In Switzerland from Big Zurich and Chagall to Picturesqe Pontresina, horse and carriage, and back

I am planning a trip to Switzerland and a friend wants a group of us to stay at Pontresina, which is in the region of Zurich. Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland, although the government is in Bern which is called the capital.

I asked Gemini

 How far is it from Pontresina to St Moritz? Would anybody go the other way, from St Moritz to Ponstresina? 

Gemini told me:

***

 The distance between Pontresina and St. Moritz is around 7 to 8 kilometers (about 4.5 to 5 miles). 

 By Car or Taxi: About a 10-minute drive. 

 By Train / Bus: Around 10–15 minutes on local public transit (or aboard the Bernina Express network). 

 On Foot: A scenic walk through the larch forests takes about 1.5 to 2 hours. People absolutely travel the other direction from St. Moritz to Pontresina.

 St. Moritz is a famous, glitzy resort town, while Pontresina is known as a quieter, traditional mountain village right at the base of the glaciers. 

 Why People Day-Trip from St. Moritz to Pontresina: 

1 Glacier Access: Pontresina is the gateway to the Morteratsch Glacier and the Diavolezza cable car, offering iconic alpine views and high-altitude glacier hiking. 

2 Hiking & Nature: Popular trails start near Pontresina, such as the panoramic hike from Muottas Muragl or walks into the car-free Val Roseg valley via horse-drawn carriage. 

3  Cultural Highlights: Visitors travel to see 

the Museum Alpin and 

the Alpine Dairy of Morteratsch to see traditional cheese-making in action. 

4  Atmosphere & Dining: People staying in high-end St. Moritz hotels often head into Pontresina for a more relaxed, rustic dinner or a quieter day away from the resort crowds.

***

Picturesque Pontresina

Pontresina's main street has cobble-stoned pavements and patterned roads. The street is bordered by historical hotels and buildings with arched doorways, shuttered windows and high triangular gabled rooftops.

The Pontresina Tourist Board website sells, in addition to books and pictures, a key ring, mug, towel, deck chair, ski strap.

Val Roseg

The name Roseg has nothing to do with rose but is connected to the old word for a peak.

From the station you can take the scheduled hose drawn carriage shuttle up the car-free Val Roseg to the hotel at the end. 

Hotel Restaurant Roseg Gletscher

There is a once a morning bus to the hotel, and an afternoon return at 5 pm on request.

Look out for Swiss nut tart (made with walnuts) and Engaldiner tart.

Ruhezone (Quiet Zone)The Swiss law preserving quite places restricts traffic to the horse drawn shuttle and emergency vehicles and farmers. to keep the quiet atmosphere and protect wildlife and plants.

What about Zurich?

Zurich has an international airport. However, my husband and I are thinking of driving across Europe to meet up with a group of friends who go hiking in summer.

St Mortitz

Expensive and exclusive ski village. 

St Moritz Events

Snow polo takes place Jan 22-24 2027 on the frozen lake. Horses wear special shoes to stop them slipping and give good grip.

St Moritz Souvenirs

Candles, bottle, cap, clutches, prints, scarves, swim shorts, tee-shirts, towel, travel bottle, mug, vodka with snow polo label. If you like vodka, this one is made from local water. Whether or not you like vodka, the picture of snow polo on the label is a conversation opener.

Zurich

From the station go to the riverside promenade. At the far end is the uphill art museum. Famous classic and modern artists.

Cross the bridge to the other side for the church, big as a cathedral, containing the three tall colourful Chagall windows with biblical themes. Read Chagall's account of how he planned them.

South of Zurich, if you are driving that way is Lucerne. You could see its famous covered bridge with interior frescoes and chapel, driving to or from Zurich and Pontresina..

You can see from this map why the west of Switzerland bordering France is the French speaking region. To the south east  are Italy and the Italian speaking region. To the north East are Germany and Austria and the German speaking parts of Switzerland.

You can see from this map how St Moritz and Pontresina are near each other in the Engadin region, the eastern part of Graubunden (there should be a double dot above the second letter u).

This map shows you that Geneva and Lausanne are in the South West, Driving in an arc  clockwise you come to Bern, the 'capital', admin centre.Basel is the north west. Lucerne or Luzern in the middle, with Zurich to the north. Lugarno far south east near Italy.

