Back to the golden age of flight

Like anyone with a vague interest in leaving a planet in decent working order to my kids, I'm generally anti-internal flights in small countries. But there are a number of reasons for which I'm keen on those operated by boutique Swiss airlines Baboo and Darwin between Geneva and Lugano, which I took for the first time on Thursday.


The least of them is that it is a remarkably quick way to make a journey that usually takes 6 hours (and, significantly, one which I have to make on a fortnightly basis). It takes 35 minutes precisely - barely enough to reach the cruising altitude of 6000m and get back down again.

But much more than a short hop over the mighty alps, this is a trip back to the golden age of air travel. 15 minutes before take-off you walk a few paces from the departure gate to the awaiting Saab 2000 twin prop. After a minimum of fuss you're in the air, and crossing the alps at close range.


Familiar mountain tops pass below like old friends: Mont Blanc, the Jungfrau, the Matterhorn. The highest peaks are a little over a kilometre down - near enough that you'd see any intrepid mountaineers that happened to be summitting at the time.

A smart lady promptly comes and offers wine and snacks to complete the moment, and before you've had time to finish them, it's 'cabin crew, prepare for landing' time and you're on the tarmac at Lugano's Agno airport.


It is a staggeringly expensive connection. At CHF 564 for your average weekend return, and at just 134 miles, it's possibly the most expensive scheduled flight in Europe(?). But the whole thing is so far away from the humiliation of modern budget air travel, you can dream for a moment or two of a world where EasyJet and co. don't exist. And I'll pay for that every once in a while.

Those trains

Don't get me started on the Swiss trains. Oops - too late, you did.

There are no bad things about the Swiss trains, only good ones. Here are the top ten.

1. Switzerland is the last place on earth where travelling by train is both affordable and an absolute pleasure (with the possible exception of Russia.)
2. There are no ticket barriers, and the ticket inspectors don't ask so much to see you ticket as wait for you to proudly show it to them. This is because there is a general feeling that no-one would think of skipping a fare because no one can fault any aspect of the service that is being provided to them.
3. All parts of the Swiss public transport network talk to each other, meaning that if you buy a 'day pass' there is very little that moves in the country that you are not entitled to get on. (Includes: buses, trams, boats, mountain trains. Excludes: ski lifts, other peoples' cars, animals etc.)
4. You can buy one of the aforementioned day pass for CHF45 (if you buy a multipack of six which doesn't have any time limit on when you have to use it by.) I have met people who, having purchased one of these, have got up at the crack of dawn and spent the entire day just travelling around by train, looking out of the window etc.
5. The view of lake Geneva from above the Lavaux vineyards when you come through the tunnel from Palezieux to Lausanne. It's so beautiful, the way you suddenly shoot out of the blackness of the tunnel to see the sun shimmering over almost the entire lake from your high vantagepoint, that the first time I did it I dropped my sandwich.
6. You can set your watch by them. I have done so, and it works.
7. When you plan a long route involving complex changes, some of them can be as short as 4 minutes. They know you'll make it.
8. The man who comes and brings you espresso.
9. They have little volume controls in each carriage so that the announcements don't hurt your delicate little ears.
10. Once the Lausanne to Geneva commuter train was delayed in winter. The next morning SBB staff went along the carriages offering everyone chocolates to apologise. (True story, an ex-colleague was on that train.)
11. The toilets are very simple and kept clean. They don't have electric doors which slide closed so slowly that you accidentally take your trousers down before they've closed and everyone laughs, or 'automatic' taps that cover your hands in soap and then you realise they've run out of water so you have to use toilet paper to clean the soapy mess off your hands.
12. On the 'Glacier Express' from Zermatt to St. Moritz they have wine glasses with slanted bases so that you can rotate it depending on the gradient the train is at, so that your wine stays perfectly level throughout.
13. Their website sbb.ch has pretty much the entire European rail timetable built into its journey planner so you can use it to plan trips that have nothing to do with Switzerland.
14. You can rent awesome mountain bikes from them at some stations.
15. I could go on. And on.

And I will. But later. For now though, toot toot!

First lists

To get the ball rolling, is a list of the best and least-best five things about Switzerland that I've discovered in my first 685 days here.

Top five:

1. The recession that brought most of the world to it's knees the moment I stepped off the plane here in July 9th 2008 went largely unnoticed in Switzerland. (NB ok this is a mild exaggeration.)
2. The trains are so extraordinarily brilliant that the minute I've finished writing this list, I'm going to create another sub-list of the best five things just about the trains.
3. The Swiss invented the potato peeler.
4. The supermarket Manor, which would be more accurately described as a 'food museum'.
5. It is, without exaggeration, utterly beautiful almost everywhere you look.

Bottom five:

1. When you arrive at Geneva airport your retinas are assulted by such silly pictures of George Clooney drinking 'Nespresso' that you can never take his films seriously. Even the Cohen brothers stuff.
2. Nespresso, generally.
3. The follow up to the internationally valued potato peeler: this ridiculously unneccesary appliance.
4. On 29 November 2009 Switzerland voted to ban the construction of minarets, for no good reason at all.
5. Let's face it, UBS have been a little bit naughty with all those wealthy Americans' saving that they should have been paying tax on...