Switzerland, back again
Ich konnte das August Desaster nicht auf mir sitzen lassen und musste dringend noch meine Entzugserscheinungen von den Bergen bekämpfen. Was tun? Spontan Ende September ne Woche Urlaub nehmen! Drei stornierbare Flüge zu verschiedenen Destinationen buchen (Bozen, Zürich, Madrid) und dann anderthalb Tage vorher gucken, wo das Wetter stabil ist. Dann Zug und Hotel buchen. Das Engadin hatte gewonnen, war sowieso von vorneherein mein Favorit, weil nur in der Schweiz ein stressfreier Urlaub ohne Auto möglich ist. Alles andere ist Käse. 🧀 😂
Oberengadin, Celerina / Schlagrina war die Wahl auf Grund der Kombination aus okayer Wettervorhersage, guter Erreichbarkeit und Bergen, Bergen, Bergen. Und es war die richtige Wahl. Ein kleines Dorf kurz vor St. Moritz, wundervolles kleines Hotel (Hotelino Petit Chalet), exzellente Bus-, Bahn- und Gondelanbindung sowie zwei Supermärkte und zwei gute Restaurants (Bo’s Co und Cresta Run). Was will man mehr? Walk out the door in the morning, straight on the hiking trail. Get back, have a great meal, clean food, sleep, repeat. Doesn’t get any better than that.
Switzerland means that you don’t have to worry about logistics because 99,99999% of the main shit is just working. Seamlessly. An extremely well-oiled machine. The trains and buses are all on the same „rhythm“, so connecting is super easy. One of the very few places in the world where you really don’t need a car as an independent traveler. And to me that’s worth a lot, happy to pay more for such an experience. Get off the plane at 16.20 on a Sunday, go to the SBB travel center, ask for a „Halbtax Schnupper Abo“ card (gives you 50% off public transport), receive a temporary card, buy a bottle of water, be at the platform where your train is leaving at 16.55 with ten minutes to spare. Switzerland is the only place in the world where that is possible. Same for the travel itself, connection time between trains is 4-6 minutes, it always works because they are always on time and synced up. Same for buses.
Got to Celerina late Sunday evening with a bit of trepidation after the self-checkin disaster a couple of weeks earlier. I need not have worried. I had received detailed instructions where to find the key ahead of time and they even called me while I was on the train to make sure everything was going well. How nice! Everything went well and I checked into my lovely room at the Hotelino. Great choice – it’s a small property, not one of these anonymous over-the-top gigantic „castles“. Room was super spacious (though it was the smallest one), with a full kitchen, wooden floors, natural stone tile bathroom and a small terrace. Comfortable and clean as well, almost goes without saying. Breakfast is great, it’s served to your room. Service in general, super helpful, super friendly, always available. Shows what you can do even with a small team if people are committed to delivering a great experience – something that the big chains could learn a lot from. Nevermind, highly recommend this hotel and will be back!
Celerina is a perfect choice as „base location“ for hiking trips, the Hotelino is right at the train station and gondola, bus stop is three minutes walk away. You can get to almost any spot within the main valley and some side valleys within a short bus or train (or gondola) ride, gondola rides are free for hotel guests. There’s a dense network of trails with varying degrees of difficulty and length. I stayed away from the super tricky ones and also did not go above 3000m because of the somewhat volatile weather. Still plenty of wonderful tracks and views to be had. But see for yourself.
Monday morning, get up early, get ready, get out! 🙂 Warm up walk from the hotel along the Inn river to Samedan, the up the mountain to Piz Padella, over to Murgans and back down to Celerina. Could have used the gondola from Murgans straight down to the hotel but it was a nice day and a nice forest on the way down, so why bother? 😉 GPX track here.
A great leg stretcher! I was worried a bit when the clouds moved in just as I was getting to the trickiest section, but they moved out just as fast. But don’t do this in bad visibility or rain/snow unless you know what you’re doing. Track was mostly easy with very short section where you had to scramble and some very steep sections secured with chains going down. Without these chains, it would have been tricky.
You get wonderful views across the valley, of some of the glaciers, scraggy peaks, the Inn river valley, and a few minutes walking though nice forests.
Samedan also has a very nice cafe (Kunst.Kaffee), they serve fantastic coffee, good cake, and yummy Tibetan Mo Mos (the hot sauce is really hot, btw).
This was just the warm up day, coming up next: the best day hike I’ve ever done, frogs at 2850m, and giant mutant forest animals!