I stayed two and a half weeks in Switzerland visiting the cities of Chur and Bern and staying with Servas hosts there.... but spent most of the time in the Alps - Zermatt and Gimmelwald and Grindelwald where I hiked as high as I could get. The last two places, Gimmelwald and Grindelwald, were the best. The scenery was spectacular.

My first Swiss destination was the ski town of Zermatt in the shadow of the Matterhorn. I couldn't use my 3 month Eurarail pass on the train there because the line was one of the many private lines in Switzerland that don't accept the pass. The first day I took a tram to the big plateau between the Klein Metterhorn and the Matterhorn and then hiked up a snow field to a ridge overlooking the next valley The next day I hiked up from the valley to the plateu at the base of the Matterhorn .

In the city of Chur I stayed with my first Servas host who was very gracious sixty some year old woman. The second night, she cooked dinner for us and her husband, who brought some traditional Swiss desserts to try. It was so nice to stay somewhere other than a hostel and be able to talk with local people in depth. Up until this time I felt like such a tourist.

My next destination was to be the alps above the town of Interlaken, but as I arrived in Interlaken, I could see that it was snowing in the mountains above. The weather on the intenet forecasted rain another couple days. I called a couple Servas hosts in the country's capital, Bern, about an hour a way and found one who would host me. Again, I was very happy to meet and talk with this local family and again was treated to great meals featuring local cuisine - fondue.

In Gimmelwald I stayed in a hostel located on the steep side of a mountain . The scenery was spectacular here, but unfortunately the 20 bed men's dorm room of this hostel was right next to the dinning hall where the young folks gathered and talked and drank and yelled until 3 AM. In the much better hostel in Grindelwald, I stayed in a 6 bed room on the top floor that had a balcony that faced the Eiger mountain across the valley. The mountain was so massive it filled most of the view even from a mile away. The two days of hiking here was limited by snow but still spectacular.

I then traveled 1000 km in one day to Lourdes, France on six different trains with the longest wait between trains being 20 minutes - when I bought a McDonald´s type meal and wolfed it down. Talk about fast food....I think I set a record.

Most of the waits on this trip were less than 7 minutes. How did I manage this trip? Computers, or more specifically, a computer I found in Bern ticket office that you could log on to and enter a departure city and destination city and a time range and get a list of possible trains and their connections which you could print out. This is the same system that the ticket office people use only there was no wait in line and you could view and print multiple variations. The host I stayed with in Bern also had the same sort of information downloaded to his PDA.