Useful Websites (alphabetically by place name)

Covered bridge, Lucerne

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=luzern+covered+bridge&title=Special%3AMediaSearch&type=image

Pontresina

https://www.pontresina.ch/en/guide/accommodation/hotels/hotel-restaurant-roseg-gletscher

Pontresina/Engadin Accessories, clothing, prints.

https://booking.engadin.ch/en/souvenirs?merchant=131&page=5

St Moritz events

https://www.snowpolo-stmoritz.com/

St Moritz Souvenirs

https://booking.stmoritz.com/en/souvenirs?page=12Switzerland

https://cakieshq.com/recipe/engadiner-nusstorte-swiss-nu

Zurich

https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Zurich

https://www.myswitzerland.com/en-gb/accommodations/best-of-swiss-hotels/wine-hotels/

Heated Poncho

'Wearable blanket' heated poncho blanket, looks interesting. Variations are the colours which include beige, green or burgundy, and hooded versions.

https://modsluxe.com/products/wearable-electric-blanket-wrap-yourself-in-cozy-warmth?

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BUDAPESCHT ( BUDAPEST) Yiddish song Karsten Troyke with Chagall Paintings

I like both, Yiddish songs and Chagall paintings. How lovely to combine both.

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Chaim Soutine Museum in Minsk, Belarus

I was researching alliterations for my forthcoming ebook Improve your English, looking for an alliterative attraction in Belarus. I scanned down the sights of Belarus and Minsk and found a museum about the artist Soutine.

Okay, remind me. Who was Soutine? He was born in the Minsk are of Russia, now Belarus, of Jewish parents. His father was a taylor. Soutine studied art and worked in a photographic studio as a retourcher.

He went to Paris which was a centre for art and artists in those days and lived in an artist's colony with other famous artists.

At first he was short of money. Then a collector bought a large number of paintings and he was suddenly rich.

When the Nazis threatened to take over Paris he escaped south, and eventually went on the run. At one time he slept in the open in the forests.

This period of uncertainty lasted about two years. He eventually died of ulcers. When the bleeding got too bad, he risked returning to Paris for an operation. the operation was not successful. He died in the mid 1940s, aged 50.

Friend of Chagall.

Painted by Modigliani. The Modigliani portrait of Soutine is in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, USA.

Soutine by Modigliani, in the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA.

Soutine, self-portrait, on long term loan to the Princeton University Museum of Art in New Jersey, USA.

Useful Websites
UK
Paris style restaurant in St Johns Wood, England.
https://www.soutine.co.uk/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaim_Soutine
BELARUS
Note that by in the website stands for Belarus
https://www.belarus.by/en/travel/belarus-life/sightseeing/tourist-attraction-minsk
https://soutine-smilovichi.by/

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
I have many more posts about destinations, dances and decorations.
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Swiss Festivals: February + August: watch Lucerne Festival's comic musical turn: Igudesman & Joo

To celebrate the Lucerne festival's anniversary, they play Happy Birthday To You in half a dozen styles.  (Click on the centre of the left video.) The right video shows another comedy with two musicians fighting for attention.

Map of Switzerland from Wikitravel

Let's look at Switzerland. It may be landlocked, far from the sea, but it has cities on rivers and lakes. Lake Geneva looks like an arch on the left of the map. I remember its giant fountain by the waterside.
The West side has a border with France and if you speak French you'll be able to read the French signs.  However, Swiss French sounds strange. I kept getting baffled by bilingual signs showing unfamiliar words, which were not French, German or Italian but their other, fourth language Romansch (which is not one language but several dialects).

On one of my trips I flew into Zurich. From there we caught a very clean modern train to Lucerne.

LUCERNE FESTIVAL & COVERED BRIDGE
Why Visit The Lucerne Music Festival? We didn't go for the festival, although I later learned Lucerne won an award in 2017 for its festival.

Lucerne is also one of the most attractive little riverside towns. It has two antique bridges with paintings on the inside. We stayed in a boutique hotel and whilst my husband was working I spent a day walking along to the covered bridge, over to the old town and back.

The bridge has paintings all the way along with captions underneath. If you want to read, and line up behind others, take photos of it and yourself with it and then help somebody else take a photo, you can easily lose an hour. When I was there it was a busy time, coach groups with guides in three languages stopping for a description of every painting. to cut the crush, the bridge was made one way, so I had to wait until it was one way in my direction.

Then it's a walk along the river bank to the next covered bridge which has gruesome pictures which reminded me of paintings by Breugels of people suffering from the plaque and haunted by skeletal or devilish figures. I also walked up and down the sloping cobbled narrow streets of the old shops, window-shopping.

Our last sightseeing stop was driving around endlessly looking for a way to the lion low down on a wall. We finally found it, then hunted for a nearby parking place so I could jump out and take a photo. Not so special, but I was glad to have done it.

