Swiss Grand Tour
Well, I don't know where to post this exactly, so I am posting in my community. It is easier for me to moderate here if not any other reason. The rest of the posts will be in worldmappin as it will fit there better. This post is mostly about my plan for the next week. Also, I have rarely published my work related stuff here, but more and more my travel and work is merging. Also there is a financial aspect to this trip, so maybe it will be of general interest.
With this background, let me be very transparent, as I usually am, that I will be traveling to Switzerland over the next week. A little bit of this is work, but I will be mostly looking at my areas of interest, which involves in this case, going to some cool places. No, I won't be going to Grindelwald and Interlaken (well I can't avoid Interlaken, as I will transit there) but I will still be going to some cool places, including Zermatt. You can see the map above and notice the general areas I am planning to visit in the Swiss Alps. What I am planning on doing is that I will try to publish a daily blog, as I will be staying at different places each night (almost). I will be traveling by Swiss Rail, and yes I have purchased the Swiss Travel Pass!
There you go, the first financial sticker shock! That is CHF 665! That is USD $823 for 8 days. Yes, it is all covered. But No, it doesn't cover certain cable cars/gondolas high up in the mountains. But at least those will be half priced. Yes, it is first class, and yes, I know it is not really needed, as swiss 2nd class is rather good, but I don't like the crowd and I can afford it, so why not. That is good money flow through the system. By the way, the second class is not very cheap either, it is CHF 419 for 8 days, which is $518. But hey, not everything is Switzerland is that expensive. In fact, I just checked my hotel costs, and each of my hotels are cheaper than my recent San Francisco hotel night. That is saying something! Cost of living in the San Francisco area is through the roof. Even a basic sub-urban home I was visiting is Daly City 20 min BART ride from Union Square is $1.2M! But hey, that is a topic for a different post.
Source of the Image and Key Reference: Schmid et al. 2017
Above is the general geologic/tectonic map of the Swiss Alps. I was studying this article for some general geological guidance. I will be visiting mostly around section 3 and 4.
Source of the Image and Key Reference: Schmid et al. 2017
These are what we call crustal scale geological cross sections, or just crustal scale sections in short. They help us visualize the nature and style of deformation of upper and lower crust. All I like for you to appreciate that Alpine geology is complex. As the African plate collided with the European place to collapse two oceans, Paleo-Tethys and Neo-Tethys, rocks are highly deformed and elevated, exhumed and eroded heavily to the present day. That gives us a very good glimpse into the lithology and deformation of deep crustal material that we can't normally observe. However, here in certain areas of the Alps we can touch the upper mantle! That is very special to a lot of us. I wanted to squeeze in the Jura Mountain trip into this as well but logistically that is difficult to fit on this trip. However, here is a good reference I was studying. Alright, that was way too much geology already! Sorry about that. Back to the plan......
My Travel Plan for the next few days
I will be flying to Geneva starting tomorrow morning, will arrive there Saturday morning. I head to the Alps directly by train from there. My general plan is to blog along the way while I am in train. I am planning to stay at some good places, look at some rocks, drink some good wine and fondue and have an excellent time for the whole week. Anyways, that's my plan. The next post will be in worldmappin. I checked the map, and there are not many recent pins to the places I am heading. More on that later.
PS. This post needs a regional large scale tectonic map! This map shows the movement of the African Plate with respect to the Eurasian Plate.