UBC July 2024 - Dice the Track, the Ride

Welcome back to July's UBC. This month I'm going to be talking about cultural differences between Switzerland and the USA.

Remember when I told you about our plans to roll the dice to determine where our train journey was going to take us? 

Today I'm going to tell you all about it. 

We started at Zurich Main Station. Opened in 1847, it is one of the oldest railroad stations in Switzerland and also one of the busiest stations in the world. Around 2,900 trains pass through the station every day. These include long-distance trains, regional trains, suburban trains and international trains to destinations such as Munich, Stuttgart, Milan, Paris, Vienna or Budapest. 

Around 500,000 passengers use Zurich Main Station every day.

The "ShopVille" area in the station's underground is home to a variety of stores, restaurants and service providers which, unlike other businesses, are also open on Sundays and public holidays. 

Yes, let me tell you about Swiss opening hours: Where I live supermarkets close at 7 or 8pm and are closed on Sundays. Businesses like hairdressers, post offices, drug stores and the like close at 6:30pm on weekdays and between 1 and 5pm on Saturdays. 

Many, many restaurants have two Ruhetage, days off, a week, often on Sunday and Monday.

Why is this? Small companies cannot afford to employ so many people that the store can be open seven days a week. What's more, Sunday is legally a day of rest, when people are supposed to go to church and spend time with their families. Some see it as a way to slow down, others find it impossible that they can't use Sunday to wash their car, shop at the DIY store and mow the lawn at home. Yes really, I'll talk more about this in an upcoming post. 

Back to the train station. This is whee we started: the departure board for long-distance traffic.

There are regular direct train connections between Zurich Main Station and Zurich Airport. The journey time is around 10 minutes. Zurich Airport has its own train station, which is located directly under the terminal building. This allows easy and quick access to the airport facilities.

However, our journey did not take us to the airport, but in the opposite direction. 

We drove past our federal capital Bern to Spiez, an important town in the canton, picturesquely situated on Lake Thun and surrounded by an impressive mountain backdrop. 

Sights such as Spiez Castle, the beautiful lakeside promenade and various hiking and cycling trails attract many visitors.

The port of Spiez serves as a starting point for boat trips on Lake Thun, which further boosts tourism. Unfortunately, we just missed a departure and would have had to wait almost two hours for the next boat to depart, so after a delicious lunch at the "Pura Vida" outdoor pool bistro, we headed back to the train station. 

Spiez is an important transportation hub in the area. Spiez railroad station is a central transfer point for train connections to the Bernese Oberland (e.g. Interlaken, Jungfrau region) as well as to Valais and Italy. 

However, due to our day pass, which is only valid in Switzerland, we had to limit ourselves to domestic destinations, so we headed to Grindelwald, the world-famous mountain village that lies at the foot of the famous north face of the Eiger. The spectacular alpine scenery attracts numerous tourists every year who enjoy the wide range of outdoor activities. In winter, the slopes and cross-country ski trails are a magnet, while hiking, climbing and mountain biking dominate in summer.

Colin spent a training weekend here last summer with his ice hockey team, and my husband and I took the opportunity to see the sights, including the glacier gorge of the Eiger mountain. Today, however, the plan was to take the Wengernalp Railway directly up to Kleine Scheidegg. The train ride offers breathtaking views of the surrounding mountain landscape, including the north face of the Eiger, the Mönch and the Jungfrau. 

Sadly, it turned out that our day pass, which theoretically allows you to use all means of transportation in Switzerland, i.e. trains, buses, streetcars and even boats, was not valid on this mountain railroad, 

What's worth knowing if you don't live in Switzerland: There is no access control to the platform. This means that you can board the train even if you don't have a ticket. Checks are only carried out sporadically. 

According to estimates, the proportion of fare dodgers in Switzerland is between 2 and 5 percent of public transport passengers. Compared to other European countries, Switzerland is in the middle of the field. 

The consequences for fare evasion in Switzerland are relatively strict:

The first time you are caught without a valid ticket, the fine is usually CHF 100 (USD 112.50) plus the price of the normal ticket.

If you are caught without a ticket again within two years, the fine increases to CHF 140 the second time and CHF 180 the third time. Each additional time can lead to even higher fines.

Repeated violations can also lead to criminal consequences (entry in the criminal record) in addition to fines.

At the entrance to this particular platform, however, there was an official who wanted to make sure that the passengers had valid tickets before boarding. And he knew why ;-)

So we stayed in the village and treated ourselves to an ice cream, which we had to pay for in cash. 

Welcome to Switzerland, a country that generates a large part of its revenue from tourism but requires tourists, who in this area typically come from Asia, to have Swiss francs to hand. We saw many disappointed people leaving the Ice Cream Parlor empty-handed. 

Missed opportunity, Switzerland!

Before the pandemic and the associated protective measures, it was common for small stores to only accept cash payments. So if you wanted to pay for two croissants by credit card in a bakery in, say, 2019, you would be disappointed. Most small stores don't even have a credit card terminal, and even if they do, in the past they had a minimum sales value above which you were allowed to pay cashless at all. They justified it with high fees that ate away their margin on small purchases. 

Fortunately, this has changed since 2020/21 and in many places, even at the farmer's farm store, you can pay with either cards or Twint (similar to Venmo). 

A key experience we had with this "train connection dice game" was that you are always pushed through the timetable. Trains usually run every half hour. Half an hour is not enough time to explore a place, so you have to allow at least 60, if not 90 minutes for a stop, or then travel on immediately. We usually opted for the latter. 

Which is why we soon left Grindelwald and made our way home, which took a full three hours, and with the best connections. It was sometimes very crowded, since visitors travel with trolleys and/or large backpacks, but all in all we mostly managed to get a seat. Not least because it is summer vacation time. Although there are many tourists, there are significantly fewer business people and no schoolchildren. 

And true to our image, the trains ran on time and we caught every connection. Just earlier this week, when we met up with a teammate of Colin's who had returned from an exchange year in Canada, we learned that the public buses there were a matter of luck. They could well be 15 minutes late or even canceled without the passengers being informed. Unthinkable in Switzerland. I can also say that everything is neat and clean here. 

This was it for our project, I hope you enjoyed rolling the dice with us. By the way we didn't carry real dice but used the free app "Dice". 

What do you think about our opening hours, cash only policies and honor system when it comes to boarding a train?