Ali – Switzerland has a number of tourist rail routes that are part transportation and part experience. On Saturday, we took a ride in Rhaetian Railways Bernina Express, which crosses the Bernina Pass and travels through the Swiss Alps, close enough to places like Saint Moritz that you can smell the rich people (they smell like laundered money and camembert cheese in case you were wondering). Parts of the railway have been designated a UNESCO world heritage site, I think both for the scenery as for the engineering feat of building it.
Now the tracks are the same whether you are just looking to get from A (a being the Swiss town of Chur) to B (b being the Italian town Tirano) or whether you are looking for the scenic experience. The difference is that the tourist train has cars with huge panoramic windows, a tri-lingual service person happy to sell you souvenirs, and tri-lingual audio announcements about the views to either side of the train. The tourism train also makes a 15 minute get-out-and-snap-your-tourist-photos stop at the highest point- Alp Glüm.
But I’m jumping a bit ahead. Let’s go back to the 7 am Saturday departure out of Zurich HB that got us to our 8:30 Bernina Express train out of Chur. I had sprung for first class tickets, which got us slightly roomier seats. We were all pretty psyched about seeing the Alpian splendor and thought a weekend spent riding trains would be a relaxing change of pace from our usual active and frenetic weekends. Maya had downloaded several audio books for entertainment to accompany the view. 
With hot beverages in hand, we spent the next 4 hours winding through the Alps past glaciers, frozen lakes, and ridiculously picturesque snow-capped mountains. 
We went over large aqueducts and through tunnels dug right into cliff faces.The description of these engineering marvels always sounded way more impressive in German, probably due to the fact that numbers take 1.5 times longer to say in German making everything sound bigger and taller. 
Near the 2000 meter top, we went past two frozen lakes creatively named green lake and black lake. On one of them (which looked neither geeen nor black) we found out what kite surfers do in winter time. Answer: test the durability of frozen lake surfaces. 
At the top we all disembarked for a tourist photo moment and a brief leg stretch, almost face planting several times falling into knee deep snow holes made by the ghosts of tourists past.
Back on the road….errr…rail, we headed down out of the Alps ending up a mere 400 meters above sea level just across the Italian border in Tirano. The plan was to hop a bus back to Poschiavo, a small Alpian town back in Switzerland that was a third of the price of Saint Moritz. So we had just enough time to grab some lunch and discover just how screwed we were on a daily basis by the exorbitant Swiss cost of living. Not 10 minutes into Italy we got Sambuca, ice cream and coffees for 9 Euros. I’ve heard the high cost of living in Switzerland is the result of both protectionist policies and an infestation of rich people, but I haven’t read any detailed economic analysis that thoroughly explains why a 3 Euro Sambuca magically becomes a 9 CHF Sambuca just by crossing a border.
We caught our bus, which was right on time because it was run by a Swiss company, and managed to reach Poschiavo 30 minutes later just before we all vomited on the seats from motion sickness. Joe had booked us in the inspirationally named Hotel Suisse. After checking in we wandered the cute and very sleepy town until we worked up a thirst and then claimed our free drinks that were secured by flashing our Bernina Express tickets. We ate an interesting Swiss-Italian Frankenstein cuisine that night at the hotel restaurant and then turned in early.
The next day we were back on the train for the 5hour trip home. In total we had spent about 11 hours on trains and 30 minutes on a bus in the span of 48 hours. We all agreed that that much butt-sitting and panorama viewing was not our cup of 9 CHF tea. Glad we can check that one off the bucket list. Next time we’ll get out and hike.