My Daily Commute (by Train)

Many people in Virginia ask me, "What's it like in Switzerland?"

That is a huge question to answer. So I can break it out into small chunks. How about I describe my commute? Yes? Ok.

Northern Virginians can talk long and passionately about traffic. In Northern Virginia, the population has exploded in the past 2 decades, and the roads have not expanded to meet the challenges of the increased population. The state government in Richmond gladly takes the increased revenue from the growing economy of Northern Virginia, and promptly redistributes this wealth immediately to the impoverished back-water sections of Virginia. Thus, the life of a Northern Virginian can be described as "brief periods of life separated by long hours in traffic. "

There are days when I feel like my life in Switzerland could be described as "memorable periods of life separated by long hours on the train." This is mostly because I live in Bern, and work in Fribourg, and I hardly ever get the joy of driving to work. This would be a commute that most Northern Virginians would reply, "Your commute is 36 minutes by car with no traffic? That's pretty good! I wish I could do that."

Depending on the day and my mood, my commute could consist of many combinations of walk, tram, train, bus, walk; in that order.   I can be enthusiastic about this daily ritual, but after too many days of doing it, it starts to wear thin on me.  I really would like to live 10 minutes from the office for once in my life.  I haven't had such convenience since I lived in South Riding and worked in Chantilly. 

One day in the middle of September, I took along my camera, and documented all the steps along the way.  This was a day when I got out on time, but spent too much time goofing off and taking pictures for your benefit, so my timing on all the connections got messed up.   Let's start. 

I recommend you read through the timeline, then watch the slide show in full screen mode.  There is also a map showing where I took all my pictures along the way, if that can help you visualize. 

7:55.  I have to promptly leave the house at 7:55.  If I leave just a minute later, I jeopadize making the train in Gümligen.  One cool thing about the trains being nearly always on time, is I learn how to cut it close.  If I leave any later, I have to bike to work, or take the tram.  I prefer to have the 30 minute walk along the top of the hill, it is much more scenic, and I get a good bit of exercise, a little time to clear my mind and prepare for the day ahead.  My office has a competition where we track the number of miles we walk, and I have logged over 250 miles since we started in August. 

The trip starts out in a small patch of forest, and has me head uphill past a horse farm.  At the horse farm, there is this big black German Shepard that always comes out and barks at me.  I have yelled at it at the top of my lungs, and that usually stops him from barking at me.  When the mean dog is not around, usually there are two early 20's or teen-aged girls helping out on the farm, and they always say good morning.  Since nobody else is manly enough to do a hike up this hill every morning, I guess I have become sort of a regular thing for them. 

The path takes a steep turn up a gravelly rocky road where cars and motorcycles are not permitted.  There is evidence of regular horse riding, as there are many "road apples" along the way.  Some mornings the hill is more forboding than others, but as I do this commute up the hill more, the hill gets easier.  The hill is steep enough that one could not dream of riding a bike up it, and just simply walking up this hill with a bicycle in hand is also a dreadful thought.  Maybe the Swiss don't think it's so bad; maybe I'm just out of shape, or maybe I am just not used to the hills any more. 

By the time I get to the top of the hill, the gravelly path has joined a small one-lane road which has very little traffic.  Usually I see only one or two cars every morning.  The rest of this part of the journey is a gentle downhill slope which makes the walk to work easier.  Biking back up this hill going the other way is terrible.  I have biked this way home only once, to get home a sloppy sweaty mess, out of breath for a good 10 minutes after arrival. 

8:20. I get to the Schützenhaus der Gemeinde Müri, which has a very nice water fountain for me to get my hydration levels back up.  This is where the forest breaks, and there is either a grey sky above me (the usual scenario), or on this day, the sky turned into a brilliant blue.  There are more cars along here, but not so many that I fear for my life.  The Schützenhaus is where the Swiss, who own guns, do shooting practice.  There is a target range that you can walk under the live fire when they are shooting.  I have never been here when the shooting range is active. 

