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Hello everyone, Myself, my girlfriend and her two girls are heading to Switzerland in late May 2011 for 8 days. This will be our second trip there in as many years with the oldest girl being her first. I have been looking around and found some useful stuff, but I am still having a hard time deciding which pass to buy. I am leaning towards the half fare card for three of us. The youngest will be 12 at the time of the trip, the oldest being 16. My question is do I need to buy a youth pass for the youngest or does she travel for free? Our last trip, we purchased a kindercard for her. Is this still available as well. We are staying in Lauterbrunnen and plan on doing Murren, Wengen, Kliene Sheddige Tremmelbach Falls and most of all Jungfrau. Sorry for the spelling errors. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
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Hello DaveB, and welcome to our forum! A Swiss Half Fare Card may indeed be a very good option for a 3 weeks’ stay, in which you’ll mainly visit the Jungfrau area. If long and extensive train travelling is involved, a Swiss Pass may be suitable, but if you plan to stay within one region mainly, a Swiss Half Fare Card will definitely suit your needs. The older girl indeed needs her own Swiss Half Fare Card. The younger one can use a free STS Family Card, which allows her to travel along for free with her mother. This can be supplied for free along with your Swiss Half Fare Cards. If you order online, you can indicate if you want to receive this STS Family Card.
(By the way: the pass you used before may have been a Junior Card, which can be purchased if the parents don’t have a rail pass, but use regular train tickets. It costs CHF 20.00, but this isn’t what you need if you make use of valid rail passes such as the Swiss Half Fare Card).
I hope this helps! You may want to take a look at the Bernese Oberland day trips and hiking pages, which may provide some more ideas for your stay. Good luck on your further preparation!
HI DaveB
You have chosen a beautiful area of Switzerland which you may already know if you visited the Bernese Oberland last year. May is a bit early in the season. You will probably be able to visit all the places you mention but many/most of the walks at higher elevations will likely still be closed due to snow. There may be quite a bit of snow still at Kleine Scheidegg as well and possibly the lovely walk from Mannlichen to Kleine Scheidegg will not yet be open. If you can arrange to go later you will have the most flexibility. However, there is still alot to do when there is snow on the ground in some spots (although it will no longer be ski-able).
I have a 30 page document full of tips and things to do in the region. Happy to send it to you but need your email address to do so. If you are interested, please send me your email address via private message, don’t post it up on this public forum.
* perches swiss pass when u reach at swiss from any train station
(golden pass is included only u have to confirm one day reservation for panaromic view)1) Day-1 – Reach Interlaken.
Go to Beatenburg –
There is a bus from Interlaken to this place which is on the hills –Half an hr ride. No need of separate tickets >> Bus at every hour past 8 min e.g. at 3:08, 4:08,…..
At the last bus stop at Beatenburg you have Cog wheels
to go down near the lake from where we can take boat ride to
Interlaken West or further to Thoon and come back by train toInterlaken. >> Last Cog wheels to go down arround 6:00 pm
Going down the hill by Cog is free. Going up to
Neithern horn peak by cable car is charged at discount due to Swiss
Pass. We can goto Neithern horn peak by cable car . It is a good view
of mountains and Interlaken lake – Return to Interlaken by 6:30pm and roam in Interlaken itself. Last boatrides and Cable care are at 5:30pm I guess. >> The discounted fare per person is 18 eur, there is cable car at every 10 min and the last one to come down is arround 5:30 pm or 5:40 pm. The are no boat rides presently running in interlaken now. You can get one in Luzern if needed. Last bus to interlaken west is at 06:33 pm from the station near the lake.
2) Day-2 – Trip to Titilis. Take train from Interlaken OST to
Luzernne. >> train at every hour past 4 min to luzern, consider you catch the train of 8:04 am from Interlaken Ost.
From Luzerne take a train to Engelberg to go to
Titilis. There is one intermediate station also where we can get down
and take this same train to Engelberg instead of going toLuzerne (You can get down at Hergiswil the train from Ost will reach Hergiswil will reach at 9:53 am. Next train to engelberg is at 10.25 from hergiswil on track 2. The train will reach at engelberg at 11:12 am). From Engelberg you can buy tickets for Titlis mountain peak. >> Ticket cost with ICE flyers is arround 53 eur you must take the ice flyers a good experince, you will also get ice toys once you go down by ice flyers enquire the ice flyer operator about it.
We can complete Titlis by 3:00pm and return back to Luzerne and spent
some time in Luzerne and then back by a direct train to Interlaken.
I guess direct trains back are only till 6:00pm.3) Day-3 – We went to Jungfru from Interlaken. We need to buy
speacial tickets for Jungfru peak. We get discount for Swiss pass
holders. We can go from Interlaken to Junfru. In all there are threetrains we need to change which are interconnected. >> Discounted tickets is 124 EUR per head go via Grindelwald route and come back via lauterbrunnen, there is waterfall near to this at Trummelbach falle. Bus to the watefall is at every hour past 33 min. The waterfall are open from 9 to 5 and ticket of 11 eur perhead.
so the route to junfraujoch will be start before 8:00 (7:52 am from Interlaken West station) there will train at 8:01 from ost to grindelwald (section B) on track 2 or 4>> Interlake Ost – Grindelwald (Change train) – Kleine Scheidegg – Jungfraujoch (approx 2.5 hrs journe, dont halt inbetween as the weather can go bad before reaching top) Back journe Jungfraujoch – Kleine Scheidegg – Lauterbrunnen – Interlaken. There is small town wengen on the way back you can rome here for 30 min or 1 hr. Be sure that you start at the latest before 8:00 from Ost.
On the way back take a different root. From Jungfru back. The first station in the
return path, take train to Grindenwald. This is another route to come
down. We can roam around in Grindenwald and return directly to
Interlaken.4) Day -4 – Start early came to Bern, spent couple of hrs in Bern >> Dont miss the einstein house.
come to Zurich by 4:00pm and see the rhine falls.
You can enquire for the golden pass train. This goes to Montreux which is a town on french border the train is at 9:11 from Interlaken west and 9:04 from interlaken ost. This reaches at 12:13 in monterux and then from there 2 trains in an hour one past 19 min and other past 54 min. To bern it will take 1 hr so if you take 12:19 train from montreux you will be in bern by 1:19 and then roam in bern for 2 hrs and you can take a train to zurich arrount 3:30 pm from bern ( yes golden train is included in Swiss pass just u need to get the reservation and if it is not peak season then no need)
——————————————————————————————————————————————————–Hello Everyone,
Thank you for the replies and the tips. We will be purchasing the half fare cards for our trip. Cant wait to get back there. Kim, I am interested in the info you have but have yet to figure out how to send a pm.. If you do read this again, could you send me one and I will reply with my e-mail..
Annika, the link to the hiking page is awesome Thank you.. I will be going over that. Ive already found a few new places to check out…Dave
Hi Dave. You’re welcome! A pm can be sent by clicking on a visitor’s name (left of the message in the forum). If you’re logged in, you’ll get to see a profile of this user when clicking the name. Below the profile the option ‘Send a private message’ can be selected.
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