June 20 - From our five-minute train transfer at Buchs, we head off on the second train south to Chur. This follows a narrow valley of the Rhine River, with increasing mountains around. After another quick transfer from train to bus in Chur (it’s good everything is well signposted because these transports don’t mess around with departure times), we go up through increasing elevation and through a pass at 2,065 meters between Thusis and Bellinzona. Now I understand why there is no train connection here, as the roads have to wind up steep canyons.
It is dark and rainy, but the scenery is incredible, some of the most dramatic I’ve seen on a bus ride.
The castles and covered bridges over the rushing river are gems that make this a beautiful trip. I do not know if the Romans made their way through this pass into the easier terrain of northern Switzerland, but if they did, they must have been impressed.
It is easy to place the division between ‘German Switzerland’ and ‘Italian Switzerland’ at the pass, because it seems like everything coming back downhill to the south is in Italian.
Pull into the Lugano central train station and head into the drippy afternoon. Take a bus up the hill to the Massagno district and find our way to the apartment. There is a grocery store within in 5-minute walk. The only downer is the complicated door. It has a peg for a door handle, that just spins. The key must be held at a certain angle to trigger the latch.
At the Denner grocery store, I learn how Lugano differs from Zurich. At the checkout, no one is minding the register, despite two customers ahead of me. They slap their items down on the belt and shout out in Italian. The checkout woman comes sauntering over, and all three engage in some animated, humored conversation. The one customer looks at me and shakes his head, as if to say ‘she is always lazy like this’.
I can understand why people sometimes comment that Italian Switzerland is more culturally like Italy. But apparently, this is misleading, as any Swiss citizen, whether they are French, German, or Italian-speaking, is quite adamant about proclaiming their nationality as being separate from other European countries.
At any rate, the bits of the city we see today on our bus ride and perusal of our neighborhood for the next three days have that organized and carefully tended sense of being Swiss, even if the architecture has morphed into something a bit different that we’ve seen up north.
Historically, Lugano was associated with Milan and Como until it became part of the Swiss Confederation in 1513.