Switzerland part 1

We drove towards Switzerland and before we knew it we were in the country, there was no sign of a border at all and we were straight on the motorway. We had to stop at the first petrol station in order to get a vignette for the motorways as we hadn’t seen anywhere that sold it before we accidently got on the motorway. Our next port of call was the little town of Appenzell which is near the border. This little town has developed many different types of food including a Appenzell cheese, Appenzell beer, Appenzell ginger bread and Appenzell sausage. Essentially everything you read about this town is about the food so we thought it was only right to try some. However we soon realised how expensive Switzerland is! An espresso at a basic café was in the region of £4-5 when in Italy we were used to paying less than a pound. We did more research and it turns out that the Swiss are paid about 4x the UK average wage and therefore the cost of living is about 4x more. We decided we would have to be a bit more careful  with our planning while here but as we walked around the town we discovered that there was a food market on so we went to investigate. You had to pay to get in and it was 8 francs which is about £6 but we decided to pay and see what all the fuss was about. Once inside we were able to try lots of the local food and even bought some cooked raclette cheese on bread as I couldn’t resist some Swiss cheese. I think we were the only English people at the fair and while many stall holders tried to talk to us in English many just continued to talk to us in German, which once past guten tag we stood no chance of understanding.

After the food festival we headed back to the car happy that we had tried many of the foods and even discovered some new food combinations (bacon and chilli fudge being one). We then headed to a town call Wil for the night. The camper stop was up a small hill and surrounded by forests so we went for a nice long walk and saw some deer running free and some cows, who weren’t that impressed to see us.

The next morning we decided to go and see the large lake Bodensee which sits in Switzerland, Germany and Austria.  We decided to see it from the German side and a town called Konstanz and relished being in a cheaper county for a couple of hours. We explored the town and the lake for the morning and had some lunch at their food festival (we seemed to have stumbled into the food festival territory). The town was really lovely and as we had the bikes we managed to cover lots of the building and statues before heading back to the van and heading West back to Switzerland and followed the river Rhine to Rhine falls which is supposed to be another one of Europe’s largest waterfalls.  We found out that we could visit the falls for free by walking across the bridge and down the other side of the waterfalls. It was a wide water fall rather than a tall one such as Krimml Falls.

Zurich was our next destination, the largest Swiss city but not the capital which is Bern. Cycling around we covered the main sites pretty quickly. As always there was a lot of churches but our main attraction was our lunch which we ordered for the first time ever from our ‘To good to go’ app. Switzerland is crazy expensive especially when it comes to food. A coffee sets you back £3-4, a sandwich £7-£10. Anything hot will cost £15-£20 so we had to find a solution or starve. The app allows you to order food in advance from places who know they will have spare food after lunch or dinner for the fraction of the price. Don’t worry it’s not leftover food from customers (at least I hope not). In Zurich we found an Indian restaurant which served us a veggie curry with Rice for £4 (Bargain). It was a nice big portion so we were able to share. The experience was a success and before we knew it we were back on the road staying in the woods in a place called Lucerne. We met another English couple (our age!) who were staying in a van conversion. We had a good chat and showed each other our vans. Afterwards we felt grateful knowing we had a toilet and shower at our disposal. There are many advantages to having a van conversion over a motorhome but none of them is worth trading for our toilet and shower.

The next morning we headed for mount Rigi. Pierre did most of the work for us getting us to pretty much the top where there was a car park. We were not amused that the car park was £5 considering it was pretty much the middle of nowhere especially as it only took coins (which we didn’t have). With no shop or anything to help us change a note we considered whether tickets would ever be checked.  This was Switzerland and every car in this car park was obeying the rules so whether or not we would get fined we were keen to blend in and buy a ticket. We asked local women if she had changed. She was in the middle of a coughing fit but continued to grab her purse. When she saw we only had a 20 swiss frank note (£15) she knew she didn’t have the change for that. To our amazement she gave us the 5 Swiss franks and wouldn’t even take the 5 Euros we offered instead. We were taken back by her generosity but did consider that when the average wage is 3-4 times more than the UK wage that £4 isn’t a huge amount to give to a stranger. We were happy that once we had finished our walk we were able to pass on the happiness and give our ticket to another Swiss walker who had just parked. He tried to offer me money which I refused and we felt satisfied that we had done the UK public image justice. We then headed to a small town called Lacerne which again is on a lake. We parked outside the town in a random gravel space and cycled in through many bugs. The cycle was lovely as most of it was river and lake side and, to my delight, flat. Once in the town we ditched the bikes and walked through the old town crossing the historic wooden bridges before walking up to the old fortress and exploring the towers which gave great views over the city and all had a different theme. We headed to the Swiss capital of Bern where we stayed in the woods (again) just outside ready for a 8km cycle the next day.

