Ruminations on Switzerland

Today I left Switzerland. I could have spent more time here, there are so many more places to explore.
Ever since I passed through Zurich two years ago I wanted to return and see more. It is expensive and it is a pain having a different currency to surrounding countries, mainly because it was hard to find a travel card that I could put Swiss francs on.

I didn’t get much chance to use any German other than danke (thank you). I only came across one person who didn’t speak English. He was the tech guy in the mobile phone shop. Most people seemed to speak more than English and German (I was in the Germany speaking areas).

I was surprised at the number of people who smoke. Especially in Zurich they seemed to be everywhere. Another weird thing - I didn’t see any Pepsi products in Switzerland. Their coke products are made in Switzerland so maybe that’s why? Also they have Coke Zero as their diet drink. I didn’t see any Diet Coke at all.
The chocolate in the supermarkets! An aisle of chocolate, the lollies were in another aisle.
There are fountains everywhere and the water in drinkable. It’s cold and tastes great. It was the one thing that was cheap in Switzerland. I don’t think I bought a bottle of water outside a restaurant.

Public transport was made easy with the SBB app. After linking my debit card I could both look up the timetable and buy the ticket through the app. I could buy my ticket as I walked on the train. Travel in Switzerland is expensive but the half-fare card (120 CHF) more than paid for itself.

The food was mostly good. Expensive, the days I had to buy lunch and dinner I budgeted 100 CHF meals and snacks. I never got to that figure, helped by not having to buy water but I did get to 80 one day. The hotels where I had half board were good, at least I got lots of veggies as it included a salad course. I got to try cheese and beef fondues and raclette. The cheese fondue was good. The beef okay and raclette is literally melted cheese served with potato. It was not as good as it should have been.

I was lucky with the weather. It was warmer than I expected but Europe has had a very hot summer. What surprised me was how warm it felt at high altitudes when the actual temperature was 0-2 degrees. It felt colder the day of low cloud and rain in Wengen.
I was also surprised at how affected I was by the altitude. I was fine at 3078m but 3135m at Gornergrat had me slightly breathless. I’ve just looked up the altitude at Jungfraujoch and it was 3571 so that explains why I was so breathless there.

My main regret is not doing as much walking as I would have liked around Wengen. I managed to injure my calf which has made walking difficult the last couple of days. My hiking poles have made a big difference as has cream from the chemist and resting but resting was hard when there was so much to see and do.

Tonight I’m in Paris, tomorrow I head to London.Lue lisää