Switzerland

Country #2 – Switzerland. Our first experience? The Obb Nightjet. As I mentioned at the end of the last blog, there was absolutely no information online about anything relating to check in or the experience itself. All we knew was that we booked and paid for a shared sleeper cabin (about $220 for both of us which included a ‘breakfast’). We arrived about 30mins before our scheduled departure where the train was waiting for us at Amsterdam Centraal Station – we got on the train without anyone checking our tickets initially. As we walked into our cabin, there were two ‘couches’ and two bunk beds up the top. The only storage for suitcases was under the ‘couch’ or at the very top with the two bunk beds. We were confused though…there were 6 waters and 6 cookies but only…two of us. Oh no…are four more people joining us? HOW! The room was so small. If your suitcase didn’t fit under the couch (which mine didn’t) – it then had to sit in the middle of the room (taking up the limited space in the middle) and affecting where the ladder went. We asked the Obb Nightjet worker if we were expecting anyone else and he said yes, it was a full cabin. Someone was getting on at Nijmegen, one person in Düsseldorf and two* people in Köln). Oh shit. How’s everything going to fit?! *One person never made it on (thankfully!).

Anyhow, it ended up working out. You can request being in a female only cabin and we had some really lovely people. The lady who joined us from Nijmegen got so excited when she found out Jas and I were partners because, “I have a girlfriend too! I just broke up with my husband a few years ago and now I have a girlfriend.” She was also planning to ride her bike (albeit an ebike) from Switzerland back to the Netherlands – crazy. The other two who joined us were both hyper-intelligent – one a doctor from India who was trying to get credentials to work in Switzerland and the other a biomolecular engineer. The sleep is disrupted as you have people getting on and off throughout the night (not to mention sleeping in a room full of strangers), but it was a cheap and effective way to get from one country to the next. The journey takes 12 hours but you can sleep for most of it.

In the morning, you get given a freshly made coffee (or tea) and two rolls with butter and jam. This is also when you get to meet and talk to your other cabin buddies. There’s absolutely no space to open your suitcase so make sure you have your essentials in an easily accessible bag before you get on the train. There’s not a lot of storage but not everyone is travelling with suitcases (two of the three people who joined us didn’t have any luggage for various reasons). Despite not sleeping very much at all, I would definitely do it again. I ended up getting a lot of writing done (probably at the annoyance of everyone trying to sleep!).

Because we arrived ridiculously early in Zurich, we had a lot of time to kill before we were able to check into our Airbnb. We hadn’t decided what we wanted to do with public transport either – so we spent the morning exploring our options. You can either get a Swiss travel pass for 2, 3, 4 or 6 days, or a half-fare travel pass, or you could look at getting a Eurail pass. Because we weren’t catching a lot of trains in Europe, we decided against the latter. We ended up going into a tourist info centre and asked them for their opinion – they asked where we were planning to go and then explained how much those full fare trains would cost which was going to be more than a Swiss travel pass. And that’s assuming we didn’t do any other travel on those days. The lady serving us said that a half fare travel pass is only effective if you’re planning to be there for a month rather than just a week. So we bought the 6 day pass at about $720 each (!!!). Buttt – we definitely got our money’s worth / would have spent more if we hadn’t. It gave us free travel* anywhere in Switzerland and meant we didn’t need to worry about buying individual tickets for each train. It also gave us discount on cable cars and access to some museums for free. *Trains, trams, buses, and boats are included - although I think we got scammed having to pay for our ferry from one of our hikes as it was a ‘public transport’ run by a ‘private company’ so wasn’t covered with our travel pass.

Fun fact: the Swiss public transport uses an honour code. There’s nowhere to tap on or tap off, the assumption is that you have a ticket. If you don’t, and get caught, it’s a 100CHF ($180) fine (oh yes by the way, the Swiss have their own currency) and might get banned from using public transport again. Having said that, on a lot of our longer journeys, we did have our tickets checked. So it’s not a risk worth taking.

Food and coffee were ridiculously expensive in Switzerland…so we just didn’t do it. Well, we bought one black and one white coffee on the first day and it cost $20! On top of that? They ask you to tip too! No thanks. Because of the cost of everything, and because we were travelling on a budget, we didn’t eat out so can’t comment on any Swiss food. Grocery prices were reasonable though – we survived on banana porridge in the morning, fruit and nuts for snacks during our hikes, fresh bread rolls and Dutch cheese for lunch (which then became Nutella rolls when we ran out of cheese), and pasta with a tomato sauce for dinner (occasionally we would add beans too for protein). Also on the coffee – outside of Zurich, most cafes made their coffees from a Nespresso machine…another reason to not buy coffee in Switzerland!

