Grand opening of the Galgenbucktunnel

Yesterday was an important day for our city and we'd been waiting for this day for so many years!

The Galgenbucktunnel has finally been open! If you live in a place with such a large construction in progress you know that it brings many limitations to your daily life. The road situation changes constantly and you face many unnecessary traffic jams. We couldn't be happier when we learned that the construction is coming to its end and that we will be able to walk in the tunnel before it opens to traffic.

It was a big project for our city and there was even a museum which we could visit several years ago. You might wonder why there was a museum for a tunnel that didn't even exist at that time. Let me give you some background...

The idea to connect Schaffhausen with Beringen came up more than 60 years ago! As we live close to Germany and many cars pass through our city it causes inconveniences to many people and this tunnel was supposed to resolve this. So why did it take 60 years to finally build the tunnel? It's because this is how long it took to the local politicians at the national level to agree that the country will support the project by guaranteeing full coverage of the costs.

In 2011, at the time when I moved to Switzerland, the long wait finally came to the end and the construction work could start. It took 8 years to build it and there were several reasons for such a long period. The first of them was the coordination. There were too many companies and different people who worked on the project. It was an enormous task to coordinate all the effort and this prolonged the project. The other reason was geology. There are different type of rocks and stones in the hill and on top of the hill is a residential area, so every single explosion had to be discussed with experts.

I would never expect that it took so much effort to complete this project considering that the tunnel is just about 1100 m long.

It was exciting to get the opportunity to walk there and see the place that limited our life was so long and that will hopefully make it much easier for us from now on.

Are you ready to go inside? Let's do it!

It takes us around 20 minutes to get to the tunnel...

Part of the project was to build a path for pedestrians to reach the city. Until now we had to walk down to the river and then up again which could be challenging for older or weaker people. Now, we can walk on the side of the hill and enjoy the views of Schaffhausen as well.

And we are getting close to the tunnel. There were so many people! What we didn't check on the internet was that we could enter the tunnel from one end only. Well, we were at the wrong end and had to take a shuttle bus.

Can you see those people on the left? None of them made it to bus as it was full already at the previous station. When we came down I wasn't very happy as I don't like waiting for any kind of public transportation and it was also very cold.

When the bus came it was full again but I and my husband could squeeze on the stairs and we were in!

It took us about 15 minutes to get to the other end of the tunnel. I was happy to get out of the bus as it was too hot and too many people touching me accidentally (I decided to believe that it was accidental).

In front of the tunnel there were many police cars and our stuff got checked before we entered the tunnel. It was quite embarrassing as my handbag was in the size of an envelop but the police guy sent me to the table to get it check. The guy who was there told me that I don't even need to open it as it's clear that I can only fit my smartphone in there.

Right at the entrance there was a poster with some details. There were many of these stands at different places inside of the tunnel. We could check photos from various stages of the construction or read some details about geology of this place.

It was strange to walk in a road tunnel. You usually don't even think about it...

Have you ever wondered what is inside of this SOS door? Let's have a look!

And I'd like to say that this photo is not askew. The tunnel is descending at 4.5% which is significant at such a short distance.

Here we are! It's nothing exciting 😊

I wanted to show some other perspective of the tunnel too, so I went down on my knees to take this photo...

My husband was enjoying himself a lot! Yes, he has a tie as we just came back from the church.

And we are at the end already. There were many food stands and plenty of benches and tables for people to sit down and enjoy their food. We didn't stay for too long as it was even colder there than outside.

Vignettenpflicht means that you have to have the vignette to enter the tunnel.

This guy seemed to enjoy his food as he was rubbing his belly quite openly.

And can you see the carousel? It was very popular and I saw kids patiently waiting in the queue.

Now, it's time to walk back home. The shuttle bus was almost empty this time as it was quite late.

I think that I will be walking on this new path many times...

As you can see there is a large villa (Charlottenfels) right above the tunnel.

The path offers beautiful views of the river Rhine and the canton of Zurich.

It's a nice place to live, isn't it? 😊

Here we are right below the Charlottenfels which means that we will be back home soon.

And we're coming to the end of the path...

I must say that I enjoyed the tunnel but we wondered why it took them so long to build it. I understand the challenges that they were facing but it's still a tunnel with 2 lanes only and it's so short. It took us only 15 minutes to walk from one side to another. But well, at least it's finally done!

Thank you for visiting!

Cheers!

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