Eurocity Train Question

Posted by shekinahmacmillan on 05/04/17 02:19 PM

Hello!

My husband and I are vacationing in Switzerland and Italy this June. One of our days is a travel day from Lauterbrunnen to Lerici by train (I checked flights, but there were surprisingly very few direct flights from Zurich, Basel, Bern or Geneva, and those that actually would fly us direct were really expensive and would take almost the same amount of time as a train, considering we would have to take a train all the way to the airport, make sure we arrive two hours early, and then still travel from Florence, Pisa, or Genoa airport to Lerici).

Anyway, it looks like my options are going from Spiez or Brig and the train is a Eurocity train (ETR 610). I just had two quick questions/concerns:

I'm not prone to motion sickness really (felt woozy on two boat/sea kayak trips in the past few years; I haven't experienced air sickness, but I take dramamine on flights just to be safe because I don't want to be stuck up in the air dealing with that and I'm also a nervous flyer to begin with, so the drowsiness helps a lot lol), but I've heard people can be really affected by the tilting trains (which I believe our is) to the point that even the medicine barely works. Just (hopefully) looking for some reassurance about how the rides are I guess- especially because if we take it from Spiez, it's a 2.5 hour train ride.
If we do take the Eurocity train from Spiez, since it passes through Brig anyway and we will have a Bernese Oberland Regional Pass that will cover the span from Spiez to Brig, can we just pay for a ticket from Brig to Milan and then show them our pass plus the brig ticket to cover the whole ride? Or do we have to buy the whole Spiez- Milan fare because the ride is on one train?

It's crazy-I love traveling and once I'm there, I'm fine, but the transportation part is always what makes me the most nervous lol!

Thank you in advance (as always) for your help!

Posted by Chris F

Basel, Switzerland

05/04/17 03:19 PM

8889 posts

shekinahmacmillan,

1) Not sure what the question is, have you not travelled by train before?
A train is (in my non-medical experience), less likely to give you travel sickness than a plane. You can look out of big windows and see the horizon. Tilting trains should be an improvement, as you experience less sideways centrifugal force. They are designed to tilt to cancel out most but not all the centrifugal forces of cornering, which gives the best ride for most people.
One possible problem is 50% of the seats are facing backwards. Some people do no like travelling backwards.

2) Yes you can split the tickets at Brig without having to get off the train. Just buy a ticket Brig to La Spezia (or wherever the nearest station is) from the Trenitalia website ("print-at-home" ticket).

P.S:, how are you getting to Lauterbrunnen?

Posted by shekinahmacmillan OP

05/04/17 04:41 PM

52 posts

Hi Chris,

Thank you so much for your answers! You're correct, I didn't really have a question for my first item (lol sorry for not really being clear, I didn't have my coffee yet when I was writing). It was just more wanting input because I've never been on high speed trains before (this is my first trip to Europe) and wasn't sure if the tilting/speed affected most people. I wasn't worried at first, and then as I was browsing other info about train travel in Europe, there was a blurb about some tilting trains causing bad motion sickness. Then, I started looking that up and read some other horror stories lol (although apparently, a lot of the newer trains have less of a tilt and the train adjusts the speed as it tilts which makes it smooth). It just made me a little nervous so I figured it would be better to ask the experts (aka all of you!).

What you said about the trains makes a lot of sense actually. I mean to be honest, I've never had any issues on trains before, but as I said, I've never taken a high-speed train, and I've always been a little "type-A"/anxious about long journeys where I'm kind of stuck on train or plane (I know, I know... it's ridiculous, but hopefully staying in Europe for 3 and a half weeks will help with that mentality lol!). I figured any input that would let me know what to expect would be helpful in keeping myself calm, so thank you for that! :). I think I will buy the seats where we're by a window (so i can look ahead as needed), and facing across from each other, so we will have at least one seat facing forward no matter what.

Also, thank you for the info about the Brig tickets- that will save us a little money that we can spend on wine and cheese somewhere else!

Finally, we're flying into Zurich (overnight from JFK), will take the train to either Bern or Lucerne (depending on what we decide on and what the weather reports are when we get there), store our luggage for a few hours while we explore and enjoy some lunch while we fight off some jet lag, buy our BO regional rail pass there, and then train to Lauterbrunnen by late afternoon/early evening. I just figured those trains were more local or like regular trains, so those didn't worry me. If we land in time and get through customs quickly, we also might send our luggage forward so we don't have to worry about storing it at a station.