August/September 2022 trip to Switzerland & Dolomites

What do you like to do other than move on to new locations and take trains? Are you a hiker? Do you want to explore? Mountain weather can be fickle so when you only spend a couple of nights somewhere you may not even see the mountains you came to see. This is particularly true in Zermatt as that elusive Matterhorn tends to put her head in the clouds.

Pending your reply, you could base in Lauterbrunnen for 5 nights and easily access Muerren as well as Thun. We took a train over to Thun once and did a lovely Castle Walk through the town and along the lake. It is certainly a pretty pace but we like the Lauterbrunnen Valley more so a day trip was sufficient.

You can get from Montreux to Muerren in one day, no problem. It takes a bit over 3 hours and involves six trains and/or lifts. If you stay in Lauterbrunnen you can cut that down to four trains.

Forgot to ask: where in the Dolomites are you planning to go and for how long?

It can take as little as 95 minutes to travel from Murren to Thun, so you might consider spending all those nights in Murren. I'd think you'd be more likely to need a full day for walking/hiking around Murren than for the town of Thun and its lake, so I'd be more comfortable commuting to Thun than doing the reverse. Since mountain weather is very changeable and not very predictable, having a bunch of days in one place is handy; it greatly increases the likelihood of having some nice days for outdoor activities.

According to the SBB website it takes between 3 and 4 hours to travel from Murren to Montreux. There are a lot of transfers involved, so you'll need to pay attention to where you are, but it's obviously easily doable.

I wouldn't want to hop around as fast as you are contemplating, but Switzerland is very expensive, so there's a lot to be said for striving to be an efficient traveler.

The reason for the number of changes is because of the geography - those Alps you came so far to see just keep getting in the way!

Mürren starts off with a little narrow gauge clifftop train winding along the edge, over as far as Grütschalp where it ends and everybody gets on the cable car (gondola) to go down the hill. So down the hill to Lauterbrunnen (so if you stay in Lauterbrunnen - not saying you should, I prefer up the hill, but your choice - you can skip the first 2 steps) and across the street to the Lauterbrunnen train station.

Then Lauterbrunnen to Interlaken Ost station by narrow gauge train.

At Interlaken Ost you board a standard gauge train (that means that the rails are 4ft 8 and a half inches apart - like on most trains in the world which are not in the mountains; narrow gauge is normally one metre (around 39 inches) apart so it can go around the steep mountain bends).

Most trains going west from Interlaken Ost go to or through Bern. The first major station after Interlaken is Spiez which is a junction with trains going in several directions. I don't know if it still exists after covid came but a very small number of trains used to go straight through towards Montreux, and if you are on that one of course you'll stay on. They were painted and described as Golden Pass trains. Most aren't though, so you need to get off at Spiez and get a train towards Montreux which will only go as far as Zweisimmen - where you guessed it you are heading into the mountains again - and you get off your standard gauge train and cross the platform to the waiting for you narrow gauge train which will take you all the rest of the way to Montreux including an extremely scenic drop down a steep incline into Montreux.

Or, for a bit of variety and to save around 90 minutes, but at the expense of most of the scenery, instead of changing to a train to Zweisimmen at Spiez you could change to a southbound train to Visp. Very fast because most of that leg is in a deep tunnel. Change at Visp for a train to Montreux which is again very fast because it follows the fairly unscenic Rhone river valley right there.

So you just cannot get there in a straight line with all those pesky mountains in the way...

You have Dolomites in your title. Where do you want to go there? You didn’t mention them. We loved staying in Ortisei.

I suggest you skip the 2 nights in Thun; add one to Muerren and one to Zermatt. That will reduce your hotel changes by one and give you more time in 2 beautiful places.

There is no need to break up the journey between Muerren and Montreux with an overnight, as the journey is short. Only 3h 18 min if you go via Visp and along Lac Leman; or 4 h 43 min if you go via the Golden Pass route through the mountains. Both routes are “scenic” but the Golden Pass is a named route. They have the same number of changes (5). And 3 of those (Grutschalp, Lauterbrunnen, and INterlaken Ost) will be necessary pretty much anywhere you go from Muerren outside the Lauterbrunnen Valley. These transfers are not difficult—-you just follow the others from one transport (cablecar or train) to the next.

I'm not lobbying for one route over the other, I've done both at various times for various reasons, but one fun and interesting benefit of the Golden Pass route is the obvious crossing of the Röstigraben. That is so-called (Rösti - those lovely potato concoctions found only in the German areas - border) by folks on both sides of the language border as you cross from the German speaking area to the French speaking area. Most folks around the language border are bilingual and switch back and forth seamlessly.

I enjoyed one morning being on the "schoolbus" train and hearing all the German (Swiss German) from the kids and then a mixture, perhaps starting a sentence in French and finishing it in German as they all chatted as school kids do, and then all French. In a reasonably short distance. Fun.

Hi,

The trip is a little bit fast-paced to me; I would skip Thun (add 1 night to Zermatt and 1 to Mürren).
I would also skip Lugano (it is pretty, but so is lake Como at 2/3 of the daily cost), and spend time in Pontresina or Samedan instead of Chur (3 nights).
You can then head to Varenna for lake Como, and take the train from there to Verona via Milan (you do NOT want a car around lake Como). Then, rent the car in Verona (many major offices at the station).

Next year, the Golden Pass route will require fewer train connections.. Schedules should be online in January at https://www.goldenpassline.ch/en/.