Bernina Express

One of the attractions of Graubunden/Grisons/Grigioni/Grischun (pick your language), is the Bernina express - a little railway that runs between Chur and Tirano in Italy, and we had booked ourselves some seats!

In fact we thought we had booked seats, but when I checked through my records I couldn't find any confirmation of the booking, so we took our chances on the train and luckily found ourselves some free seats without a booking.

While we only travelled a segment of the journey, between Pontresina and Poschiavo, it was an incredible journey through a snow-blanketted landscape. If you look at the map of the line, you'll notice the little red train twists and turns its way up and down through the Bernina pass.

We ended up in Poschiavo, in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, which was actually a bit bleak in the freezing weather, and we spent most of our time in a restaurant eating pizza and drinking espressos in 'pretend Italy'.

On the trip back we skipped the panoramic train, taking a regular train, in what turned out to be blizzard-like conditions. The snow flowed over our windows, having been kicked up by the plough at the front of the train. Amazingly there were people outside on the flats kite-surfing on their snowboards.

In the end we made it back to Pontresina just fine, after a small pause in the journey while they cleared the line, apparently with a broom.