I woke up this morning about 5:30 AM, a bit before the 6:00 AM alarm. I knew we had a lot to do to get finished with our packing, and it is just nicer not to be in a rush. I let Stephanie sleep in until the alarm went off at 6:00 AM.
I re-dried the remaining clothes for a bit that we had left from last night and then took them out to cool. With the washer/dryer combo, it always seems like the clothes are just a bit damp when they are hot, maybe there is residual water/moisture from the washing cycle still in the machine somewhere and it just makes damp steam when drying.
I made a cup of coffee and worked on the remainder of the items we still needed to pack, mostly the phone and computer chargers and our Swiss electrical plug adapters, and the few clothes we had dried this morning.
Stephanie got up with the alarm at 6:00 AM and we both got ready, and then ate a little breakfast. We were pretty much ready to go about 6:40 AM, so we just relaxed and let our breakfast settle. We have learned over our travels that is is better to get up a little early than to be rushed to get everything packed and be in a hurry to get to the train station. Missing a train is not a good option on a tight schedule.
We left the apartment about 7:05 AM for the short leisurely walk to the train station. We were only at the station for a few minutes before our train arrived. There were not many people getting on the train, so it was easy to find good seats and have room for our luggage.
The train left on time and made a few stops before we arrived in Interlaken Ost to transfer to the train the Bern. We had a short connection time, and luckily, most of the train stations in Switzerland have both ramps and stairs to get down to the lower lever to go under the tracks to change platforms, but it is still quite exhausting to even use the ramps and do that quickly with luggage in tow.
We boarded the train to Bern and easily found seats. We found a luggage storage rack on the end of the train car where we could store our bags and took the four seat section right beside them. The train was not that full, but as we made more stops along the way it became more crowded. Then a large group of school age children got onto our car and they took about every open seat that was available, luckily they started in the middle of the large car, and did not need our two extra seats at the end of the car that we were using for our backpacks.
They were only on the train for one stop before they got off, and things were back to normal and less crowded. The next stop was Bern, and we arrived on time and gathered up our luggage and got off the train. I had thought we would need to go to a separate section of the station to catch our S5 local train. We saw some signs that appeared to indicate we needed to go to outside of the station, so we headed in that direction. We had about 16 minutes to make our connection, so we had a little time to figure it out. Stephanie looked on the large train connection information board at the main entrance to the station and saw that the S5 train was on platform 12A. That was just a regular platform inside the station, not outside in a separate area, and it was not far from the platform we had arrived on. We headed back into the station toward platform 12A, and headed up the ramp with our luggage in tow. The S5 train was already at the station, so we boarded and found a large open area at the end of the car where we could stand with our luggage. We only needed to go one stop, so it was easier just to stay there with our luggage and not find seats. It happened to be right next to the bathroom, so while we waited, we both took advantage of it’s proximity.
The S5 train left on time and it was about 7 minutes to reach our stop. When we arrived at our stop, we got off and were right next to the elevator to go down to ground level. That is always a nice thing to have available when toting luggage, carrying large luggage down steps is not fun, especially with our sore legs from hiking yesterday. We used Google Maps on my phone to get walking directions to the hospital entrance, just a 6 minute walk from the station. It was raining slightly, but not enough to require any umbrellas.
We found the entrance to the small hospital called Hirslanden Klinik Permenance, or in English, Hirslanden Clinic Permenance. We saw a booth set up with signs for Covid Testing, so Stephanie went and asked what we needed to do. We were told to go to the front registration area to fill out some paperwork. The building was not very large, so maybe it was more of a clinic than a hospital, although we saw two persons being released, one with some type of arm sling, and one that appeared to have had orthoscopic knee surgery.
There were a few people in line ahead of us, and we were still had 20 minutes until our official 9:50 AM appointment time. We were not in any hurry, we need our 48 hour certificate duration to extend out as far as we could in order for it to be valid when we need to use it to board the Glacier Express train on Friday at 8:52 AM, so the longer it took, the longer our 48 hours lasted.
