09
Nov
8 Minute Read
8 Minute Read
This is part of a series of posts I’ve written about my trip to Switzerland in 2024. To see the overview of trip, check out my overview post!
Let’s get this out of the way - Switzerland has some of the best transit in the world. It’s truly amazing. They’ve managed to carve their way through mountains via tunnels and even provide alternate routes when changes are needed.
The trains move quickly, smoothly, and quietly, and operate on time. Like, seriously on time. I was notified that a train was “late” because it was one minute behind schedule. Seriously! That’s just a normal day in the Bay Area if you’re lucky.
First of all, download the SBB app for your phone. Just do it. It’s actually really good, giving you details like car orientation of the train you’re getting on, and giving you updates to things in basically real time. It’s honestly something I just kind of got used to, which was surprisingly comforting in a foreign country.
Note that it will ask you for permission to use your geographical location while using the app. It’s primarily for the location-based functionality that helps you determine where you are which, in turn, helps you in purchasing tickets. This works fantastically well when in the country.
As an example, we had planned to take a train around from Interlaken to Andermatt via the route that takes you near Brig and Zermatt. It’s actually a tourism experience and destination on its own usually because the trains go up and over some of the most beautiful mountain passes.
But a few weeks prior to our visit, this region received a ton of extra rain, causing some problems with the tracks. We were told this in the SBB application on our phones, and a bus was provided to connect people from one side of the damaged tracks to the other.
It’s great that the app even alerted us to this situation! I don’t think there is any such comparable service for me in the Bay Area.
Knowing this, however, we opted to play it a bit safer and talked to someone at the train station in Interlaken. They were very helpful, spoke English, and got us on a bus that ended up being an incredibly pleasant experience, getting us to Andermatt even earlier than planned!
It required us to take a train from Interlaken out to Meiringen first, then we transferred on to a bus that took us the rest of the way, directly to Andermatt. I don’t know if I would have considered this route originally!
What made this even better, we literally drove up and over the Sustenpass, one of the big climbs we did a day or two later.
There are some really interesting architectural aspects to how Swiss trains operate, so definitely keep an eye out for them! My favorite was actually the third “rail” in between the rails on some of the routes I was on. It was actually a stationary “gear”, in that it was as if someone had rolled out a gear flat along the ground right in the middle of the train route.
This allows the trains to both ascend and descend shockingly steep routes using traditional rails! Pretty cool!
If you’re expecting to take the train a lot in Switzerland, it’s important to become familiar with the various passes that are available to you. You can buy tickets as needed, but their prices can add up quickly.
What we did to alleviate this issue was purchase a “half fare card”. It’s something separate from your ticket(s) that allows you to buy basically every ticket in Switzerland for half the price originally listed. Yup, it’s just that easy, and it’s likely the best solution for most tourists, lasting 30 days from a date you set when purchasing it.
Note that this is not the same as the Swiss Pass, which I believe is more for people who live in the country. So if you’re simply there temporarily, pretend it’s a totally different pass that doesn’t apply to you.
Because I found this initially difficult to figure out at first, here’s the trick with the SBB app (as of 2024):
When you purchase tickets, the SBB app will show you your ticket in the form of a QR-like code that you can show to any conductor who asks (and trust me, they will ask - we had them check us on basically every train ride we took). However, they will also ask you for your half fare card QR code as well, which you’ll have to show to them separately.
A little confusing at first, but easy once you experience it first hand.
Also, if you end up being in Switzerland for a longer period of time like we were, we noticed that Apple (I can’t speak to Android) decided to “archive” our half fare card in the wallet, which confused us all when a conductor asked us for it and we suddenly couldn’t find it.
There’s a separate section of your Apple Wallet that contains your “expired” passes, listed at the bottom of your other passes. View them, find your Swiss Half Fare Card, then select it and “unhide” it at the bottom right of your screen. It should then show up in your main set of passes (mine in fact still does, so I guess it doesn’t re-archive it again).
The “easy ride” is a cool feature that allows the app to pick up your geographical location and basically “figure out” where you end up and charge you for whatever is the cheapest way to get there. It works super well, actually, and isn’t limited to just trains.
You open it up in the app, move a slider to “start journey”, and then when you get to where you want to go, you slide the slider again to stop your journey. The app has a nice widget that shows up when your phone is picked up and shows you how long your journey has been.
We actually managed to do a price comparison when my friend and I traveled from Zürich to Bern and somehow the EasyRide cost me 50 cents less than his did. Interesting!
However, for longer trips that may require you to switch trains, it’s usually better to just purchase the ticket directly so that you will have access to the entire itinerary with track numbers and sector boarding areas. Otherwise, you’re kind of on your own to figure all that out yourself!
In general I think the easy ride feature is cool, but use it on shorter trips or trips where you know more directly where you’re going.
If you open up the SBB app, you’ll likely notice that there’s an option in your profile settings (or when purchasing a ticket) for including a bike. This wasn’t initially clear on its own. Basically it came down to this:
My friends weren’t initially sure if they needed to purchase a separate bike ticket when first arriving in Switzerland because of this, but it was never an issue! Just make sure if you have a bike, built up and rolling around, that you have a separate ticket for it. The app will actually have a separate QR code for it that the train operators will ask you for in addition to the one you have for yourself.
Come to think of it, I’m not sure I ever used EasyRide with my bike built up like this, so you may need to showcase that specifically when beginning your ride. Use your best judgement! The app is quite good and generally is easy to follow.
This is also yet another great reason to purchase a half fare card, as it will help out when purchasing the separate bike ticket as well!
Regardless of how you like to travel, I found the train system in Switzerland to be top-notch and amazing. It was a trip in and of itself! Just know the rules ahead of time and you’ll be soon traveling like a local!