The bike ride was tough but nice through a wooded park with a 100m+ incline – the way back was a free ride. Bern was lovely and didn’t feel like the capital at all. It had a huge clock that worked far better than the Vienna one. It had a street of cool fountains with statues. We visited the Bern Bear park which housed 3 bears in the centre. The park was centred around the historic bear pit where Bears were made to fight. We saw 2 of the bears napping and getting ready for hibernation. Whilst being unimpressed by the very fact these wild animals were essentially in a city zoo the enclosures once seen in their entirety were not the worst. Regardless there is still no need to house wild animals in a city when there is so much space in the wild!

Up another hill there was rosegarten which as the name suggested was a park with roses. We chilled and waited for 2pm to arrive so we could collect our next to good to go meal which was Thai food. We had Pad Thai and Chicken Panang with a couple of Spring rolls thrown in. This was far better than the Indian we had previously!

Upon arriving back at the motorhome we had time to visit a chocolate factory outlet outside the city. We were hoping for some hot chocolate but there was none in stock. However there was lots of reduced near their sale by date chocolate going for 50p! This was worth the visit alone – we were particularly amused when one girl saw the price and screamed grabbing about 5 bars. We spent the night in the woods in a place called Bulle.

We were on a city mission and next up was Geneva (If Switzerland wasn’t expensive enough!) We had reservations for a free tour of the large hadron collider at CERN and we were very excited. I won’t bore you with the science but we were honestly expecting to be the stupid imposters of a tour which was going to be full of Physics geeks. We were wrong. We nearly laughed out loud when the best questions one American came up with was do they have to clean inside the collider (Maybe he was looking for a job). Anyway the tour whilst interesting was nothing to write home about although we did get to see the first ever collider which was built in the 1950s. The guide was pretty deadpan but the whole place seemed very open and transparent about what they do although I’m sure they have some secrets somewhere. 

The next day we wanted to explore Geneva so where best to stay the night than in France! Turned out to be a nice easy flat 6km cycle into Geneva crossing the border at some point. Of course we had a Good to go lunch ordered – we even went all out and ordered 2 portions! We first went to the ICT museum which was meant to be a good free attraction but this was as Google put it – permanently closed – oops. Ah well we moved on and stumbled across the UN. We joined the obligatory queue outside to get a look inside and before we knew it we had been through the scanner and were being told we could join the next tour. We couldn’t look around without the tour and as we had already queued we thought why not so we paid up and headed across to the start of the tour. After a little waiting the tour started and took us through several of the conference rooms, including the main Human Rights conference hall and the large assembly room. The people on our tour kept going rouge and it was very entertaining watching the tour leading having to keep count and round the people up when they disappeared into other meeting rooms which were due to have important meetings in. During the tour the tour leader pointed out that as it was a clear day you could see the jet d’eau which is the famous fountain and that you could also see Mont Blanc in the distance.  The whole tour lasted about an hour and a half and did teach us a fair amount about the history of the UN in Geneva and New York and we were glad we had done it, even it if was by accident. We then cycled back into the main town where we went to see the famous Jet d’eau which is essentially a large spurt of water in the middle of the lake. We then headed to see the flower clock which as it sounds is a clock face on the bank covered in flowers. After this we cycled up the hill to the cathedral in the centre before we cycled to get our latest “too good to go” lunch from a little café and then headed back to the van before driving further into France for our next camper stop on a small hill in Reposoir.