No matter how we looked at it, getting from the Cinque Terre to Gimmelwald, Switzerland was not going to be easy. I knew this from the instant I saw possible train schedules on the Swiss Rail website. The best trip would take nine hours and would involve six tight connections between five trains, a bus, and a cable car. Missing any one of these connections would leave us stranded in a train station late at night with no place to sleep and would set our trip behind by at least a day. We could not miss a connection.
As a testament to the difficulty of our plan, the friendly ticket lady in the Florence train station laughed at the schedule I handed her and called over her colleagues to look at it. Yes, even a seasoned railway employee thought we were nuts. We must’ve earned her respect, though, since she was more than eager to help us work out the details of the mandatory train reservations.
Swiss trains are notorious for their timeliness, literally departing and arriving within seconds of their scheduled times. Therefore, we were somewhat concerned when we pulled into the Milan train station with only ten minutes to get to some unknown platform and on the train to Switzerland. Needless to say, the instant the train stopped we had no choice but to run!
Dodging in and out of the crowd with full packs, we made our way to the front of the surprisingly long train on platform 18. We soon learned that our Swiss train was on platform 3, which was the complete opposite side of the station. Another run ensued, and we boarded just minutes before the conductor blew his whistle. We were off to Switzerland.