Problem
Lucerne has several festivals. The world has several music festivals. I am not into classical music concerts. I can get quite bored. However, I found this wonderful video on Youtube of the comic duo, Igudesman and Joo.

Is it worth visiting if you don't want to participate in the conerts? Why would it make you put Lucerne on a shortlist of places to visit?

Let's start with Switzerland as a whole.

Zurich's Art Gallery and Monet
We flew into Zurich and had a weekend there. The first day we saw the art gallery housing a giant Monet painting of the flowers under the bridge at his house in France. the pinning was on the far wall of an almost empty room. The art gallery guide told us that standing up close, which tried at first, you just see globs of different coloured paint. As you retreat the painting gradually comes into focus.

I also saw a Chagall or two, much smaller pantings, after the giant Monet. See the Chagall's first, the Monet last.

The next day we went to see the Chagall windows in the chapel of the cathedral. Chagall had retired. he went to the cathedral, just to take a look. Once he saw the chapel, so tall, he immediately imagined the three windows, each one in different colours. That is his style.

If you sit and look at them for a long time, it's like meditating. At first I thought, 'Oh yes. Very nice, but why such a fuss about how wonderful they are? Just tall bits of glass.'

But eventually a feeling of peace crept over me and relaxed me.

The station
We went early to the station. The street was one way and we ended walking part of the distance from our hotel, dragging our suitcases. Fortunately we knew the trains run on time, like Swiss watches. So we were still early. A ukulele band was performing in the station.

The Modern Train
Then we took the ultra-modern train. The seats folded in two directions so you could face either way. The carriage had a rack with hangers, so you could take off your coat or jacket and hang it up as if you were in a theatre.

Switzerland's major tourist cities are:
Geneva - on Lake Geneva. on the West near France. going clockwise around the lake you come to Lausanne, Switzerland's wine country.

Lucerne - (Luzern in German, Lucerna in Italian)
on the mouth of the river and lake with two covered bridges leading from the new city to the old city.
Lucerne Events Dates:
Lozärner Fasnacht.

Zurich:
Switzerland's largest city has 50 museums. Chagall windows are in the church. Modern Art Museum.
Huge, wide Monet in art gallery.
Airport, with connections on Swiss airline (Star Alliance member, handy for us as we collect loyalty points, airmails from Singapore Airlines); plus train links to Lucerne.

Shopping and Riverside Restaurants
We walked along the riverside street which is on the cliffside offering views from the buildings on the bank side. Restaurants on the riverside were the most expensive.

Wh is fondue so expensive. It's only cheese melting with bits of bread? To ams a proper fondue you need two or three types of cheese, maybe emmentaler, gruyère and reblochon, plus garlic, white wine or kirsch.

Fondue and Cheese
We were looking for a place serving cheese fondue. Failing that, a boutique selling Emmentaler. We saw windows with cheese and Swiss cow bells.

What do you cut the cheese with if the restaurants are too expensive or closed or full? You have to buy a Swiss army knife. We popped into a shop which had a display and captions like a small museum. I didn't want the genuine army style knives with covers in camouflage grey. Besides, they did not have the vital corkscrew because the army on duty is not supposed to be drinking. I fancied the jolly red ones with the white cross - and the helpful corkscrew.

Story
On another business trip we took the train down to Milan in Northern Italy and watched ate evening's opera at La Scala opera house. We had booked the theatre tickets on line. Then we had a late night snack. Finally we caught the train back gone midnight.

Trains From Switzerland To Italy
Getting the right ticket for our train and the time and price we were travelling was more  complicated.   There was a long queue. We needed change in another currency. Did we get one through ticket? No the tickets went half way. You had to buy the second half separately. From a different machines.

When we got on the train it was dark and we wanted to sleep. But we needed to show the ticket to two sets of border controls each way, ticket inspectors who walked down the train, speaking two different languages.

After one ticket inspector passed, we curled up to go to sleep. We were woken by another man, and could not understand the problem, until another passenger helped. The ticket inspector said in Romansch that he wanted the ticket for his half of the journey. The passenger explained that, by translating what the ticket inspector's said in Italian or to his girl friend. She explained it to me in French.  I explained it to my husband in English. My husband asked if we had the right tickets. Off we all went again with our impromptu united nations translation service.

On that trip we went to A l p r o s e, the Swiss chocolate factory, with a museum, free tastes and lots of different kings of chocolate to buy. The milk which is turned into cheese is also an ingredient of chocolate. We posed outside the factory for a selfie beside a statue of a cow.

