Switzerland

I first mentioned in my Mountains post how, after my High School graduation, I really wanted to see the mountains of Colorado and my travel agent mom surprised me with a trip to Switzerland instead that I will appreciate forever. I did not realize just how different yet the same everything is. The goal was minimalistic luggage with only a backpack and lodging with the only requirement being a private bathroom so hostels were out. Even if Hostel was just a movie, the thought of a shared bunk bed with other strangers seems a little too weird to me.

It was the first time going outside of America for me. I had never been to Europe before then and I remember the flight to London being really long but was good overall. I don’t remember much of it though I do remember being grateful there were no screaming children. We dropped our bags at the luggage ‘day care’ to avoid taking around with us, which we got a laugh at. We had a layover here so decided to take a few hours to explore. 

We were typical tourists and got to experience their underground train to Big Ben (pictured above), though we didn’t see the change of guards as we didn’t have much time in London before traveling on. I really want to come back and spend more time in London for sure. 

We had time to ride the huge London Eye Ferris wheel, which had air conditioned, spacious compartments (pictured) for people to ride without having to be squished together like other Ferris wheels. And it was way less sketchy. I really liked it and got a great view of London and many pictures.

 

The weather was partly cloudy and a bit cool so we both had on light rain jackets the once time we wore them. I vaguely remember even riding in one of the red double-decker buses. After lunch in the park, we saw a few people dressed as statues in the park that would come to life after throwing coins in their hat, which I thought was really cool. Now when I see them in movies or other places I think of when I saw them in London on the way to Switzerland.

We hopped on a short plane ride to Geneva. It was our first stop in Switzerland and the nicest hotel we stayed at the whole trip. There was not much of a learning curve yet since most people knew English at the hotel and the city was pretty big but there were some differences that we had to get used to. We asked the front staff recommendations on where to eat or shop and we were on our way exploring. The city had a long lake running through it that was super clear and had swans in it. Even got a pictures of babies! I had never seen a swan in real life until then and never have since this trip.

The city was mostly French, which made sense since it bordered France. The place where we ate lunch at, I noticed the waiter was rude to us before we gave him a tip. I wonder if other American’s hadn’t tipped or paid but at the time I didn’t understand. They did not take card and we hadn’t exchanged our money yet, but took our US dollars thankfully. 

There was this huge water spout with soccer ball as some tournament was happening. I remember hearing cheering in the middle of the night about it. Eventually we found a Starbucks and had to get one and we noticed it was twice as expensive as back home. It also seemed to be mostly made up of smaller cars or motorcycles in the city with flashy sports cars scattered, besides public transportation of which buses were popular.

We took a boat ride on the lake in Geneva and I saw some huge mansions along the lake, like the Great Gatsby style houses. You could tell most people had a lot of money there. I am pretty sure that is where I saw the first Audi R8 and Lambo. I went on this huge hunt for this Swiss knife I saw in an advertisement that I wanted to get for military boyfriend and looked everywhere for it. On the last day I almost gave up and then I saw it in a window of another store! They even said they would ship it back home for me, which I hadn’t even thought of how to get it home.

When we made it back to the train station the next day, we had to run to catch our train to this castle we wanted to check out called Chillon Castle (pictured below). I was intrigued because my boyfriend now husband loves medieval anything and is a huge history nerd so I got some pictures of everything I could.  I didn’t realize it at the time that some of these buildings are older than our country. Crazy to think about.

We rode another train to our next place of stay, Interlaken. I was highly impressed with the public transportation there and got a lot of good pictures a long the way.  It seemed everywhere you looked was a photo opportunity that looked like a backdrop. It was unreal. 

There were mountains were towering all around and scattered between them were houses which I loved the style of them with the shutters. It would be so cool to live there but so expensive. And every body of water there was crystal clear blue like the Caribbean. Crazy.

Our 2nd stop, Interlaken, was a cute little German town that I really liked. They even had horse drawn carriages! We did not get a chance to ride them but it was fun to see them. This is where I also saw some paragliders in the sky and just imagined the view they had up there. The hotel we got was smaller but had a balcony. 

I also got to try Swiss McDonalds which didn’t open until 9 am and were about as grumpy as I am in the morning. We were their first customers and there were no smiles or greeting. We got the only thing they had and it was alright. Not as impressed with it here vs back home. 

Afterwards we went to find a laundry place to wash our clothes since we only took a backpack as the idea was to keep costs minimal. We didn’t end up finding one and instead I bought a Swiss hat and then promptly forgot it on the train leaving to our next destination.

Made it to Grindelwald, which was a bit like Interlaken but with more English spoken. At least here we were able to find a laundry place after getting something to eat as our travels had made us hungry. The hotel we were staying did not have a balcony but was still cute. There were several little cottage-like houses and I found one with green shutters I loved.

Walking around the city I saw a weird, faded looking flower which I found was called ‘Edelweiss’ which is a famous flower referenced in the movie the Sound of Music, which I rewatched recently and reminded me of my trip there. The images in the movie are not backdrops and real. It is a real place but I thought I was dreaming the whole time there. Or I was at Universal Studies or some movie set.

Once we finished our clothes, we went to find this gondola that we saw on the way to Grindelwald that we wanted to ride. Once we found what time the next bus left to the Gondola, which they called a ‘cabin lift’, we went up to ride it. It lasted about an hour which we rode it to the top of this mountain and got a lot of awesome pictures of the view. On the way to the top, we saw the trees had little pinecones on them and we wanted to take some but oh well.

Once we made it to the top, it was breathtaking and surreal. I quickly decided I liked Grindelwald the best so far. It was a small German town sandwiched between towering mountains with spectacular views all around. 

