve taken this train route many times before and it never gets old to me. I’m on Switzerland’s Rhäetische Bahn railway.