Postbus Switzerland Puns

Right off the bat the name often causes confusion:

• The ‘Bernina Railway’ is a train line which connects St Moritz (Switzerland) to Tirano (Italy) via the Bernina Pass. The route is narrow gauge, but all standard “friction” trains (no cogwheels) so it has to gain and lose height slowly - hence all the winding sections and loops which look like a model train enthusiast got carried away. It also has the highest through station in Europe; ‘Ospizio Bernina’ which at 2253m is over a 1000m lower than Jungfraujoch but isn’t a dead end.

• The ‘Bernina Express’ (BE) is a special premium train exclusively aimed at tourists which runs a few times a day from Chur to Tirano (or VV); along the Bernina Railway and also the Albula Railway. It is also marketed as carrying on to Lugano with a special bus running non-stop from Tirano to Lugano, but I am going to mostly ignore that part.

This is a follow up to my expanded Glacier Express post. Whilst it is not as famous as the heavily marketed Glacier Express (GE) the BE is getting increasingly better known (thanks in part to the social media friendly scenes). The Chur-Samedan section is covered by both trains and is said by many to be the best part of the GE. I would say the BE route is much more varied, has more impressive views, and is more consistently interesting (plus it actually has good views of glaciers). Basically given the choice of the two I would choose the BE.

The BE takes half the time of the GE, clocking in at around 4 hours. But as with the GE I still think that charging through in a single sitting (in as much as that train can charge) misses out on too much or barely gives you a glimpse of some things along the route. For example the stunning view of the Morteratsch glacier and Piz Bernina passes by in only a few seconds. However in comparison with the GE there are less diversions. Partly because it is much shorter, but also the route is through much steeper and emptier landscapes.

Disclaimer: As with the GE I have ridden the whole of the train route (much of it many times over), but have never set foot on the BE train itself so I can’t talk about the quality of the service. Nor have I covered the extra section from Tirano to Lugano by bus.

--- The Bernina Express (BE) ---

• This is what I would call a ‘premium tourist train’; it requires a seat reservation at an additiona

Edit: The original version of this post which is more likely to be updated is here.

---General Points---

Switzerland is expensive to visit

Switzerland is well known for being expensive in comparison with surrounding countries (and most other countries in the world). Even a basic McDonalds meal will be painfully expensive to most visitors. If you are careful then a fun (if rather basic) trip can be had for less than 70CHF a day, or with eating out and spending on activities for more like 150CHf per day. If you are really hardcore and wild camp and eat what is basic enough to stay alive then 10CHF might be possible.

Living and working here you do at least have much higher pay than elsewhere and so very strong buying power. As someone who lives in Switzerland I mostly do daytrips or just for 1-2 nights at weekends, and so am lucky as most of the concerns of costs are covered by the salary and not being far from home. I do try and keep costs down so I have learnt quite a bit myself in how to avoid painful prices (not least as I moved here with a student state of mind).

Ultimately if you really are on a tight budget and want to see the Alps then France, Austria, Germany, and Slovenia are all cheaper and offer much of the same.

As with Swiss watches the appeal is partly in the historical branding and the popular mindset, rather than Switzerland being the be-all-and-end-all of the topic.

Not everything is that expensive

The basics for travel are expensive (food/accommodation/transport) but many activities are actually cheaper than elsewhere. Compared to say London where many attractions are £20+ ($26 USD) or even the insane 200 KN ($31 USD) to walk the walls in Dubrovnik many Swiss attractions are quite reasonable.

• Entry to the Château de Chillon is 13.5 CHF ($15 USD); less than half the price of the Tower of London and still cheaper than most other castles in the UK.

• A return ticket on my local cable car to a high ridge in the Jura where you can spend as long as you like with panoramic views of the Alps, and into France and Germany costs less than the half hour spin on the London Eye.

If you google around there are plenty of sites and blogs with suggestions in general, or for specific places

• The [official tourist

I don't want to step on anybody's toes here, but the amount of non-dad jokes here in this subreddit really annoys me. First of all, dad jokes CAN be NSFW, it clearly says so in the sub rules. Secondly, it doesn't automatically make it a dad joke if it's from a conversation between you and your child. Most importantly, the jokes that your CHILDREN tell YOU are not dad jokes. The point of a dad joke is that it's so cheesy only a dad who's trying to be funny would make such a joke. That's it. They are stupid plays on words, lame puns and so on. There has to be a clever pun or wordplay for it to be considered a dad joke.

Again, to all the fellow dads, I apologise if I'm sounding too harsh. But I just needed to get it off my chest.

Do your worst!

They were cooked in Greece.

I'm surprised it hasn't decade.