There was a crowd forming at the entrance because of the time it was taking at the reception desk to register, so another nurse came over and asked us what we needed. We told her we were there for Covid testing and she asked our names. She headed back behind the reception area and came back with the paperwork we had emailed in last night, at least that part had worked. It was becoming apparent that the tests would happen after all! The paperwork already included some bar code stickers, so everything was in order for us to head back to the outside booth for the actual tests I needed to use the restroom, and while I was doing that, Stephanie reviewed the information on the forms. I had apparently put 2021 for my birth year, and they had changed that to 1972 to match Stephanie’s birth year. Stephanie had the nurse change it to 1959 on the form and we also handwrote our passport information for identity onto the form. I was a little worried about getting my birth year changed, but the nurse helping us said she was the one that would eventually input this into the Swiss Certificate System, so we were a little more confident the changes would actually take place. We asked this same nurse about the cost, and she said it was free for Rapid testing, so that was encouraging.
We took our time heading out to the testing booth, trying to buy a little more time on our 48 hour certificate duration. Then we had to wait for one person to complete their test before we headed into the booth together. Unfortunately, the “free” part of the testing was not true, tests were only free for Swiss Citizens. We asked about the free testing we had heard about for Travelers in Switzerland, but the nurse said it was only free for Swiss citizens again. We had to pay CHF 80.00 per test, which was the highest allowable amount they could charge within the government cost allowance, but we were here and needed the test, so we obviously had no option.
Covid Test In Bern
We were both swabbed in our noses and then we received copies of our receipt and another form the nurse had filled out. She said we would receive our results via an email in about 3 hours, so “rapid” was not necessarily true for this test.
We headed back to the local train station and had to wait about 10 minutes for the S5 train back to the Main Bern Station. Once we were there, we looked on the SBB app for the next scheduled train to Zermatt, and found that we had about 35 minutes to wait for it to arrive on Platform 5. We sat on a bench inside the station and headed up to the platform about 10 minutes before our departure time at 11:07 AM.
The train arrived on time and we boarded, placing our luggage in the luggage rack at the end of the coach, and taking seats nearby. The train was not crowded at all. We left on time and headed toward the town of Visp where we would get off this train and make a train connection to Zermatt. The train ride was nice, we both were a little sleepy and had a hard time keeping our eyes open, the smooth train ride was very calming, and we were more relaxed now that we had accomplished our mission in Bern and were back on track, literally, to Zermatt.
We arrived on time in Visp, and had 6 minutes to transfer to another platform for the train to Zermatt, once again going down and then up to our platform using the long ramps and avoiding the stairs with our luggage. The train to Zermatt was older, and it was not full at all, so we had ample room for our luggage and seating.
It was a fairly slow train ride to Zermatt, and we made a few stops along the way. The scenery was pretty spectacular as we headed up into the mountains toward Zermatt. We passed by the Tasch Station, where people drive to and park their cars before heading into the car free town of Zermatt. This was also the station where I had met Stephanie the last time we were leaving Zermatt when the train she was on had left while I was taking some photos of the electric vehicles. On that trip, we had boarded an earlier departing train by mistake, and we thought I had ample time to take the photos before the train left. It was a harrowing experience, but one that had taught us a good lesson or two.
We arrived in Zermatt and got off the train. Zermatt is the end of the line for all arriving trains. We needed to grab some pullovers from our luggage, it was much cooler here high up in the Swiss Alps, and it was cloudy. I used Google Maps for walking directions to our apartment, and we thought we were at the right place when Google indicated we had arrived, but were not. The building Google Maps took us to did not match the pictures of the apartment we were staying in. We found our apartment building that matched the photos around the corner, but now we were not sure how to enter. The directions we had were to go up to the second floor, and we were in Apartment number 2. The stairs went up to a door with the number 3 above it, we had no idea if this was our place or not. Stephanie headed up the stairs to the door while I waited with the luggage. The number above the door was apparently the building number, which I never thought to look at, we had saved the location in Google maps, and we did not really know the full address, including the building number, we just chose it by the saved apartment name in Google Maps.
Stephanie had found our apartment with our name in it while she was inside the building. We had been corresponding with our contact, but it was through messaging in Booking.com, not a very efficient form of communication like texting through WhatsApp.
