Carriage to the Clouds: Exploring the Literary Landscape of Switzerland by Rail

One of the cruellest torments endured by Byron’s Prisoner of Chillon was to glimpse through the bars of his cell breathtaking mountains with their ‘thousand years of snow, on high — their wide long lake below, and the blue Rhône in fullest flow.’ The belated ‘compassion’ of his captors in loosening his chains, reminding him that paradise lay just beyond the dungeon walls, served only to deepen his despair, writes Richard Tarrant.

Chillon Castle still stands, sentinel-like, beside Lac Léman, as does the column to which François Bonivard was chained for four of the six years of his incarceration, now etched with the name of the romantic poet who immortalised his story. And sure enough, all around is a vision of natural splendour so typical of Switzerland — snow-dusted peaks, verdant valleys and glittering glacial waters. The fortress lies just two miles around the lake from Montreux, with its grand dame hotels, broad promenades and an incongruous statue of former resident Freddie Mercury. As well as The Prisoner of Chillon, Lake Geneva (in its anglicised form) also inspired Frankenstein and Hotel du Lac — the perfect place to begin a somewhat literary journey around this often maligned country.

The literary landscape of Switzerland - Aletsch Glacier
The pristine Aletsch Glacier is one of the highlights of a Jungfraujoch excursion.

And there is simply no better means of travel than the scenic trains which crisscross Switzerland. They are comfortable, run like clockwork (naturally) and overcome Europe’s sternest geographical challenges to unite this patchwork nation’s four great cultural regions — French, German, Italian and Romansch Switzerland.

Starting in Montreux, the first of these epic rail adventures is the GoldenPass Panoramic to Visp, connecting with the final section of the more famous Glacier Express to Zermatt. A little over two hours of travel along the lake, beyond the Aigle vineyards and through the Rhône and Matter valleys, exposes a stark contrast between elegant, bustling, francophone Montreux and the spectacular alpine village of Zermatt; its traditional wooden chalets and Germanic character, car-free streets and scents of fondue and gingerbread evoking the sense of stepping into a fairy tale.

Towering above Zermatt is the unmistakable ‘jagged tooth’ profile of the Matterhorn, a crooked finger beckoning climbers with a magnetic, often fatal allure.

The literary landscape of Switzerland - Matterhorn
The unmistakable Matterhorn towering over Zermatt.

The Gornergratbahn, Europe’s highest open-air cog railway, is a rather less perilous ascent to a height of 3km, revealing extraordinary views of ice floes, greyed and striated with age, like elephant hide, the Matterhorn in all its soaring glory and 28 other 4,000m+ summits arranged in a panoramic guard of honour.

West to east runs the Glacier Express, the ‘slowest express train in the world’. If you find yourself seduced by the name, make the journey in winter when the most spectacular stretches are blanketed in snow – but even in high summer, it leaves a lasting impression.

En route to Davos or St Moritz, the deep Rhine Gorge — Switzerland’s Grand Canyon — and the 2,000m Oberalp Pass are conquered with ease; 291 bridges, 91 tunnels and two World Heritage Site mountain regions are traversed.

The literary landscape of Switzerland - Gornergrat
There are 29 mountain summits visible from Gornergrat.

These days, think Davos — and its near neighbour Klosters — and perhaps you think of the World Economic Forum and the ultra-rich, but it wasn’t always so. At the turn of the 20th century, the town was better known as a health resort, particularly for tuberculosis sufferers, drawn to its high altitude and clean mountain air. A fascinating insight into this history may be gleaned with a funicular ride 300m up to a sun-drenched plateau where stands the Hotel Schatzalp. Formerly a luxurious sanatorium but now one of Europe’s great ‘time-warp’ lodgings, this attractively dilapidated building retains most of its Art Nouveau character. In the grounds bloom hundreds of species of alpine flower, and clouds scud across the sky at eye level revealing in their wake farreaching views of pine-forested hills and distant snow-speckled peaks. No wonder Thomas Mann was moved to celebrate the resort and its setting in Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain), in which a young engineer intending to spend three weeks in the sanatorium visiting his sick cousin ends up staying for seven years.

Mann was not the only author to draw inspiration from the region — the guest book of Davos’ stately Grand Hotel Belvédère includes such names as Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Conan Doyle, and just an hour or so north is Maienfeld, the idyllic alpine backdrop for Johanna Spyri’s children’s classic Heidi.

The Bernina Express unites German and Italian Switzerland in a splendid southward journey from Davos, recognised by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in motion. The first half, by train, climbs high above the pine treetops, past wildflower meadows and turquoise lakes, to the Bernina Pass, then descends into a completely different picture of beauty — all sunshine, orchards and vineyards, corkscrewing viaducts, and towns and villages ever more Italianate in style. From delightful Tirano, just across the border, the adventure continues by luxury coach through Lombardy’s picturesque Sondrio region and around the shores of stunning Lake Como, re-crossing into Switzerland in the final minutes before Lugano.

Resist the enticement of a lengthy stay in the charming resort of Lugano (or nearby Locarno, home to the international film festival) and another great Swiss ‘combination’ journey returns you north. Leaving behind the palm trees and sun-dappled lakes, the Gotthard Panorama Express spirals up the mountainside from Bellinzona (a short local train ride from Lugano or Locarno). Ten minutes through a high-altitude tunnel, the landscape is magically transformed once more — brooding timber churches and the smoking chimneys of steep-roofed chalets heralding a return to Germanic Switzerland. Looping down to Flüelen, we exchange rails for waves and board a traditional paddle steamer bound for Lucerne.

The literary landscape of Switzerland - Pilatus Railway
The Pilatus Railway is the steepest rack railway in the world.

The pretty historic bridges and buildings of this historic city sit in the benevolent shadow of Mount Pilatus and, if you have time to wait for a clear summer’s day, ascents by cogwheel and cable car to the summit present astonishing lake views. But we have a Swiss grand tour to continue in the form of the Luzern- Interlaken Express. Trains ply this dramatic route several times a day, accommodating brief stops en route. Meiringen is one such stop. Unmissable for Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts, it is here that the fateful events of The Final Problem play out. The Englischer Hof, where Holmes and Watson stay, is now the Parkhotel du Sauvage, and a funicular leads to the Reichenbach Falls, where the River Aare plunges into ‘an immense chasm, lined by glistening coal-black rock and narrowing into a creaming, boiling pit of incalculable depth’. In this ‘fearful place’, Holmes and Moriarty wrestled to their deaths, or at least (124-year-old spoiler alert!) that’s how it appeared to the distraught doctor.

Grindelwald, half an hour by train from Interlaken, is ‘chocolate-box’ Switzerland and so perhaps the perfect final stop of a great rail odyssey. Not least because there is one final, iconic train journey to appreciate– the Jungfraubahn, which cuts through the legendary North Face of the Eiger on its way to the highest station in Europe, set beside the pristine, other-worldly Aletsch Glacier. Here, a palace of ice awaits exploration one tentative step at a time, and a high-speed lift delivers visitors to the Sphinx Terrace for views as far as the Vosges mountains of Alsace and Germany’s Black Forest.

Switzerland, in microcosm, is expensive, yet also wondrous, unique and undeniably one of the world’s essential travel experiences.

A 15-day Swiss Rail Pass costs from £366 per person (2nd class) or £577 per person (1st class) from the Switzerland Travel Centre at 30 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ED. For more information, visit the Switzerland Travel Centre website or call 020 7420 4937.

CALIBRE Editorial