For context I'm a Refuse Driver (Garbage man) & today I was on food waste. After I'd tipped I was checking the wagon for any defects when I spotted a lone pea balanced on the lifts.

I said "hey look, an escaPEA"

No one near me but it didn't half make me laugh for a good hour or so!

Edit: I can't believe how much this has blown up. Thank you everyone I've had a blast reading through the replies 😂

It really does, I swear!

Because she wanted to see the task manager.

Heard they've been doing some shady business.

Don't you know a good pun is its own reword?

but then I remembered it was ground this morning.

Edit: Thank you guys for the awards, they're much nicer than the cardboard sleeve I've been using and reassures me that my jokes aren't stale

Edit 2: I have already been made aware that Men In Black 3 has told a version of this joke before. If the joke is not new to you, please enjoy any of the single origin puns in the comments

BamBOO!

They’re on standbi

A play on words.

My daughter, Chewbecca, not so much.

Pilot on me!!

Christopher Walken

Nothing, he was gladiator.

Or would that be too forward thinking?

Dad jokes are supposed to be jokes you can tell a kid and they will understand it and find it funny.

This sub is mostly just NSFW puns now.

If it needs a NSFW tag it's not a dad joke. There should just be a NSFW puns subreddit for that.

Edit* I'm not replying any longer and turning off notifications but to all those that say "no one cares", there sure are a lot of you arguing about it. Maybe I'm wrong but you people don't need to be rude about it. If you really don't care, don't comment.

I won't be doing that today!

Hindus, on the other hand, never had any beef.

This morning, my 4 year old daughter.

Daughter: I'm hungry

Me: nerves building, smile widening

Me: Hi hungry, I'm dad.

She had no idea what was going on but I finally did it.

Thank you all for listening.

[Removed]

Where ever you left it 🤷‍♀️🤭

Right off the bat the name often causes confusion:

• The ‘Bernina Railway’ is a train line which connects St Moritz (Switzerland) to Tirano (Italy) via the Bernina Pass. The route is narrow gauge, but all standard “friction” trains (no cogwheels) so it has to gain and lose height slowly - hence all the winding sections and loops which look like a model train enthusiast got carried away. It also has the highest through station in Europe; ‘Ospizio Bernina’ which at 2253m is over a 1000m lower than Jungfraujoch but isn’t a dead end.

• The ‘Bernina Express’ (BE) is a special premium train exclusively aimed at tourists which runs a few times a day from Chur to Tirano (or VV); along the Bernina Railway and also the Albula Railway. It is also marketed as carrying on to Lugano with a special bus running non-stop from Tirano to Lugano, but I am going to mostly ignore that part.

This is a follow up to my expanded Glacier Express post. Whilst is not as famous as the heavily marketed Glacier Express (GE) the BE is getting increasingly better known (thanks in part to the social media friendly scenes). I would say the BE route is much more varied, has more impressive views, and is more consistently interesting (plus it actually has good views of glaciers). The Chur-Samedan section is covered by both trains and is said by many to be the best part of the GE. Basically given the choice of the two I would choose the BE.

The BE takes half the time of the GE clocking in at around 4 hours, but as with the GE I still think that charging through in a single sitting (in as much as that train can charge) misses out on too much or barely gives you a glimpse of some things along the route. For example the stunning view of the Morteratsch glacier and Piz Bernina passes by in only a few seconds. However in comparison with the GE there are less diversions. Partly because it is much shorter, but also the route is through much steeper and emptier landscapes.

Disclaimer: As with the GE I have ridden the whole of the train route (much of it many times over), but have never set foot on the BE train itself so I can’t talk about the quality of the service. Nor have I covered the extra section from Tirano to Lugano by bus.

--- The Bernina Express (BE) ---

• This is what I would call a ‘premium tourist train’; it requires a seat reservation at an additional ch

From a strictly solotravel point of view most of my time on this route has been solo. A few of the linked reports are from tours where I wasn't alone, but even in those cases the experience and what I did wouldn't have been very different to if I was solo.

• Imgur album of some of the spots along the way. I have just used my own photos rather than tracking down examples of every last spot.

• Disclaimer: I have never set foot on the actual Glacier Express trains, but I have read up on it, done all of the route on regional transport multiple times, and spent weeks on end in some of the areas.

--- The Glacier Express (GE) itself ---

• The GE is a pretty standard entry on the top lists of scenic trains, a must do in most guide books, and probably the first train that most tourists would/could name in Switzerland.

