I (Chuck) had a plan to try and get to a Victorinox (the original Swiss Army knife company) store to build his own knife. The problem was the stores that did it hadn’t been open and the one that was left was nearish to Lucerne but about an hour away by train. With the last few days of stress though Becky was happy to sleep in and let me go to Brunnen early and get this done. I got up and headed to the train station and took an uneventful train to Brunnen. I got there way too early so I wandered around the waterfront a bit then grabbed some breakfast at a local bakery.

At 9 the store opened and I was the first appointment for building a knife. The lady who ran the process was very nice and walked me through selecting 1 of 3 types of knives I could build. I chose the Climber. We setup the machine and started layering on all the rivets, separators, springs and tools and about 20 minutes later I had the knife built and just had to choose the “scales” or the colored outer shell. I chose a travel themed one and had the back side inscribed with “Switzerland 2025” to commemorate the trip.

Once done I let Becky know I was on my way back and that I should make it before checkout and we could move on to our planned trip of the day ending in Zurich. I planned to try and get my last 3 stamps for my Grand Train Tour book today so we were going to take what I thought was a simple loop through St. Gallen and Schaffhausen to get those 2 and ending in Zurich for the last.

We caught the first train to St. Gallen which was on the Voralpen Express and it was relatively straightforward. We decided to tour the Abbey that St. Gallen is known for so we dropped our luggage in the lockers at the station and headed over that way. The abbey was built in honor of Saint Gallus and we first went through the main cathedral which is an amazing Rococo style interior with vivid and detailed ceiling paintings. We walked through and admired the views and then moved to find the Library. The library was the part Becky was most looking forward to and it did not disappoint. We had limited time but we did an audio guide tour of the library which is an impressive 2 story collection of old manuscripts, maps, globes and even a mummy complete with inner and outer coffins.

We left the library and went to the vault which housed some historical displays about the abbey. We had to rush a bit through this as we had another planned stop before heading to Zurich and the game this evening. We walked back and found that we would have to change trains relatively quickly before reaching Shaffhausen.

We got to the first station and we have been lucky for the most part in Switzerland to have ramps or escalators or elevators for most platform changes but this time we had to hoof it on a few sets of stairs but we made the connection. I looked up where the stamp location was and unfortunately this one was like Interlaken and was in a tourist info shop well into town and not by the train station. I googled how to get there and it recommended a stop by the Rhein falls in Shaffhausen which in general was fine as that’s all we really had time to see so we got off there. It was little more than a platform with no real station and Google recommended a path that I started to follow but quickly realized was more work that it was worth having made us scramble on several trains with our luggage all day. I went back to Becky and the luggage and we figured out the best route to get back to Zurich and the hotel. We had to make a quick trip to Shaffhausen station itself and change once again to a direct train to Zurich.

Once there the chaos continued as there is major construction in front of the Zurich train station which meant the carefully planned out route I had from google maps and street view was no longer viable. We looped around the side of the station in big crowds and eventually made it across the street and down to the riverfront to proceed across and to our hotel. Overall uneventful but another stressful situation late in our trip so we needed a few minutes once at the hotel to just relax in the excellent A/C and then get ready to head to the game!

We had tickets to the Quarterfinals and found out several days ago that it would be England and Sweden. Both teams are well regarded in international women’s soccer and we expected a good game. We found our seats in the interesting stadium which had a circular wooden roof over the seats and concourses. The crowds were pretty heavy while we took a lap around to see the food options for dinner and to find some souvenirs. Becky got an interesting combo of a bratwurst and a small crusty bread roll. She tried to make it into bun but it was not ideal. Becky went back to the seats and I went to the Souvenir stand and got a scarf, pin and a Euros mini soccer ball. I grabbed some fries and a drink to take back to the seats and when I got back there were a very nice man and daughter in one of our seats. We quickly resolved that but later when I went to get Becky a water I came back to becky leaving our seat quickly and a bunch of drunk dudes sitting in them. I asked her and she said they had confronted her and 2 women sitting next to us and said we were in the wrong section and started filming the 2 other women during the confrontation. We found an usher and showed them our tickets to verify that we had understood our section correctly (we had) and I immediately went down to put them straight but they had apparently sobered up enough to realize they were wrong and were moving. I let them know it wasn’t appreciated but they were drunk and just laughed it off but at least moved.

For the game the first half was dominated by Sweden who scored 2 goals and led 2-0 at the half. England later in the second half finally broke through and then scored again just a few minutes later to tie things up. Despite a lot of chances on both sides no one scored in the Extra time so we went to penalties. Sweden had I think 3 chances to score the winner but missed them all and eventually England got one and Sweden missed again to give England the victory. It was an exciting game and all of the goals including the penalties at the end were scored on the goal on our end!

After the game we knew getting a tram back to the station area and our hotel would be interesting so we headed in that direction and positioned ourselves in the crowd. With a little jostling we managed to make it onto the 2nd tram in our direction and even managed to secure seats. We got back to the hotel relatively uneventfully and basically crashed.

Today’s Highlights

• Custom Swiss Army Knife for Chuck and a relaxing morning for Becky
• Beautiful abbey with a beautiful old library
• So many trains
• View of a spectacular waterfall from one of the trains
• Sitting next to a small Sweden fan who never gave up on her team, even as she chanted “Sweden” through tears right through the last penalty kick

Tomorrow’s Proposed Adventure

• Exploring Zurich