{"id":1886,"date":"2015-01-26T08:05:17","date_gmt":"2015-01-26T07:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/?p=1886"},"modified":"2015-01-26T09:51:54","modified_gmt":"2015-01-26T08:51:54","slug":"break-braunwald","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/eastern-switzerland\/break-braunwald\/","title":{"rendered":"Break in Braunwald"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/C2015-01-25-085e.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-1888\" src=\"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/C2015-01-25-085e-1024x652.jpg\" alt=\"City Nightline\" width=\"660\" height=\"420\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/C2015-01-25-085e-1024x652.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/C2015-01-25-085e-300x191.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 660px) 100vw, 660px\" \/><\/a>I had to go down to Switzerland for some business and thought I would take in a day&#8217;s skiing, even though the weather didn&#8217;t look good and I had a cold. The trip was painless and it made a nice break despite my heavy head. I took a bed on the excellent City Nightline on Thursday night from Utrecht to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.swisswintersports.co.uk\/basel.php\" title=\"Basel - gateway to Switzerland\" target=\"_blank\">Basel<\/a> for around fifty euros and was in Basel before 7am. If it wasn&#8217;t for the business, I could easily have been on the slopes somewhere like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.swisswintersports.co.uk\/wengen.php\" title=\"Ski in Wengen\" target=\"_blank\">Wengen<\/a> within a couple more hours.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/C2015-01-25-076e.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-1887\" src=\"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/C2015-01-25-076e-1024x698.jpg\" alt=\"Linthal Valley\" width=\"660\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/C2015-01-25-076e-1024x698.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/C2015-01-25-076e-300x204.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 660px) 100vw, 660px\" \/><\/a>The next morning I got up early and took a train across to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.swisswintersports.co.uk\/zurich.php\" title=\"Zurich - perfect rail destination for ski vacations\" target=\"_blank\">Zurich<\/a> where I bought a Snow&#8217;n&#8217;Rail combined ticket at SFR 60. Despite all the talk of the cost of the Swiss Franc, somehow sixty francs for a scenic trip up the Linthal valley and a day in one of the most pleasant small, car-free resorts seems to me good value. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.swisswintersports.co.uk\/braunwald.php\" title=\"Braunwald\" target=\"_blank\">Braunwald<\/a> is not a huge resort, but it does have a good range of skiing as well as plenty for non-skiers to do &#8211; indeed, despite it being a Saturday, the slopes were almost empty and there seemed to be more tobogganists and winter walkers below the Eggst\u00f6cke than skiers and snowboarders. It has struck me before how unusual a resort so easy to get to from Zurich is so quiet at weekends, with most weekend warriors preferring to go to Hoch-Ybrig or Flumserberg. The trip really is a doddle, with the funicular railway right in the Linthalbahn Braunwald railway station. A quirky feature of Braunwald is the configuration of gondolas used in the resort, with one cableway operating them in pairs, another in quads and a final one alternating with chairlifts on the same cable.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/lara-gut-and-anna-fenninger.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1890\" src=\"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/lara-gut-and-anna-fenninger.jpg\" alt=\"Lara Gut and Anna Fenninger come in 1st and 2nd in St Moritz\" width=\"620\" height=\"349\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/lara-gut-and-anna-fenninger.jpg 620w, http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/lara-gut-and-anna-fenninger-300x169.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nThe weather wasn&#8217;t great so I had a leisurely day on the slopes. I later saw replays of Lara Gut winning in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.swisswintersports.co.uk\/stmoritz.php\" title=\"St Moritz - capital of winter tourism for 150 years\" target=\"_blank\">St Moritz<\/a>, but the self-service restaurant at Grotzenb\u00fcel put up a big screen to let us watch the racing live at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.snowandrail.com\/kitzbuhel.php\" title=\"Kitzbuhel - home of the toughest downhill race in the world\" target=\"_blank\">Kitzb\u00fchel<\/a> on the shortened Streif course off the Hahnenkamm.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/C2015-01-25-059e.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-1889\" src=\"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/C2015-01-25-059e-1024x794.jpg\" alt=\"Gondolas in Braunwald\" width=\"660\" height=\"512\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/C2015-01-25-059e-1024x794.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/C2015-01-25-059e-300x233.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 660px) 100vw, 660px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nAfter a pleasant day on the slopes, a leisurely train journey back down the valley and a meal at Zurich Station&#8217;s NordSee fish restaurant it was time to get on the sleeper back to the Netherlands in the company of two charming Chinese ladies. The fare was cheaper than from Basel bizarrely, some 44 euros.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had to go down to Switzerland for some business and thought I would take in a day&#8217;s skiing, even though the weather didn&#8217;t look good and I had a cold. The trip was painless and it made a nice break despite my heavy head. I took a bed on the excellent City Nightline on &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/eastern-switzerland\/break-braunwald\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Break in Braunwald&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83],"tags":[246,67,163,252,250,202,73,69,37,33,51,38,23,113,40,194,197,145,168],"class_list":["post-1886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eastern-switzerland","tag-anna-fenninger","tag-basel","tag-braunwald","tag-downhill","tag-fis","tag-kitzbuhel","tag-lara-gut","tag-rail","tag-ski","tag-skiing","tag-snownrail","tag-snowboard","tag-st-moritz","tag-swiss","tag-switzerland","tag-vacation","tag-vacations","tag-wengen","tag-zurich"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1886"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1894,"href":"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886\/revisions\/1894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}