Autumn Eurocrankhop- Day 11

Köniz vs. Luzern - Switzerland - Schweizer Pokal

Out of the hotel and through Dudelange centre, with the market just setting up in the town square, so an opportunity to buy some fresh bread and cheese for the journey.  I passed on the bedding plants and ceramics.

The 0718, this time off the passing loop at Dudelange-Usines.

Onto the junction station at Bettembourg with the branch unit in the centre, on the left the SNCF unit from Nancy to Luxembourg, and just visible on the right, a double decker unit off to Differdange.  C'mon you Red Boys! 

In most railway mess rooms, pinned up will be a photocopy of a fabled 1990s poster, stating the unofficial ten rules of running a railway.  Number 1 is to never trust a project who's completion date is listed as a season, but a strong Number 2 is 'never work with the French'.  At the time this was based on experiences with trying to run freight through the channel tunnel, and buying trains off Alstom.  Nowadays, it is pretty much a rule if you want to get anywhere on time.  My destination was into Switzerland and then down to Bern.  Not wanting to rely on tight connections in France, I instead opted to nip in and out of France, into Germany, and down the western border into Basel. 

This involved a short trip to Metz, with an eight minute connection onto a joint SNCF/DB service to Saarbrucken.  At Dudelange, what would have been my train if I was going to be going via France, never turned up.  Five minutes late, my SNCF train to Metz rolled in, then sat around for another five minutes.  It then plodded on, making up a couple of minutes.  Only by the good fortune of my door being by the stairs, did I make the connection.  The driver can be seen getting in at the far end, immediately shutting the doors and off we went. Other people weren't so lucky as we departed bang on time, only to be held at the signal at the end of the platform, with the driver refusing to open the doors.

He then drove like a maniac, which is just as well as approaching Remilly, for no apparent reason, we crawled along at walking pace for a good ten minutes, giving a good opportunity to study the fog laden French countryside.

This put us ten minutes late for my seven minute connection at Saarbrucken.  However, the German's are canny to the French operating methods, as we had five minutes of dwell at Forbach, the border station, and were timed at 20mph from then on, so when we passed over the river Saar, into Germany, we were relatively on time.

This meant I did make my connection.  My steed over from France in the background (for some reason a pair of single car diesel units, despite it being all electric), my next leg, an EMU onto Mannheim, in the foreground.

There is a plinthed steam loco at a Saarbrucken, though it appears someone has taken the body, leaving just the wheels.

The route eastwards is one I have done many times, but nearly always on the Paris-Moscow sleeper which connects out of the last Eurostar, so you can do a full days work, and be in Germany for first thing the next morning.  This is the first time I'd taken any notice of the route, as it winds through the Palatinate forests....

....including the fabled town of Frankenstein, where Mary Shelley passed through before meeting up with Byron and Percy at Lake Geneva for their short story competition.  The castles on the hillsides giving the inspiration for the man monster, and it was this name she decided upon.

All was going well until we hit Kaiserslautern, where single line working was in place due to track works.  In the UK, if a line is shut, then the timetable has to modified so that trains can work over the single track without delaying each other.  Not so in Germany, where we turned up on time but had to wait ten minutes for an ICE heading the other way to Paris.  I had an eight minute connection at Mannheim, so was glad that we had made up five minutes by Ludwigshafen.  However, we then sat in the platform for five minutes, which meant I got to watch my intended Bern bound SBB service, rattle past in the adjacent platform.

Sure enough, when we got to Mannheim, my train had long since gone.  Fortunately, the German timetable is just as shambolic for flighting trains, so there was an ICE to Basel fifteen minutes later (then not one for 3.5 hours) and would catch up my service by Basel, with a twenty minute connection on to Bern.  My ICE arrived bang on time, then sat there, and sat there, eventually departing 15 minutes late.  EU law now dictates that the rail infrastructure must be separately controlled than the train operators, such as the creation of Railtrack/Network Rail, though either can be in public or private ownership.  Germany has really struggled with this, and therefore the track company, DB Netze, is in a mess, especially with train control and signallers.  The centre of this is at Mannheim, where massive industrial relations issues have caused an acute shortage of signallers, which means large swathes of the area are being operated by a person covering multiple signal panels.  This was obviously the issue today, though the official explanation was only of 'issues with the railway operation'.  The delay gave me time to get my last German meal of the trip, and I went route one with a breaded cold veal sandwich, cheese covered pretzel and European apeltise. 

The route down through the upper Rhein valley is only double track and intensively used by freight traffic, so once you lose your path you are fucked.  By the time we crossed over the Wiese into Switzerland, we were over half an hour down.

Into the vast Basel main station.

With my intended train, now long gone for the second time, I was onto an Intercity to Bern.

This took me through the central flatlands of Switzerland....

....then over the Aare and into Bern.

Just reacting quick enough to get in the comedy sign.

We were now in the territory of Swiss private operators, in this case BLS.

Through stations cut into cornfields....