Apartment in Zermatt
There was a lift outside the building on the other side, so Stephanie used that to come down to pick me up with the luggage. She had not been able get back into the apartment from the outside door to the elevator on our apartment floor level before heading down to get me, so she headed back up the front entrance stairs while I loaded the suitcases into the lift. She was meeting me at the top so we could unload and get through the outside door upstairs. I could not get the lift to operate, so Stephanie used the call button upstairs to bring me up, It was an odd operation, you apparently had to hold the button for your floor for the entire duration of the ride, which she had failed to tell me about. We also believe that the elevator would not work from the ground floor without a key fob, nothing I did would make the elevator move, even when I finally figured out to hold the button.
We liked our apartment, it was not very large, but had everything we needed. We were only staying two nights, and we are very close to the train station and the center of town. We did a little furniture re-arrangement so we had space to open our luggage, and settled in.
While I was looking at my email, I noticed one from the Glacier Express train company, and it was a response to my email from two days ago about our CDC cards and getting on their train. The email indicated we could take our CDC Vaccine Cards to a Pharmacy and the Pharmacy could issue us a Swiss Certificate. I had not received that email until after we were done with our Covid Tests in Bern, so it would not have helped to avoid that side trip and expense, plus, we were just not sure it was true, so we would have gotten the tests today anyway to make certain.
There was a Pharmacy a block from the apartment according to Google Maps, so we left and walked over to it. We asked the pharmacist about the certificate and showed her the email from the Glacier Express train company. She said it was true, she could issue us a year long Swiss Covid Vaccine Certificate for the cost of CHF 8.00 each. She indicated it was complicated, but doable. She took our original CDC vaccine cards and passports and about five minutes later the pharmacist gave us each a paper copy of a certificate with a large QCR code that was just like the certificates we had already received from the tests we had taken. She even indicated they should work anywhere in the EU. We thanked her for helping us for a more permanent solution, and paid the CHF 16.00 total fee for the two certificates Outside we made sure the QCR Codes worked by loading them into the Swiss Covid Certificate App on our phones and sure enough, the App verified we had certificates that were good for a year from our respective second vaccine shot dates. It was such a relief to have that situation finally and permanently resolved.
We were hungry, it was almost 2:00 PM before we got everything with the new certificates settled, so we headed out to find somewhere to eat lunch. By this time, it was raining. We walked up the main street and looked at several places to eat before selecting one that was off of the main street, sort of on a small side road, but close enough to have their menu posted out on the main street on their signage.
Lunch in Zermatt
The restaurant had a large covered outside eating area with about eight tables, so we sat at an outside table and ordered lunch along with a bottle of Rose Wine. We each had a pasta dish, mine was a special pasta with potatoes and ham diced in it, with a cream sauce and it came with a small bowl of apple sauce that was to be spread on top of the entire pasta dish. Stephanie had a penne pasta with arabbiatta sauce. The dishes came with a side of bread.
While we were waiting on the food, I started to get a few drops of water fall onto me from a leak in the canvass awning, so we moved one table over. Then the rain really started to fall more heavily and the awning was not draining well, so one of the people working there used a broom to push the awning canvas up to drain the water off. This happened a couple of more time while we were seated at the table, and on the last “drainage” the end of the awning came off of the support and dumped a lot of water very near to Stephanie. Luckily she only got a little on her, and we all laughed, even the other older couples eating on the patio.
Cloudy & Rainy Zermatt
After eating, we headed to the far end of town on the main street, just to look around. It was showering on and off, but mostly off. We headed back into town along the lower road which parallels the river. Once back into the main area, we looked into a few shops Occasionally, we had to remember to put our masks on after we entered the stores, it was just not always on our minds.
After shopping, we headed to the Coop Grocery near the train station for a few items to snack on tonight after having had such a large, late lunch, and then we headed back to the apartment. We relaxed with some wine and actually found some English speaking shows on the TV. I got caught up with yesterday’s blog post, not wanting to get too far behind since the days can start to run together.
We actually watched most of a movie before calling it a night about 10:30 PM. It is cooler here and with the windows open, we were expecting a great night’s sleep. We have no real plan for tomorrow, and are hoping for better weather, but the forecast is calling for more rain. We will just have to wait and see. We do not have a lot of pictures to post today, the extra travel to Bern and the rainy weather in Zermatt did not lend itself to taking many good pictures.