Brig to St Moritz (Glacier Express)

Left Lausanne early (7am) Saturday morning on the local train to Brig. Brig is down in the valley which the Glacier Express drops down to after leaving Zermatt about 8 in the morning. We arrived in Brig and went to the supermarket to get a picnic lunch for the train, got aboard the Glacier Express at 10:20 and started on the way toward St Moritz. The Scenery all throughout Switzerland is amazing, it is so much like the area around Queenstown/Fiordland feels like being at home. Also after being in Italy and France the number of people that could talk to us in English was awesome. The train rumbles past heaps of tiny villages etc, heads into these tiny twisty tunnels and climbs some serious inclines (In Brig they hook up a traction unit with a cog drive) After climbing over the high point of 2000 or so meters the steep descent begins, this is the headwaters of the Rhine river, after the main descent the train heads into the Rhine Gorge, which is apparently known as the Swiss Grand Canyon... actually it looks like that big sandy cliff at Tuckers Beach on the Shotover River (you know the one that you see from the old landfill). Its the same even down to the pine trees all over the slopes

Arrived at Chur and the engine was changed back to a normal 'adhesion' one for the trip on to St Moritz, this is probably when the scenery is at its best, its the typical picture postcard Swiss scenes. Arrived into St Moritz into heavy rain showers and caught the bus around to the hostel. The Hostel in St Moritz was awesome, we had dinner included in the price for the night and so had a huge feed of salad and beans etc. There was pork stew and mashed potato as well, and soup and custard and fruit for desert. Pretty good deal for only 2 more euros than what we have been paying at all the other hostels...

Had an early night in St Mortiz and got everything sorted for the next days early start to get the train to Luzern. Had a battle with understanding instructions for the washing machine (they were in a dialect of German/Romanche that was far removed from School C German) but finally got some water noises being made and swishing happening. After going back about 40 minutes later to put it in the dryer we found that the washing machine was red hot and was still at the start of the 100 minute cycle... in what seemed to be boiling water... oh well at least the clothes would be germ free... after even more of a battle we got the clothes rinsed in cold water and spun and into the dryer to get in the morning. Morning comes and we go to grab the clothes, find that Jo's Icebreaker is a new, slimmer fit. Her week old singlet is a nice new shade of misty grey and Tim's T Shirt print has mysteriously disappeared... gone, completely gone Oh well not much we can do, off to catch the train.