....and the late afternoon silhouetting our passage across the viaduct at Gummenen.

I changed at Kerzers, which is a pretty mad station, as it is situated on the cross roads of two lines, which cross on the flat, with a couple of chords linking the lines, and platforms at right angles to each other, with trains splitting and joining, and platforms at right angles to each other, making Limerick Junction look like a simple operation.

I took the short hop down to the dual named Murten/Morat.

I'd chosen to stay here, solely because it was the only place in the Bern area that had twin rooms for less than £200.  The disappearance of Dai meant I could have changed to a single room elsewhere, but reading up on the place it sounded good, and also had mini golf.  The town was originally settled by the Romans, but over time has been in French, Swiss, but predominantly German hands.  This means it is a Swiss-German town, in a predominantly Swiss-French area.  Its original importance came from its location on the Bern-Lausanne road, but the railways bypassed it so it moved into the watchmaking and absinthe industries.  The Germans heavily fortified the town with walls and a fort, but it has never been tested so they are largely intact.  Heading to the hotel, and indeed it was a picturesque little town.  The buildings mostly date from the heyday of the towns trading status in the 17th century.

The hotel seemed to be some sort of medieval castle, with access via spiral stone staircases in the turrets....

...leading to a spectacular view from the room.

I headed out, finding the mini golf, with a ninja turtle made out of drain pipes, closed.

Instead I jumped on a return working of one of the commuter ferries.

This took me across to Sugiez, for a train onto Bern via Ins....

....and one of BLS's new double decker units to Liebefeld, the closest station to the Köniz ground.  Köniz is actually a district that covers a number of villages and suburbs of Bern.  It is only known for being that it was at Liebefeld-Steinhölzli school in Köniz, that comedy North Korean nut job Kim Jong-un studied when he was in Switzerland.

Cup games are hit and miss in Switzerland, as to whether they will be busy.  The draw of a top flight team in Luzern, and a tiny ground, meant I thought I might have trouble getting a ticket, as there was no info on the club website.  As it was, with 45 minutes to kick off, the area was pretty much deserted, only some fenced off roads and the Luzern coach parked up, gave any idea a match was imminent.

The ground itself was pretty empty, and 15 pieces of Nazi gold later (about £12), and a standing ticket for the home end was mine.

Köniz 1 v Luzern 1 (AET Luzern win 4-5 on penalties)- Switzerland - Schweizer Pokal

FC Köniz were founded in 1933 and didn't do much until three seasons in the Nationalliga B in the late seventies.  In 2011 they brought in a load of ageing top flight players, which, surprisingly worked as they were promoted up a couple of times to the 1st league promotion, which is the third tier league.  They have just missed out on promotion to the second division on a couple of occasions.  One of the players brought in was Miguel Portillo, who's playing style is based on pastel knit ware and reading from Wikipedia with an old timetable in his hand.

Fussball-Club Luzern were founded in 1901.  Since then they have had a record number of promotions and relegations for a Swiss club.  Until the 1970s, most of their time was spent at the second level, but since then it has been nearly all top league, including winning the title in 1989.  They have also won the Swiss cup a couple of times.

The ground is an athletics track, tucked between flats and a wooded area.

There is a small stand on one touchline.

Adjacent to it, an even smaller terrace.

Behind each goal, were temporary terraces of a few steps.

The large track area behind the goal had been made into a very sociable food and drink court, with bar stools and high tables.

For me, it was the first game of football I have ever watched from a long jump pit.

Amidst a barrage of noise, the sizeable Luzern support arrived a few minutes before kick off.

It's as though some advertisers want their signs to de defaced.  Two possible rude words, just by removing the 'r' a couple of times.

The teams came out to face the hordes.

It's fair to say that Luzern were on top, somehow contriving to miss three open goals.

Their shirt was a horrible yellow orange, with white bars on the front.  Not one of the better efforts.

The home keeper was proudly bearing an @keepers_towel

Half time, and miraculously the score was still 0-0.  If you go to the effort of getting an electronic scoreboard, then surely you can go to the effort of putting the away teams name in, rather than just 'guest'.

Strangely, kids were allowed to run around the pitch at half time, but were not allowed to take balls on.

Even stranger, were the open air urinals?

At the start of the second half, Luzern finally scored.

Although it looked like this would be the first of many, it didn't happen, and in fact, Köniz equalised with four minutes to go.

This is how it ended, which meant extra time and possibly penalties.  If I stayed to the end, it meant I wouldn't get back to the hotel until 0045 in the morning, so I headed off.

I was struck by the number of free viewing spots there were, and indeed, the number of people taking advantage of them.  On the pathway behind the main stand...

....at the main entrance behind the goal...

....and from a tennis court by the scoreboard.

I was going back to Bern Weissenbühl station, as there were no trains from Liebefeld.  This entailed a ten minute walk through the utterly pitch black woods, until the station was found.

A direct service took me back to Murten, with the town lit up for the evening.  A quick check revealed that there had been no more score, and Luzern had won on penalties.

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