8:33.  If I make a good enough walking pace, I can grab the S1 line that takes me directly to Fribourg.  The train ride on the S1 is exactly 55 minutes long, and this is the fastest way to get from Gümligen to my office, bar none.  It also is one of the more uncomfortable rides.  The S1 is packed, so I don't get to sit until we get to the main train station, and most of the people get off.  I usually don't take this train.  I really have to walk quickly and not slow down for anything to make the S1 in 38 minutes from my front door. 

8:38. The S2 that goes to Schwarzenburg arrives at Gümligen.  I usually take this train to the Bern main station, where I then take the intercity to Fribourg.  This gets me to Fribourg 8 minutes later than if I was to take the S1.  So if I miss the S1, it is not a tragedy.  I have a back-up plan. 

8:40. If I manage to miss the S1 and the S2, there is a third fall-back.  There is a tram that leaves Gümligen and shows up in downtown.  A very brisk walk after the "G" tram makes it into Bern Zytglogge can get me to the 9:04 train at the main train station. 

This morning, I was so busy taking pictures for you, that I blew it, and missed all three connections.  This almost never happens.  i got distracted by taking some pictures of cows and mountains, and sights along the way, that I didn't realize that I had fallen so far behind schedule.  Oh well. This gives me an opportunity to show you what standing around the tram stop in Gümligen looks like, so you can get a glimpse of my everyday life.  Since I missed all three of the above connections, I also missed the intercity train to Fribourg that leaves at 9:04.  So the commute will take even longer now. 

Most of the Swiss spend their time on public transportation reading the free newspapers.  They are not the paragon of journalistic integrity, but they pass the time.  The articles are written in simple enough German for me to read (I have a really hard time reading the real newspapers, that use lots of words I never learned, and I would spend all my time reading the dictionary to get the meaning of the articles.)  Here, this day's newspaper describes the Stock Market meltdown, and also describes the new uniforms of the Swiss Ski team. 

The tram trip is pretty slow going, and is only a few minutes faster than it would be to drive downtown.  I get off at Bern Zytglogge, where the "G" tram ends.  In order to make the inter city train, I have to walk to the train station, about 8 minutes walk away.  Sometimes, I grab the #3, the #5 or the #9 tram, which all take me straight to the train station.  Since I have a lot of time to get to my 9:34 train, I decide to walk it and show you some of the pictures along the way. For those who don't know the rules of pronouncing Swiss words, "Zytglogge" is pronounced kind of like "TSEET-glock-kah" Along the walk from Zytglogge to the Bahnhof (train station), there are many shops along the way.  A few clothing stores, like H&M, Vögeli, and a butcher/deli.   I never do any shopping, so I don't have much idea what is actually in these shops. 

9:16. I arrive at the main train station.  I have no idea what Bern looked like before the great construction of 2007.  In 2007 through May of 2008, all of this area around the train station was a huge mess of construction and blocked roads, pedestrian paths re-routed, trams stopped.  They managed to finish all the work for the revamped train station just about a week before the UEFA soccer tournament began. 

A part of the massive construction that was done includes a new wing of the underground mall, where they now show some of the old city walls, enclosed in a glass display, showered with pink light.  There is no escaping the worldly influence of McDonald's, as there is one that is never empty right inside the train station.  I get to the train station meeting area, where there is a big blue display showing all of the trains that arrive and depart from Bern.  I already know what train I am taking, as do most of the people here this morning.  There are occasionally tourists studying the departure board carefully, or asking for directions.  There are also the locals waiting around for a friend to arrive; they use this area as a meeting point. 

My train to Fribourg is the nice train.  This train comes once an hour, at the bottom of the hour, instead of the top of the hour.  This is the double decker train, with a very nice restaurant on board.  At 9:04, the train that goes to Fribourg is not nearly as nice, but still much more comfortable than the S1 that stops about a dozen times between Gümligen to Fribourg.  On the adjacent track is the Cisalpino train to Milan.  I have not had an opportunity to take this train yet, but will probably sometime in the next few weeks for a business trip to Turino. 

When the train arrives, there is an orderly shuffle without proper queueing to get into the train.  Many of the Swiss stand too closely to the door, as crowded passengers coming in from Zürich attempt to get off.  Since this is such a late train, it is not nearly as crowded as if I had gotten on this train an hour earlier.  I usually get on the car close to the restaurant, there are usually more seats further up the train, but it is never a problem trying to find a seat toward Fribourg. 