We managed to kill about 4 hours before we asked the Airbnb host if we would be able to please check in early – which she generously allowed us to. We dropped off our bags and then went out to explore a little bit of Zurich – we were too tired to do much so we went to the FIFA museum which was included in our Swiss travel pass. Thankfully so as I would have been disappointed paying for it. It was really interesting, but had way too much information. And when you’re surviving on little sleep, it was the last thing we wanted to be doing!

Given our fatigue and dreary weather, we headed back to our room and started to plan our hikes for the week. What we quickly discovered though, was that a lot of the hikes we wanted to do were in fact closed…because they still had snow covering them. We had planned to do the four lakes hike in Flims, or the Stoos Ridge on the Thursday but couldn’t do either. (Things TikTok doesn’t tell you). So any hike you want to do that’s above 1600m in Spring, make sure you check that they’re open first.

I spontaneously created a Reddit account and asked what hikes were open in early-mid May from Zurich and had some really helpful, quick replies (I recommend using this any time you have questions that need an immediate answer). We settled on Walensee and are so happy we did! It was a really easy walk – a little bit of incline and decline but nothing strenuous at all. It took us about 2.5 hours to do 10km and maybe another 30mins for lunch and photos. The best part? You’re walking along the bluest blue lake the entire time! (It’s true, photos really don’t do Switzerland justice).

After we finished this walk, and because we had a travel pass, we thought we would try to tackle one of the other hikes a Reddit member suggested – Mt Rigi. Even though the sun is up until 9pm, the cable cars stopped running at 6pm – MAKE SURE YOU LOOK THIS UP BEFORE YOU GET STUCK! After a long and slow 45mins cogwheel ride up (which was not overly exciting to be honest, but means you don’t have to hike up only down!), we started our hike at 4:30pm. We quickly realised we weren’t going to make it the entire way before 6pm so we did half the walk (5km) and caught the last cable car from Klosteri. The thought of being stuck on a mountain in Switzerland, hungry and tired, really didn’t appeal to either of us. The views at Rigi Klum were stunning though so we’re still glad we caught the slowww cogwheel train. After a big day of hiking, we caught the train back to our accommodation ready to check out the next day.

Our next stop was Zermatt – right near the bottom of Switzerland (and a long, expensive train ride there – but one in which we had already paid for!). Navigating to our accommodation was…a challenge. The buses no longer ran conveniently to the accommodation which left us hiking for 20mins on an incline with all of our luggage. 10/10 would not recommend. And to top things off, during our research in Zurich, we found out that the hike we really wanted to do (and the one that was a ‘must do’ in Switzerland) was, you guessed it, closed. Our host recommend an easier stroll up to Zmut where we could see the Matterhorn (Toblerone mountain) the entire time. Admittedly we were so sore from the day before that this probably worked in our favour. And the shorter walk meant we had more time to spend with our host – a lovely French woman who was so generous and kind. One of the things we had read before booking this place was that they offered (for a fee) a cooked dinner or a cooked breakfast but that we all eat together regardless of whether the host cooks for us or we cook for ourselves. We opted for the breakfast and cooked ourselves pasta for dinner. Our host generously offered us her leftover Ratatouille to put on our pasta and my godddd it was so good! So much better than our bland tomato sauce!! And for breakfast?! French crepes, an omelette, fresh bread with jam and butter, orange juice, and coffee – all for only 13CHF ($22 each). This was the best start to our Saturday.

We only had the one night in Zermatt and that was enough – it’s definitely a town set up for skiing so somewhere I’d consider going back to to do just that…if I could ever justify some of the prices of the country! We were then on our way to Interlaken. We dropped off our luggage at our (very nice) accommodation and went out to explore Grindelwald. We only had the afternoon so thought that was the best way to maximise our time. We ended up buying return gondola tickets (for 38CHF [$68 each]…and that’s with a 50% discount!!) but in hindsight, maybe we could have purchased only one way 1) to save money and 2) to walk through the meadows. But we knew we had at least a 1.5 hour hike to Lake Bachalpsee at the top so we probably didn’t have time for a 3 hour trek up.  The view at the top, at ‘First’, was absolutely insane. Swiss alps, everywhere. There’s a really short cliff walk at the top (which we did, much to Jas’s distress and fear), with incredible views. But if you’re hiking to Lake Bachalpsee, it’s not necessary as you get stunning views the entire way to the lake. Despite the hike being ‘open’ you were walking on a path surrounded by snow. But it wasn’t that cold? We managed in our shorts and a light jumper. It took us about 1 hour before we reached Lake Bachalpsee which was, you guessed it, frozen. Still stunning though. We had our lunch. I made a snow angel. Then fell over in the snow (that was cold). We then caught the gondola back down (and missed all the cows ☹) and train back to our accommodation.

