Driving the Alps

Another driving related post from Kevin, big surprise I'm sure.

I've done all the driving so far this trip.  I enjoy it and Amanda seems to appreciate the avoidance of stress she would otherwise experience from driving with signs that are, well, different from home, and rules of the road that sometimes seem more flexible and other times more strict.  Well driving in the Swiss Alps brings things up a notch or ten. On our way from Fussen, Germany to Zermatt, Switzerland we cleared three particularly impressive passes.

Austria

First was in Austria, where we went over the a beautiful pass that I haven't found the name of yet.  The motorcycles on this pass probably outnumbered the cars 2:1 or more.  It was a very nice road to drive.  Enough corners to be fun, but not so many switchbacks that it was a pain and slowed you down too much.

Oberalp Pass, Switzerland

Next we cleared the Oberalp pass in Switzerland, which was far more switchbacks than I could count, very tight and winding, and there was also some kind of bicycle race (cyclists all had numbers pinned to them) which meant a lot of passing of cyclists.  We got some footage of this drive which I did a quick trim of and uploaded so it's available here.

Furka Pass, Switzerland

The final big pass for the day was Furka Pass, which is the 4th highest pass in Switzerland.  The view from the top was more breathtaking but the road was less challenging than Oberalp, probably because there were only a few crazy cyclists and not hundreds.  I would gladly drive Furka pass again, but would probably skip Oberalp, it was just too painful.

Goppenstein Train Ferry, Switzerland

Heading to Lauterbrunnen from Zermatt we decided to try a train ferry instead of driving yet another pass, and it saved us about an hour off the drive and the nail-biting of driving a million switchbacks.  I really enjoyed driving the passes, but in the future I'll do more train ferries or just skip having a car altogether in Switzerland and just take the trains to get around.  The Swiss trains we've been on so far were very timely and comfortable and really do make a great primary mode of transportation here.