Zurich Events Dates:
August Zurich street parade - which attracts a million visitors.
August Theatre Festival - Zürcher Theatre Spektakel.
Bern
The capital city has an old town with arcades.
Basel
This medieval city on the Rhine has an art fair; and the February Carnival, Basler Fasnacht.

Swiss Cheese in the USA
If you can't get to the Swiss festivals in Switzerland, you might catch one in the USA:

Sponsored by the Ohio Swiss Cheese Association, Sugarcreek Business Association, and the Village of Sugarcreek, The Swiss Festival is held the 4th weekend after labor day each year. (2017: It was September 29-30) 2018 ... 

If you pass a Swiss hotel in New York, consider eating at their restaurant, or booking a hotel room. You might be offered a little piece of wrapped Swiss chocolate.

www.ohioswissfestival.com/

www.alprose.ch/

https://www.lucernefestival.ch/

Swiss Hotels:
https://www.booking.com/country/ch.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/festival-travel-checklist

Official Swiss Tourist Board:

https://www.swiss.com/gb/en

Switzerland - Wikitravel:

https://wikitravel.org/en/Switzerland

My Previous Post on Chocolate:
travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2014/09/chocolate-guide-worldwide

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Another French Mural - by Chagall

Problem
Any murals by famous French artists in Paris?

Answer
Yes. Marc Chagall (6 July 1887-28 March 1985) painted part of the ceiling of the Paris Opera in 1963.

His section is the circular ceiling in the Palais Garnier, over the theatre seating, with a chandelier hanging from the middle. All primary colours, stunning red and yellow and blue which you can see from below.

Chagall ceiling in the Paris Opera. By Isogood in Wikipedia.

Stained Glass
If you want to see Chagall's art, most of his work is paintings and stained glass. My favourites are:
1 The Chagall windows at the hospital in Jerusalem.
2 The Chagall windows in the cathedral in Switzerland.

Still on my wish list:
Museum in the place where he grew up in Russia/Belarus.

Websites
Large numbers of his pictures are in Wikipedia including the one which inspired the title of the musical Fiddler on The Roof.

Travel information:

http://us.france.fr

http://uk.france.fr

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. More about murals in France and Europe and Canada in my other posts. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Minsk, Marx, Chagall and Belorussia

When I think of Minsk and Belorussia I see Chagall's visions of idyllic flowers and calm cows and bedecked brides and villagers arm in arm, dancing through their simple happy lives in the nearby villages. And the cities, with their grand gold  domes and stately buildings, magical centres of learning and opera, and the humour. The stoic yokels and cultured writers.

That is the romantic view. But what can you see today? A street called Karla Marksa. Who would that be? But let's start with the museums.

Here's my wish list. M i n s k e r s (predictive text wants to replace with ministers) and tourists can enjoy about twenty museums including those in the list below:

Belarusian State Museum of the Great Patriotic War. (Alphabetically)
Museum of Ancient Belarusian Culture.
Museum of the History of Minsk.
Museum of Modern Fine Arts.
Museum of Nature and Ecology.
National Academic Bolshoi Theatre of Opera and Ballet. (Bolshoi means big.)
National Art Museum.
National History Museum.
State Museum of Theatre and Music.

Yakub Kolas Memorial Literature Museum.

Street Names
Regarding finding your way about and language, they seem to add the letter a onto everything which makes life easy. For example, The Museum of Nature (etc) is in Karla Marksa street. Ah. Karl Marx.
The State Literary Museum of Maxim Bogdanovich is in Maxima Bogdanovicha street. The State Literary Museum of Yanka Kuala is in Yanki Kupaly street.

Chagall
The Marc Chagall Museum is in Vitebsk. If you can't make it to Belorussia, or want to do a grand tour of Chagall sites in more than one country, there's a Chagall Museum in France. (See TripAdvisor.)

Vitebsk is also associated with the classic haunting tale of The Dybbuk, written by Ansky.

• S. Ansky (1863–1920), playwright, The Dybbuk
• Marc Chagall (1887–1985), artist

www.artmuseum.by
www.minsktourism.by
www.warmuseum.by
www.yakubkolus.by

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Houses of the Famous Museum Visit Wishlist - Elvis, Freud, Levi, Trotsky, Twain and more

I'm researching a book of quotations and keep coming across new museums in the birthplace of somebody famous - or where they lived and died. You can visit Trotsky's house, where he was murdered, in Mexico. You can see exiled author Stefan Zvieg, home, where he supposedly committed suicide with his wife - although conspiracy theorists think he was murdered in the Rio area, Brazil.
   Sometimes you visit a country or place and the most interesting or mysterious part, such as the controversy about how the person died, is not mentioned at all. Instead you are shown only the verifiable facts, such as this was his pen or Freud's spectacles. I imagine guides are wary of giving misleading information or being negative when people are trying to have a happy holiday.
  I went to Molly Brown's house in the USA and heard not a word about the Titanic. Then when I visited Jim Thompson's house in Bangkok, twice, I had to buy a book in the bookshop to find out the theories as to where or why he disappeared on his last walk through the jungle.