One of the things we were desperate to do was to swim. We made a pact that we would swim in every country we visited (regardless of the temperature!) so we found a swimming spot and went there for a quick (refreshing) dip before having our pasta pots for dinner (we didn’t have a kitchen at this accommodation and were strictly told no cooking…so hot water and pasta it was).

On Sunday we bought our fresh rolls for the day and went to start the hike to Lake Oeschinescee. Because we indulged in the gondola the day before, we decided we would hike up to this lake (and save ourselves $70 each [even with our discounts]). It was a 50mins hike up with a steep (very steep) incline for the first 2kms – it’s about a 450m incline over 4.5kms. By the time we got to the top, we were sweating. But it was freezing. The lake itself was stunning. We had the option of hiring a rowboat for the hour, for a bargain of 38CHF ($70) – which we obviously declined. Instead, we grabbed a warmed pretzel from the café at the top, had some fruit, and began our descent down. One thing we didn’t plan for? Was how bloody cold it was at the top! After this, we decided to visited Lake Blausee. Honestly, this is something you could skip. It cost 13CHF ($23) entrance fee (more because it was the weekend) and it was this tiny lake filled with so many tourists like ourselves around the outside. It does include a complimentary boat ride on the lake though where you can see all the trout. It was really pretty, but probably not worth the money. And admittedly, we didn’t care too much about the trout farm either (sorry). It would be a really nice place to have a picnic – your entrance fee gives you permission to stay there for as long as you like and there’s playgrounds too. So it is a good outing for the family. So too was Grindelwald-First the day before – they had ziplining, a glider, and then karting down the mountain (but be prepared to pay just as much for these activities as you did for the gondola up there…even with a Swiss travel pass).

If cows are what you really wanted to see in Switzerland, Grindelwald is your best bet. Otherwise, there’s a lot of cows between Kanderstag and Frutigen if you wanted to walk between the two towns or catch a bus halfway and walk a little bit (it’s a 10mins bus ride between Oeschinescee to Blausee so I’d recommend doing both in the same day).

After returning back to our accommodation, we had mentioned to the host’s family the day before that we play/played football (as we saw one of the kids in a Barcelona shirt in the photos) – the parents asked if we would play with them on the Sunday so that’s what we spent our Sunday afternoon doing. And honestly, what a place to play football! Swiss alps in the background, meadows surrounding you, and the best part?! FRIENDLY CATS THAT LOVE YOUR ATTENTION! We really enjoyed our evening with these kids and then proceeded to have some great conversations with the hosts themselves (they were former professional skiers for Switzerland and are now mental coaches for the national curling team). A great ending to our Swiss experience. The next stop – Croatia!

Travel tips and points

• Plugs

  • they are different from the rest of Europe!

  • they use a 2 or 3 prong plug, but they’re thinner than the European ones

  • we were fortunate the Airbnb we stayed at had adapters we could use, but I wasn’t able to charge my laptop or use straighteners (the adaptors are for EU to Swiss)

• Download the SBB app for travel - it consolidates all the schedules for all trains, buses, and trams in a really easy-to-use app

• Trains also don’t have charging ports – which I find wild given how modern this country is and how long some of the trains are (2+ hours).

• Switzerland have their own currency (Swiss Franks CHF) which is in between a euro and a pound. so we basically just multiplied everything by 2 and subtracted 10% e.g. 10CHF = $18AUD

• The Lindt chocolate museum is booked out weeks in advance

• The Swiss travel pass is definitely worth it

  • on some of the longer trains, like the Glacier Express, you still have to pay for a seat reservation (which is like $60 lol)

• Some Airbnbs require a tourist tax (same in Croatia and Italy)

• Accommodation

  • make sure you book somewhere with a kitchen! Unless you like spending money haha

  • book somewhere close to public transport too (nothing worse than lugging your luggage around or up hills…as we’ve experienced twice already)

  • the public transport system in Switzerland is elite, so you could stay anywhere close to the train lines and you’d be fine

• Works on an honour system for tickets

• Take coins (euros are okay too) for your hikes - sometimes they have little huts with refreshments where again, it works on an honour system, and you put the money in the box and buy drink or a snack

• A lot of shops (yes, even grocery shops) are closed on Sundays

• Zurich seemed a bit dull, but maybe that was influenced by the weather

• Zermatt is definitely set up as a skiing town

• Interlaken is a really nice town, but very touristy

  • you can swim in the lakes (Interlaken literally means between lakes) but not in the rivers because of the currents

• Check whether hikes will be open when you travel! A lot of hikes are still closed in May/early June

• Bring warm clothes for your hikes – the summits can be freezing (literally)