The double-decker train InterCity Express is incredibly quiet and smooth.  There is one car named "the quiet car", which is so quiet you can often only hear the rustling of newspapers.  There are usually tourists who get into the quiet car and inconsiderately start talking.  I seem to be more Swiss every day, as I usually give these rude talkers a very dirty look, but say nothing. 

The train arrives in Fribourg 27 minutes later, but this day, there was a seven minute delay.  In August 2007, there was some sort of landslide that caused the rails between Wünnewil and Flamatt to be unusable.  There has been construction on this line ever since.  In one small place on the line, there is only one track for both directions, which will require us to wait for a service in the opposite direction to pass.  The train I took on this day had to wait, and it caused a seven minute delay. The delay in this direction does not bother me much; especially since I have had so many other delays this morning, what is another seven minutes? 

I exit the train with nearly everybody else. A sea of people exit the train, and walk at an average walking pace down the ramp to the rest of the train station.  At the exit of the station, I hang around at the bus stop. It is usually only a 2 minute wait, but since we were seven minutes late from the rail construction, I waited longer than usual. 

The rest of the commute is not that interesting.  I take an empty bus to the edge of town, and walk another ten minutes to our office.  The morning is started by a fresh cup of coffee, as delivered from our Nespresso machine, which I adore.  This machine is great, especially as it does not give my coworkers the opportunity to be rude and finish off all the coffee in the coffee pot without refilling it.  Insert a capsule, put a cup in place, and press the button, and a great cup of coffee comes out. 

The amount of time I put into the daily commute does start to drain on me.  Emotionally, it has taken a serious toll in me, especially in this past week.  Time can be shaved off here and there; if I take my bicycle from the house to Gümligen, I can do the trip in 7 or 8 minutes.  I have to be walking out the front door by 8:25 at the absolute latest to bike to Gümligen and make the 8:33 S1 train.  In any event, I probably will remember the commute when I think back on my time in Switzerland. I might even look upon it favorably.  However, I will never look back memorably on my Virginia commute by car. 

[ Full Screen Slideshow ] 

[ Photo Album ]

View Album

Get your own

Commute by Bike!

I never have been able to do this, in any of my careers before. Biking to work in Northern Virginia is suicide. Not to mention too far, too hot, too scary and too cold. Traffic in Northern VA is terrible. The suburban sprawl has increased the number of houses to the west of the Washington DC area, but the number and quality of the roads have been slow to increase to match the population increase. It is said that there are three subjects that people can always small talk about. Politics, weather, sports. In Northern VA, there is a fourth: The traffic (or your commute this morning).

Everybody in Virginia has an opinion about traffic. "Oh, don't go on 28 between 7:35 and 9:30, you'll be in bumper-to-bumper!", "Oh you should take that cool bypass around Route 234." "Forget about getting on I-66 before the HOV lanes turn on." If you ask anybody who has lived in Virginia, they can give you detailed horror stories about how they hated their commutes, or at the very least, they all know the radio stations they like to listen to, as there is not much else to do in the car while sitting in traffic.

When I lived in Virginia, the location of the house was in South Riding, just southwest of Dulles International Airport. The office is in Sterling, northeast of Dulles Airport. There were two or three different paths to take to get to work. North in route 606, which is in places, an undivided highway of traffic going 96 kph (60 mph), giving me a very narrow 4 inches of real estate on the side of the road. Along this road drive 18 wheelers, and much worse: soccer moms driving their Chevy Suburbans primping their make up as they chat on their cell phones. I said suicide. I meant it.

The other path is north on Route 28, a 6 lane divided highway, a main thoroughfare between the Interstate I-66 and the Dulles Airport terminal. The traffic on this road, despite all the lanes, is usually stand-still in the morning, or at least creeping along at 32kph (20 mph). Still, there was a fatality of a poor guy on a bike a few years that I haven't forgotten about. Probably a soccer mom. By car, the commute is 16.6 miles (26 km) or 15.3 miles (24.6 km), depending on the route. The commute routinely takes 45 minutes during the morning, not so bad in the evening. That is an average of 20 miles per hour. For this suburban-sprawl induced traffic problem, I have sworn with words laced with anger and dripping with obscenities on a daily basis. If that is my average velocity in a car, I might as well have that commute on a bike.

