I just left it at home. Usually when I take my daughter dancing I read online news and catch up on blog posts. Today I couldn’t. I was there, my girl in the studio and I wanted to reach for my phone and it was not in my handbag.
I knew exactly where I’ve left it. No big deal, it was at home. But I felt totally weird. There were 45 minutes to kill. 45 minutes of waiting for my daughter to be done. 45 minutes of not knowing what to do.
I picked up a magazine. A magazine full of advertising for a travel agency. At least there was an article in it about a train ride through Switzerland. So I started reading it, wondering if it will, once again, cover the same three basic places to visit.
To my surprise it didn’t. It was a great round up of the country I come from, covering all areas, from the German part to the French, back to the German part and over to the Italian part of Switzerland. If you would book a trip like this you would definitely see all of Switzerland’s beautiful bits and pieces without having to risk to be in just the typical tourist places. To be honest, it totally took me by surprise.
Usually it’s all about Luzern, Zermatt, Interlaken, maybe Montreux and Zurich because that’s where the airport is most international tourist fly into. And while I was sitting there, reading this article, I was thinking of all the conversations I had with Australians about their visits to Switzerland and how often the answer to my question about where they’ve been to was Interlaken, Luzern and Zermatt. I thought about all those times when I thought: “What a shame!”
Don’t get me wrong! Those places are really amazing. But there is more! And given that Switzerland is so small it always made me wonder why people wouldn’t try to see more. Well, I guess it’s because that’s what the big travel agencies suggest.
There I was, thinking of all the great places all those people visiting Switzerland might miss and wondering what suggestion I would make to someone asking me what to go see in my home-country. Then I wondered if all the places I would suggest would really have the same “wow effect” to them, they had and have to me. Maybe it would be different if you would visit them as a tourist.
Honestly, I still don’t know. But I think nevertheless, I would suggest some different places. Just because it would give those people an entirely different experience of Switzerland than everyone else would have.
And just like this, the 45 minutes were over…
I’ve been to Lucerne and Bern. had a good time in both places.
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We lived just outside of Bern and worked there before our move. It’s such a great city and a beautiful area.
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Now you know, why you had to forget your phone 😉
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Yup 😉
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😀
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I am the same with my phone. It is a habit I am not really fond of, feeling like half a person without my phone. I would love to see Switzerland one day!
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I think this train ride would be a fantastic way to do it. It really covered everything. So if you ever plan on going, let me know and I give you some pointers 🙂
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How different we can be. More often than not I haven’t a clue as to where my phone might be. Most “calls received” are from me, on a borrowed phone, looking for mine. In fairness, it’s an old flip phone, not a pocket sized computer, and so I really only use it to make calls. On travel: A friend told me last year that he and his wife were going to “see Australia.” That they would be gone for nearly two weeks. My first thought was, “Wow, did someone finally invent personal jet back packs?”
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Hahaha! Yes, that makes me laugh too, when people claim they’re going to see Australia (or the USA) in only two weeks. Don’t get me wrong, you can cover a fair bit. 2 nights in Sydney, then to Melbourne maybe driving to Adelaide via Great Ocean road (3-4 nights), flying from Adelaide to Ayers Rock and hiking the Outback (3 -4 nights), flying to Cairns and snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef (3 nights) and then back to Sydney for another night before heading home. Like that you have covered 1/2 of Australia but most known sights…
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I’ll keep this as a possible itinerary, for when (or if) I can get this retirement thing to actually work out. I have a nephew living in Hong Kong who has a girlfriend from Sydney. They visit fairly often and push the”envy us” button with every trip report.
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Oh wow! Hong Kong and Sydney! How awesome! I love Hong Kong! Such a crazy and yet beautiful city!
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Yeah, the nephew took a “temporary” position in HK about twenty years ago. He still has the day job but also owns a nite club in the Wan Chai District called The Wanch. They have a FB page if you’d like to check it out.
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That’s probably a little gold mine…
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The mountains alone are calling. It would be magical to hike in your beautiful place of birth!
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It’s beautiful but you have this kind of landscape too in the US…
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Yes! The Rockies. They are spectacular and a national treasure.
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So so so beautiful!
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With images like that, I need to go there
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I think you should. And there are some lakes on which you can do a little bit of sailing at least 😉
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I would be perfectly happy not owning a phone. I might as well not actually, I set it down, get busy and walk away. Then hours later my son says “Mom where’s your phone, I tried calling you” then he rolls his eyes and laughs. I had no I dea that so many languages were within Switzerland. That;s really interesting. the trip sounds amazing too.
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Oh yes, 3 languages and there’s actually a 4th which is very old and very similar to Romanian.
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That is so cool, do you speak them all?
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I speak German, French and a little bit of Italian. Just a little bit. I grew up in the German speaking part of Switzerland and in back in the days learning French was mandatory in school (in the fmFrench and Italian part they had to learn German).
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That’s very cool
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I have done Swiss Alps on wheels.. from Torino to Geneva. It was beautiful. Mini halts at ice cream parlors..rich creamy homemade ice creams and sorbets.. Splendid!
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Sounds like a perfect trip 🙂
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That’s one country I would love to visit!
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You should! I bet you’d love it!
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Yes, I know I would!
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My Ex Husband use to work in Switzerland and on weekends I would go over and we would explore, we did amazing things, skiing was one of my favourte things, but we did loads and went everywhere, he was there for over a year so we had plenty of time to explore
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Nice! Where did he live?
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Zurich, you would walk two minutes and find yourself in the red district
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I lived in Zurich for a while and grew up in a ski area very popular for people from the Zurich arena to go to. The red district is called Langstrasse.. And was the Plattspitz Park still the drug area? They cleaned it up over the last years… I lived closer to the Zoo. Love Zurich. It’s close to everything…
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