• It is run by a private company, not by the Swiss federal train service (SBB), and what they do best is advertising. Like Jungfraujoch it is long, slow, expensive, and full of tourists who are convinced it is a ‘must do’ when there are many cheaper and easier options to get a similar experience. It certainly has many people convinced it is an essential experience. I have seen people go a bit crazy with planning trips around it: one couple I met spent 3 days in Switzerland, the whole time was given over to sitting on trains doing the GE or getting to/from the end points. So far I have never met a Swiss person who said it was a must do or even recommended it.

• It is an express train in the old fashioned sense of the word: meaning you don’t have to change. The average speed is about 36km/h (22mph), hence their tagline that is ‘the slowest express train in the world’. It would actually be an hour faster to go on a massive diversion up through the Flatland via Zürich on 4+ other trains instead.

• The glacier part of the name comes from the fact it used to pass the Rhone Glacier, but that stopped in 1982 when the Furka base tunnel opened allowing year round travel on the route (and even if it had stayed on the same line the glacier has retreated out of sight from the trainline now anyway). Now you can still see a few bits of various glaciers far above you along the route, but really it is about the worst way to see a glacier when visiting Switzerland (not least as you pass so close but out of sight of the mighty Aletsch glacier). If you want to see a glacier than you can take a cable car or mountain

• Imgur album of some of the spots along the way. I have just used my own photos rather than tracking down examples of every last spot.

• Disclaimer: I have never set foot on the actual Glacier Express trains, but I have read up on it, done all of the route on regional transport multiple times, and spent weeks on end in some of the areas.

--- The Glacier Express (GE) itself ---

• The GE is a pretty standard entry on the top lists of scenic trains, a must do in most guide books, and probably the first train that most tourists would/could name in Switzerland.

• It is run by a private company, not by the Swiss federal train service (SBB), and what they do best is advertising. Like Jungfraujoch it is long, slow, expensive, and full of tourists who are convinced it is a ‘must do’ when there are many cheaper and easier options to get a similar experience. It certainly has many people convinced it is an essential experience. I have seen people go a bit crazy with planning trips around it: one couple I met spent 3 days in Switzerland, the whole time was given over to sitting on trains doing the GE or getting to/from the end points. So far I have never met a Swiss person who said it was a must do or even recommended it.

• It is an express train in the old fashioned sense of the word: meaning you don’t have to change. The average speed is about 36km/h (22mph), hence their tagline that is ‘the slowest express train in the world’. It would actually be an hour faster to go on a massive diversion up through the Flatland via Zürich on 4+ other trains instead.

• The glacier part of the name comes from the fact it used to pass the Rhone Glacier, but that stopped in 1982 when the Furka base tunnel opened allowing year round travel on the route (and even if it had stayed on the same line the glacier has retreated out of sight from the trainline now anyway). Now you can still see a few bits of various glaciers far above you along the route, but really it is about the worst way to see a glacier when visiting Switzerland (not least as you pass so close but out of sight of the mighty Aletsch glacier). If you want to see a glacier than you can take a cable car or mountain train up to various peaks with fantastic views instead (e.g. Gornergrat in Zermatt, Diavolezza on the Bernina line, or Eggishorn above Fiesch).

• The ticket is covered with a train pass like the Swiss Pass, but with a seat reservation required (with a fairly hef

• Imgur album of some of the spots along the way. I have just used my own photos rather than tracking down examples of every last spot.

• Disclaimer: I have never set foot on the actual Glacier Express trains, but I have read up on it, done all of the route on regional transport multiple times, and spent weeks on end in some of the areas.

--- The Glacier Express (GE) itself ---

• The GE is a pretty standard entry on the top lists of scenic trains, a must do in most guide books, and probably the first train that most tourists would/could name in Switzerland.

• It is run by a private company, not by the Swiss federal train service (SBB), and what they do best is advertising. Like Jungfraujoch it is long, slow, expensive, and full of tourists who are convinced it is a ‘must do’ when there are many cheaper and easier options to get a similar experience. It certainly has many people convinced it is an essential experience. I have seen people go a bit crazy with planning trips around it: one couple I met spent 3 days in Switzerland, the whole time was given over to sitting on trains doing the GE or getting to/from the end points. So far I have never met a Swiss person who said it was a must do or even recommended it.

• It is an express train in the old fashioned sense of the word: meaning you don’t have to change. The average speed is about 36km/h (22mph), hence their tagline that is ‘the slowest express train in the world’. It would actually be an hour faster to go on a massive diversion up through the Flatland via Zürich on 4+ other trains instead.

• The glacier part of the name comes from the fact it used to pass the Rhone Glacier, but that stopped in 1982 when the Furka base tunnel opened allowing year round travel on the route (and even if it had stayed on the same line the glacier has retreated out of sight from the trainline now anyway). Now you can still see a few bits of various glaciers far above you along the route, but really it is about the worst way to see a glacier when visiting Switzerland (not least as you pass so close but out of sight of the mighty Aletsch glacier). If you want to see a glacier than you can take a cable car or mountain train up to various peaks with fantastic views instead (e.g. Gornergrat in Zermatt, Diavolezza on the Bernina line, or Eggishorn above Fiesch).

