Slow Train to Switzerland: One Tour, Two Trips, 150 Years and a World of Change Apart

With wit and useful insight, impressive research, entertaining story-telling, and a bit of amusingly boastful Union Jack flag waving, this British ex-pat travels back and fourth in time to explain how Switzerland began, grew, adapted to change, and became the country that has fascinated tourists then and now. I read this book to prepare for my first guided tour of the highlights of Switzerland, and I feel educated about the general history, geography, and character of this country—and now cheerfully eager to visit. This book is a must-read for anyone preparing to tour the Alps and lakes and villages of this land-locked island. It's a fun read, a thoughtful introduction to the land of cheese and milk chocolate and oh, so much more.

If you like learning about other countries this book fits the bill. You will learn among other things why the Swiss became such expert watch makers, and how tourist travel to Switzerland literally transformed both the country and also helped to create the whole tourism industry around the globe. It is also fascinating to learn how the Victorians traveled and spent their time on vacation. The author could have used an editor to reduce some repetition, but otherwise this was a nice book that our "Grand Tour" Book Club enjoyed very much.

Very fun and readable book. I was reading it just before and during my first trip to Switzerland, and could relate to much of what the author was saying. The concept of the book is an interesting take on travel writing - re-creating a journey taken 150 years ago and documented in a diary. The author's writing style is engaging and lively, and I emerged with some insight into travels during Victorian times and the beginnings of the leisure travel industry as well as a feeling for the people who live in the Swiss Alps. The old pictures and illustrations from the original traveler's diary add even more life to the story.I think anyone who has traveled, or is thinking of traveling, to Switzerland would enjoy this book. And it makes great airplane reading on the long journey to get there.

I have been to Switzerland five times to different areas each time. This book is GREAT! So interesting to learn about the development of tourism,railroads, hotels, mountain adventures, personalities. The author's descriptions of Switzerland today were invaluable and informative, even to someone who has been there as a tourist over the last 20 years. Now that I have finished the book---I am ready to go again! Read the book from the library, and then ordered the book from Amazon because I knew I would want to refer to the book again and again.

Slow reading, a bit choppy s book bounces back to the 1800’s to present time. The author follows a travel route of a women from the 1800’s using her journal to replica her adventures.

Good read, learned new things about Switzerland

A very entertaining book!

I read this book as I traveled almost all of the same journey in the Swiss Alps. It added so much information and some emotion at just the right times. It truly enhanced my journey.

The author and his mother follow the route taken by the first intrepid Thomas Cook tourists. Some of the contrasts between the poor country then and the prosperous country now are amazing, and how the female tourists coped in their crinolines and ordinary shoes through snow and over glaciers beggars belief. An enjoyable, undemanding read, that somehow gives a great deal of information.

nice -for bedtime reading

Swiss resident of British extraction Diccon Bewes takes the fifteen decade old travelogue of a participant of the first Cooks Tour of Switzerland as a guide to retrace the trip. For me this evoked my many trips over the past seven decades, but it did much more: it is an intelligent, informed reflection on how tourism changed the one-time “poor house of Europe”, pioneering and inventive Switzerland, how travel comforts and mores have improved and why the Swiss are now among the most prosperous and civil people on earth.

Nice book.

Un libro sulla Svizzera di oggi con riferimenti ad un viaggio del 1860 di una ragazza inglese che inaugurò il tour alpino della compagnia Cook.Interessante anche se avrei desiderato leggere anche il testo integrale originale che invece è ripotato solo in parte.