Today I've added more places to visit to my wish list.
Here are the ones I have done and my most significant memories:

My Been There Top Ten:
1 Anne Frank House,
2 Bronte Museum,
3 Disraeli,
4 Dickens, London
5 Rothschild,
6 Freud, London
7 Jefferson, USA
8 Webster, USA
9 Poe, USA
10 Scott, Scotland.

My Wishlist Top Ten:
1 Elvis Presley's Graceland,
2 Mob Museum Las Vegas,
3 Jane Austen, UK
4 Mark Twain, USA
5 Jim Reeves, TN< USA
6 Robbie Burns, Scotland
7 Abraham Lincoln (I've done the theatre in DC, a battlefield with explanation of how he wrote his Gettysburg address speech, but not the birthplace area),
8 Trotsky, Mexico
9 Chagall, France (or Eastern Europe)
10 Robben Island

BEEN THERE _ DONE THAT
USA - BEEN THERE
Elvis Presley museums/souvenirs -
when living in the USA I seemed to find an Elvis souvenir such as a car in every city.( But I still haven't done the big Elvis centre Graceland.)
President Jefferson home, Washington DC.
Fallingwater designed by architect by Frank Lloyd Wright
Edgar Allan Poe House Museum, Baltimore.
Home of Jack London, California.
Home of Molly Brown.
Home of Pearl Buck.
Home of Clara Barton.
Buffalo Bill Cody Artwork museum.
Hearst Castle, California.
Noah Webster. The man who wrote the dictionary, revised spelling, and made a grammar book.
Noah Webster House 227 Main St W Hartford CT 06107
noahwebsterhouse.org
(NB on the web your search for Webster will probably bring up a different Webster, Daniel,danielwebsterestate.org and Tripadvisor you'll see Daniel Webster House.)
Winchester Mystery House
Deadwood, reproduction of poker table with Wild Bill Hicock's dead man's hand

CHINA
Sassoon hotel in Shanghai - not much to see. Great place, with small plaque in hall, but having been there made me read about Sassoons.

UK
London - Dickens house.
Keats House.
Freud's house - highly recommended.
Bronte's house in Haworthy, Yorkshire - highly recommended. Loads of info and shop.
Rothschild home Waddesdon. National Trust.
Disraeli's house.
Portsmouth - another Dickens' house.

SCOTLAND
Home of Walter Scott;
David Livingston.

WALES
Dylan Thomas (3 locations).

EUROPE
Anne Frank House, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Highly Recommended.
Hans Andersen Museum, Denmark.
Puccini's house, Italy.
Bialik's house, Israel.

ASIA
House of American, Jim Thompson, who started Thai silk industry, Bangkok, Thailand.
Gandhi's House, Delhi, India.
Sun Yat-Sen's home, Shanghai, China.

AUSTRALIA/NEW ZEALAND
Katherine Mansfield Birthplace museum, Wellington, New Zealand Katherinemansfield.com

SOUTH AFRICA
A former home of Nelson Mandela was included in a tour I took around Soweto. You can also visit Robben Island.

*****
TODO - WISHLIST
England
London: William Morris house. Hogarth house.
Jane Austen.

Scotland
Robbie Burns House.

USA and North America
Mark Twain House and Museum, Hartford, Connecticut. marktwainhouse.com
Niagara - Houdini Museum
Graceland - Elvis
Hemingway
Cemetery with Al Jolson statue.
Replica of White House President's room in Boston.
Homes of Country Music stars: Jim Reeves near Nashville, TN.
Abraham Lincoln museum.
Several halls of fame - though most are online and some are only online with no premises.
Whitehouse tour, Washington DC.
Las Vegas Mob Museum.

MEXICO
Trotsky museum.

S AMERICA
Stefan Zvieg museum near Rio, Brazil.

PACIFIC
Robert Louis Stevenson home and hilltop grave in Pacific.

EUROPE
Birthplace home of Levi-Strauss in Buttenheim, Germany.
Brothers Grimm fairytale trail.
Chagall Museum - Eastern Europe.
Chagall Museum, France.

I'll add some more details and books later this week so keep checking this post daily.