It seemed like much of Switzerland you could get around without a car and everywhere was beautiful. It is too pretty there to be stuck in a car anyway. It was fun to roll the train window down and look out. We passed several small waterfalls and huge lakes with beautiful water. Even managed to get a butterfly in a picture (image below).

The next stop was another small German town, but carless this time, called Wengen. Even when taking the train over there I couldn’t get enough of this place and the views. Unreal. Walking through the street there are a lot of flowers and I even spot a cat! It seemed like a really homey town. We did have the hardest time trying to find the hotel though. It seemed like English was spoken, which helped as we didn’t know any German. I now know more but only through Duolingo and Rammstein.

The hotel was adorable and had a small pond out in front. Our room had a cute balcony with table (image below) and chairs to enjoy the views on that I utilized a lot. I took a picture of the hair dryer as I thought it was really weird looking and was confused on how to use it. When we went walking the next day, we saw a few guys playing this huge chess set outside, which I thought was fun. Since our phones didn’t work other there, we found an internet café to send a few emails after eating.

On the train ride to Wengen and off in the distance I saw a tall waterfall I wanted to check out, which we later found was called Lauterbrunnen. We took the train there and hiked up the hill until we were under the waterfall. I got a lot of great pictures on the way and while there.

The city reminded me of Grindelwald as it was a small town in the valley of these huge mountains surrounding it, but this time with a huge waterfall right above. The closer we got the more massive the waterfall stood and seemed to flow right into the city.

They carved out a path and railing in the rock so you could go under and it was really neat. Once we hiked back down, there was a group of boys dipping their heads in the water because it was so hot. What I thought was cool about Switzerland is they had little water fountains all over the place for people to cool off and drink and that was one of them. We were able to refill our water bottles in the fountain water, which is unheard of back home. We had no problems with the water taste there.

Once we checked out of Wengen we headed to Luzern, which reminded me of Geneva a bit which a clear lake running through with Swans. It was a big city with big, pretty buildings. Even the city buildings were pretty. It was sadly our second to last stop for this trip. 

This one had a long bridge with flowers that seemed to be popular which other people called the Chapel Bridge (image below). We walked down it a couple times and noticed it had really pretty artwork in the top that I got a few pictures of.

There was a part of it that was black where a fire had destroyed some of the artwork which I also got a picture of and I had totally forgot about.

That was not the only place with gorgeous artwork and architecture as it was scattered around in the city, which I thought was really cool. The bridge looked even cooler at night along the river with the lights and everything.

We ate one day along the water where a bunch of Swans would come by looking for food. I got a bunch of close pictures of them. So pretty. It was also funny when they would flip upside down to catch fish or something underwater (pictured in Geneva) or stick one leg out of the water. I even found a couple of Swan feathers I kept. Anywhere I saw Swans on the trip I was mesmerized and could not take enough pictures.

There was another tourist destination we checked out which was this wounded lion carved out of rock to honor the Swiss Guards which I thought was really cool. I remember it being very tranquil and peaceful by the sculpture. It seemed like they had a lot of pride in their country in Switzerland as their flag was everywhere.

The water in Luzern was just as pretty as the rest and crystal clear. I saw sail boats, fishing boats, tour boats, etc. so we decided to take a boat ride too. It reminded me of the mansions in Geneva but even bigger. The water was so nice and it was so hot, we saw two guys swimming in it. Crazy. Overall, I found Luzern very romantic at night and everyone was really nice. We took a boat ride around the city like we did in Geneva and saw many extravagant mansions. One even had an adorable boat house directly on the water for them to pull in their boat.

Our last stop was in Zurich which was a very large, busy city and the hotel was really cute with a small TV and fridge. The sink was right by the bed though, which I thought was a little weird. And no balcony this time. The buildings looked very fancy like in Luzern, especially the churches, with gold and fancy details. We did not go inside any as we weren’t really into seeing a bunch of architecture or detailed artwork.

Similar to the other big cities, there was a river that went through it (though not as clear) with swans but this time we decided to rent a paddle boat, which we remembered the ones in Luzern we didn't ride. That was a fun part of the vacation as I really liked being on the water and taking my time in it. It was partly cloudy but I had on capri’s and short sleeve shirt and not too warm. We didn’t end up wearing as manycold weather clothes on this trip as we expected when we packed.

Switzerland was like nothing I have ever seen before. At least at the time in 2008. Everywhere I turned this whole trip it looked unreal. I remember several times in the small towns that I felt like I was dreaming or that everything was a movie backdrop because it was so pretty. There was no way it was real. I also had never seen so many flashy cars, which I guess makes sense if you live in an expensive area. There were a lot of Audi’s, Volkswagens, and other German cars since many of the cities spoke German. They didn’t have Dr Papper but had Pepsi, Coke, Sprite and no air conditioning, similar to Oregon and Colorado. Some aspects of Colorado have really reminded me of Switzerland, specifically Pagosa Springs. I first mentioned in my Travel post how I would love to go back. There were a bunch of things I saw that I wanted to come back and do. Maybe even convince myself to go paragliding or river rafting.

The words I heard being used during this trip for certain things were different than what I am used to hearing. Elevators were called ‘lifts’, which made sense, and if you wanted some chips, ask for ‘crisps’. They had various modes of transportation- you could go on a boat which was called a ‘water taxi’ or if you wanted to ride the underground subway you would refer to it as the ‘tube’.  But first you might need to stand in line, which is called a ‘queue’, and if you wanted to take food home you would call it ‘take away’ instead of ‘to go’. What I thought was really funny and very different was how they referred to construction as we have a very negative reaction but they were called ‘improvements’ over there. It is crazy to realize how different our worlds are even when we share the same planet.