Train explores the two worlds of Switzerland and Italy.
It takes 27 minutes to pass through the Gotthard Base Tunnel. It’s something of a dreamlike experience: You’re on the train hurtling through lush Swiss scenery — trackside haystacks and farmhouses, small villages with a single towering steeple, distant mist-crowned mountains, and dramatic landscape unfolding in more shades of green than you knew existed. Then all of a sudden, everything goes dark. Pitch black. You’re still moving at about 150 miles per hour, but now you can’t see where you’re going.
That darkness, a 35-mile stretch through a mountain of granite, was unveiled in December 2016. The completed tunnel is part of an epic narrative. The Gotthard Base Tunnel replaced one that took 10 years to construct during the Victorian era. At that time, European commerce was growing briskly thanks to a new-fangled mode of transportation: the railroad. To travel from the medieval city of Basel, in northwest Switzerland close to the French and German borders, to Milan, a commercial center, took 50 hours across the Alps by stagecoach. So in 1872, construction began on the tunnel, which would employ up to 2,500 miners at a time and ultimately claim 100 lives, especially once they moved from using gunpowder to the then newly invented dynamite to bore through the solid earth.
The new tunnel, which carries a price tag of $12 billion and took 17 years to build, is the longest train tunnel in the world. I relate all this not to bury the lead, but because these are the things you’ll think about as the train emerges into Bodio, a tiny town in Switzerland’s Ticino region. It feels like a world away from the other side of the mountain. You’ll notice how quickly the scenery transformed from mountainous Alpine stretches to palm tree-dappled Mediterranean landscape. Even the outside temperature is a few degrees warmer than it was where the tunnel starts.
You’ll think about these things until your reverie is interrupted by a man with a stoic expression and an old-timey conductor’s cap. He’ll be gently ringing a bell to announce his arrival. He’ll be pushing a cart from which he’s hawking frothy cappuccinos, dispensed from a compact machine, Swiss chocolate bars and croissants, as well as souvenirs such as Swiss Army knives and detailed toy train cars. You’ll snap a photo for Instagram.
The new tunnel is part of the Gotthard Panorama Express, which I rode with a Eurail pass. The Eurail system is an astonishingly expansive network comprised of more than 35 railways — both high-speed and international and smaller regional lines. It covers more than 155,000 miles through 28 countries. I have always had a fascination with mass transportation. I don’t have a license, so I depend on it in my daily life in New York City. Our subway system, a fraction of Eurail’s scope, is the object of much frustration and vilification because of its breakdowns and delays, but frankly, I think it’s more worth noting how many times a day — rather, hour — things run without incident. Amtrak, which can take me 226 miles from Manhattan to Washington, D.C., in under three hours at 150 miles per hour, is a pleasure trip. When it works. Catastrophic derailments make headlines sometimes, and delays are frequent. But in my romantic, precision-obsessed image of Europe, I envision the train system as being as unflawed and lovely as other European contributions to the world: Mozart’s operas, Vermeer’s milkmaid, Coco Chanel’s little black dress, baguettes. So it didn’t take a moment’s hesitation when a friend suggested a spring trip across country lines via rail.
Our journey started in Lucerne, a medieval city where German is the primary language, rustic fondue eateries offer all the giddy excess you’d expect, and its moniker as the City of Lights rings true when you stand on one of the historic covered bridges watching the light bouncing off the Reuss River. (In case you’re confused, note that Paris is the City of Light.) As well-preserved as the Old Town is, however, shouts of modern Europe can be heard. I found Karel Korner, a cocktail bar that could put any cocktail joint in London or San Francisco to shame. A medley of gin and some unpronounceable apricot ingredient and garnished with rosemary made a mighty fine nightcap.
The next day, before my friend and I caught the steamboat that would take us on a nearly three-hour ride across Lake Lucerne to the Panoraed ma train, we stopped into the Swiss Museum of Transport. It’s common knowledge that the Swiss are the standard bearers for monitoring time, but the museum illuminates that they also made groundbreaking developments in how we make our way across the land, through the space we occupy. The first mountain cogwheel train in Europe was built at Mount Rigi in 1871, for instance.
The journey ultimately ended in Lugano, a small town tucked in a bay on Lake Lugan no, surrounded by the epic mounts San Salvatore and Bre. Everyone speaks Italian, which makes sense when you learn that it was part of Italy until 1803. I spent the afternoon wandering narreets row cobblestone street that snake around the Piazza dello Riforma, the main square.
Lugano is a financial center, so