At seven that morning our train rolled into Zurich train station. We'd traveled all night from Budapest. At 5.30pm the day before we went to Keleti station in Budapest, found our train and our compartment and settled in for the night. There was four to our compartment, since I booked early we had the 2 lower bunk. Sophie had misgivings about sharing a sleeping compartment with 2 strange men. One of them was from Rumania, he joined us in Budapest, the other guy, the conductor told me will join us in Linz, at around midnight. We couldn't get a private berth because there were none on this sector, the single person compartments will join the train in Vienna when we pass through at midnight. I was told we can pay to switch at Vienna but I reckon by the time we reached Vienna we would have been asleep for over 3 hours, so I decided we'll stick with whatever we had. The conductor came around a few times to hand sheets, pillows and blankets and water. he took our travel documents, when I asked when we'll get them back, he said 'next morning'. We made our bed and before long decided to turn in. Well, the Romanian wanted to turn in, he's been traveling all day from Timisoara, Romania. I decided to make the bed for our 4th passenger. I told Sophie, I don't want him to come in at midnight and be noisily trying to make his bed and wake us all up. True to form, I don't know what time it was, we heard a knock on the door, we opened it, let him in, he climbed up the berth on my side, loosen his clothes, he fell asleep as did I. When we woke up, it was 6 am, the Romanian would leave the train to catch a connecting train to Davos. At 7am we made into Zurich. It was cool and kind of gloomy. We went to look for a left luggage place to leave our bags. Zurich train station is huge, has a lot of services, lots of lockers of all sizes including one which was manned. We left our luggage with them, cost a little bit more. There are showers there too, there's no shortage of services in this station. I went into a bank to get some Swiss Francs. We were ready to explore Zurich, we had till 2 pm when another train will take us to Strasbourg, France.
We went in search of breakfast, this was the most expensive breakfast we had ever eaten. I remember we spent 22 euros for dinner at a McDonalds in Bari, Italy. This meal (just breakfast) costs us 30 euros. I had some very delicious homemade Swiss Muesli which I loved, Sophie had eggs cocotte. Wow, we are in Switzerland. Zurich is pretty.
Zurich's train station is a great place to people watch. All kinds of interesting looking and smartly dressed people pass through here. We sat for a while as we waited for our train. Promptly at 2 pm, the French TGV train left the station and in 4 hours we were in Strasbourg, France. Now we can say we've been in Zurich before.
At seven that morning our train rolled into Zurich train station. We'd traveled all night from Budapest. At 5.30pm the day before we went to Keleti station in Budapest, found our train and our compartment and settled in for the night. There was four to our compartment, since I booked early we had the 2 lower bunk. Sophie had misgivings about sharing a sleeping compartment with 2 strange men. One of them was from Rumania, he joined us in Budapest, the other guy, the conductor told me will join us in Linz, at around midnight. We couldn't get a private berth because there were none on this sector, the single person compartments will join the train in Vienna when we pass through at midnight. I was told we can pay to switch at Vienna but I reckon by the time we reached Vienna we would have been asleep for over 3 hours, so I decided we'll stick with whatever we had. The conductor came around a few times to hand sheets, pillows and blankets and water. he took our travel documents, when I asked when we'll get them back, he said 'next morning'. We made our bed and before long decided to turn in. Well, the Romanian wanted to turn in, he's been traveling all day from Timisoara, Romania. I decided to make the bed for our 4th passenger. I told Sophie, I don't want him to come in at midnight and be noisily trying to make his bed and wake us all up. True to form, I don't know what time it was, we heard a knock on the door, we opened it, let him in, he climbed up the berth on my side, loosen his clothes, he fell asleep as did I. When we woke up, it was 6 am, the Romanian would leave the train to catch a connecting train to Davos. At 7am we made into Zurich. It was cool and kind of gloomy. We went to look for a left luggage place to leave our bags. Zurich train station is huge, has a lot of services, lots of lockers of all sizes including one which was manned. We left our luggage with them, cost a little bit more. There are showers there too, there's no shortage of services in this station. I went into a bank to get some Swiss Francs. We were ready to explore Zurich, we had till 2 pm when another train will take us to Strasbourg, France.
We went in search of breakfast, this was the most expensive breakfast we had ever eaten. I remember we spent 22 euros for dinner at a McDonalds in Bari, Italy. This meal (just breakfast) costs us 30 euros. I had some very delicious homemade Swiss Muesli which I loved, Sophie had eggs cocotte. Wow, we are in Switzerland. Zurich is pretty.
Zurich's train station is a great place to people watch. All kinds of interesting looking and smartly dressed people pass through here. We sat for a while as we waited for our train. Promptly at 2 pm, the French TGV train left the station and in 4 hours we were in Strasbourg, France. Now we can say we've been in Zurich before. 
No comments:
Post a Comment