So you must understand how excited I was when I came to Switzerland, and see people on bicycles everywhere.

Ever since we moved to Rüfenacht, taking the tram has been a source of impatience. I knew that the average velocity by tram was approximately that of me on a bike. So I started biking to the train station, to start my daily journey. My new commute consisted of: Walk to tram, 10 minutes. Wait for tram, 5 minutes, take tram to Gümligen, 10 mins, Wait for S1 to Fribourg, 3 minutes, 45 minutes to Fribourg, 5 minutes waiting for a bus, 10 minutes on a bus ride, and another 8 minutes walk down a hill to the office.

What an itinerary.

Well for the past 4 weeks, I have been taking the bike to the Gümligen train station, and sometimes even further into town, where i can catch a different tram to take me all the way to the central train station, Bern Bahnhof. The way to the train station in the morning is all down hill. If you drop the 10 minutes that it takes to walk down the hill to the tram stop, taking the bike is actually a shorter "door-to-door" commute time than taking the tram.

Since the way to work is all down-hill, and fast, I do in fact have a higher average velocity than the tram. One morning I got out late, and rode my bike past the tram as the passengers were boarding. What a perfect opportunity to test my theory that it takes about the same time on a bike as on a tram.

I peddled down that street as fast as I could. I was ahead of the tram. Whoosh! The tram passed me. Ah! but he's stopping. I peddled faster. Good thing this is down-hill. I pass the tram. I'm ahead! yay! The tram passes me again. We do this a few times, but his last two stops are close to each other, and I race by.

I had parked my bike, locked it up and was walking to the train platform as the tram shows up in Gümligen Station.

Since the S1 is a long ride, with many stops, and there are often no seats on the train in the morning (until we get to Bern), I have been doing an alternate course to get to work, which takes a little bit longer, but takes the InterCity train, which is bigger, nicer, quieter, and less stinky. This commute involves: bike to Eggholzli (which I think means 'little forest on the corner'), park my bike there, take the tram to Bern Bahnhof, and take the Intercity train to Fribourg that leaves every 30 minutes (on :04 and :34).

There are days that I wish I did not bike to work. The rain does not bother me so much, so those days I wish I did not bike don't happen to be the rainy ones. However, one day, after getting over a cold, and generally feeling spaced-out -- I was actually hoping that my bike had been stolen while I was gone. Most of the people here are trusting enough to lock up their back tire to their frame, and that is it. No locking up the bike to an immovable structure such as a pole, tree, bicycle rack, etc. This was a bit strange to me when I started the bicycle commuting. I am used to having those metal Kryptonite locks securely bolting the bike to something that would take a bulldozer to knock over. Once, I even locked my bike up, and forgot to take the key with me. The bike was not stolen.

It is clear to me that the bike I brought over was not well-equipped for commuting to work here in Switzerland. First of all, the gears are inappropriate at every speed. There has been times where I am racing down the hill to Gümligen at a very respectable pace, maxed out at the highest gear, and found myself being passed by a local Swiss.

Of course, since I am fat and pathetic, I am not surprised that I get passed going up-hill, either. But I did notice that even though I was going up-hill in the lowest gear, those who passed me had a faster rate of pedaling that did not match up with what I was doing. The only explanation for this must be in the gears. I find myself casually looking at the gears on the local Swiss bikes, and it becomes more apparent that these bikes are built for going up hills. The front gears are tiny and the back gears are huge. I guess I shouldn't feel too bad about not being able to climb the hill on the way back to home. (See how I gawk at other people's bikes in the next post, Stuff White People Like).

The return trip by bike has a modest up-slope which seriously reduces my return velocity. The grand finale is a terrible hill that might even have conquered me at my peak biking performance capabilities when I was 16 years old. I never get home without being out of breath and sweaty. I suppose it is better than getting to work out of breath and sweaty.



View Larger Map