Zurich, Basel, and a Night Train

Friday was another nasty day in Switzerland. I did laundry then headed into Zurich to check out a couple museums and try to upgrade out seats to Berlin. Deutsche Bahn was able to upgrade us from seats to couchettes on the return trip but not on the way to Berlin.

Both we're on ETH campus and not particularly worth the rainy walk from Hauptbahnhof. I did get a sausage though, which is much more challenging than one would expect. I went to focusTerra in the geology dept and a paleontology museum in the paleontology dept. Calling them museums is a bit of a stretch. They're really just fairly large exhibits in the common area of each dept. They we're informative but it was awkward walking around them as a tourist with students hanging out all over the common area.

After Zurich, I headed back to Baden to finish packing for our trip to Berlin. 

Our main train left from Basel because I couldn't figure out how to get tickets from Baden without paying full price. So we headed to Basel around 5 to have dinner before getting on the train. We found a brewery with two restaurants and a Biergarten called Ueli Bier. The beer was tasty and the food was amazing!! I got Weinerschnitzel with Rosti. It was tasty but could have used some kind of sauce. L had the brewmaster's salad and it was the most amazing salad ever!! It was basically a bunch of meat and sausage cooled then put on top of some lettuce with a tasty dressing- so good! I'm going to try to replicate it when I get home! 

After wandering around Basel for a bit, we headed to the train station to board our night train. Here is a view of the Baselr Munster from the opposite side of the river!

The conductor was able to upgrade us to couchettes for the night and we are SOO glad we did!! Not that traveling in a couchette is comfortable by any means, it's just better than a "reclining seat."

So a couchette is a cabin on a train car with three bunk beds on each side wal. The beds were really hard and not even remotely long enough for L. The aisle between the beds is basically big enough for one person at a time so basically you go in and lay down and go to sleep, which is fine since that's what you're there for. I strongly recommend ear plugs as the trains are seriously loud and rattley. I also reccomend either lots of beers or some sleeping pills. 

It certainly wasn't the best night's sleep but it got us to Berlin!