• The ticket is covered with a train pass like the Swiss Pass, but with a seat reservation required (with a fairly hef

Due to Covid it seemed easier to stay domestic this year. Not the worst thing as far as I am concerned (though I am hoping to finally get further away again next year).

The plan was to just rent a place, make a list of ideas, and hit them as the weather allowed. I don't think I have spent 2 weeks purely on holiday in a single place since I was a child. It wasn't a problem to fill the time; I still have a list of things to do there that would easily fill another week.

• Photos on Imgur.

• I have already written up a few of the more interesting days as separate posts, in these cases I have provided a link for them.

Rankings:

• Best place: Alp Suvretta. A little Alp farmhouse way up the Val Bever selling a few basic bits of food and drink. It is barely even marked on the maps as a building, there are only a few handwritten signs to invite you to pop in for refreshments (and zero internet presence that I can find). A wonderfully relaxed and beautiful spot which felt utterly detached from the world. I spent two 1.5 hr sessions whilst on MTB tours just sitting and slowly eating/drinking. I was invited to keep sitting for longer after finishing and paying, but would have fallen asleep in my deckchair if I stayed any longer (not that it would matter as a few of the other handful of guests were already doing so).

• Most touristy: Val Roseg. There seemed to be a fairly constant stream of people and bikes going to/from the Restaurant Roseg and Pontresina. Given the glacier views at the end it isn’t a surprise, but I had thought this would be quieter given that it is a 7km through the narrow part of the valley to where the view opens up by the restaurant. Bikes, and especially ebikes, make the approach up the (relatively) gentle climb much easier for lots of people, and quite a few people on foot seemed to be doing the full round trip and surprised by the length.

• Best surprise: S-Chanf. A classic Engadin style village which I just went to for the train station but was very impressed with it as I walked through. There is quite a large old village core with hardly any newer buildings around the outside - a rare mix.

• Best view: Munt Pers (via Diavolezza cable car). Unbeatable view of the highest peaks and glaciers of Graubünden, with an extensive view of other peaks and off into Italy too.

• Favourite side valley: Val Bever, especially p

Due to Covid it seemed easier to stay domestic this year.

I don't think I have spent 2 weeks purely on holiday in a single place since I was a child. It wasn't a problem to fill the time; I still have a list of things to do there that would easily fill another week.

• Photos on Imgur.

• I have already written up a few of the more interesting days as separate posts, in these cases I have provided a link for them.

Rankings:

• Best place: Alp Suvretta. A little Alp farmhouse selling a few basic bits of food and drink way up the Val Bever. Barely even marked on the maps as a building, there are only a few handwritten signs to invite you to pop in for refreshments. A wonderfully relaxed and beautiful spot which feels utterly detached from the world. I spent two 1.5 hr sessions just sitting there and slowly eating/drinking whilst on MTB rides. I was invited to keep sitting for longer after finishing and paying, but would have fallen asleep in my deckchair if I stayed any longer (not that it would matter as a few of the other handful of guests were already doing so).

• Most touristy: Val Roseg. There seemed to be a fairly constant stream of people and bikes going to/from the Restaurant Roseg and Pontresina. Given the glacier views at the end it isn’t a surprise, but I had thought this would be quieter given that it is a 7km through the narrow part of the valley to where the view opens up by the restaurant. Bikes, and especially ebikes, make the approach up the (relatively) gentle climb much easier for lots of people, and quite a few people on foot seemed to be doing the full round trip and surprised by the length.

• Best surprise: S-Chanf. A classic Engadin style village which I just went to for the train station but was very impressed with it as I walked through. There is quite a large old village core with hardly any newer buildings around the outside - a rare mix.

• Best view: Munt Pers (via Diavolezza cable car). Unbeatable view of the highest peaks and glaciers of Graubünden, with an extensive view of other peaks and off into Italy too.

• Favourite side valley: Val Bever, especially past Spinas station when it gets much more wild and rugged. However, you generally can’t go wrong with any of them.

• Most “Oh god why am I doing this to myself?”: Climbing up the Scaletta Pass with a bike on MTB Route 90. A steady 14% climb for 600m over loose and rocky ground. I pushed/carried pretty much the who

What did 0 say to 8 ?

" Nice Belt "

So What did 3 say to 8 ?

" Hey, you two stop making out "

When I got home, they were still there.

There hasn't been a post all year!