December Weekend, Swiss Style

The hard life I lead took another amazing turn this weekend past, with 3 fantastic days in eastern Switzerland. Ditching the trains, as fun as spending twice as long getting somewhere in much less comfort can be, the equation was something like this:

2 Crazy Kiwis + 1 Awesome Aussie + 1 Silly Spaniard + 1 priceless Heidi (our GPS) = alot of fun :D

Saturday moring we were up early - I was up at 4am! For an early start, after saying goodbye to lucky Sandra (who is off to Australia for almost two months). Within the space of an hour we were in 4 different coutnries: Austria, Germany, Switzerland and tiny Lichtenstein - yes, it counts!

Our first stop with Lichtenstein - teeny tiny country with a reasonable castle. We drove up the big mountains behind the castle, an adventure in itself, with almost a foot of snow to trudge through, to find some amazing views and really test out the GPS.

The one thing we were definitely going to do in Switzerland was buy (and eat) good chocolate. With this in mind, our first stop inside Switzerland was the Lindt Factory at Kirchlberg...near Zurich. Lots and lots of pretty cheap Lindt chocolate, along with some free testers. The locals were stocking up big - many people buying hundreds of franks worth of chocolate!

Nachster halt....Luzern! It is safe to say we were all blown away by this little gem. We found our hostel, right on the lake near the Hauptbahnhof, and besides wishing it was summer, instead of the on-and-off rainy couple of degrees we werew being delt, the place was perfect!

For starters the city had a fantastic energy running through it. Old castle walls surround the city on one side, there is a strange wooden bridge, rebuilt to match the period after a 1993 fire....and a cool river with plenty of swans running through the middle. While wandering the streets we came across a brass band playing, christmas markets everywhere, and strange processions of people holding stars followed by people ringing bells dressed in white, followed by Saint Nicholas or something similar - not quite the Austrian Krampus!

On Sunday our destination was Zurich, with an impromptu detour to the delightful Zug - home fo Stefi. The town was buzzing with preparations for something called "Maerli", which seemed to involve fairtales and lamas...I wish we were there later in the day to see more!


Apart from that the town had some awesome statues of funny men above above fountains...

...a pretty Church and Castle, a lovely lake with an amazing, albeit cloudy, view of the surrounding enormous mountains and a bakery with cool cakes and bread in various shapes including a mouse and a man smoking a pipe!


This place goes pretty close to taking the cake as my favourite place we saw in Switzerland....

Soon enough we find ourselves in Zurich..the biggest city we will be visiting this weekend. We are off to a good start, parking our car in an expensive lot when we could get street parking for free, but we are round the corner from the famous Spruglis!

Of course we get some classic truffles - milk, white and dark chocolate - to sample, and boy, these things are amazing!


After this Zurich was a little on the down side with first impressiosn - every pretty historic building was covered in scaffolding or had a crane ruining the view..the weather was cold and there was nothing too fancy to see. But after some walking we came across the older parts of the city - cool little cobbled laneways and tiny walkways along the river redeemed teh city pretty quickly :D

Then..the big winner...some crazy event where teams of people were swimming from one side of the river to the next. Keep in mind that it was only 1 degree outside, if that, and these guys and gals were swimming in speedos...not wetsuits!

After an interesting lunch - some strange pastie type thing with curry (ie Indian style) tofu, coleslaw and tomato - which tasted suprisingly good; we toured the Museum of Modern Art....which was akin to beating a dead horse in my opinion....:P


We rounded out the day by taking our hired Peugeot for some good-ol'-fashioned bush bashing in the dirt roads at the top of the Zurichberg...and finding an amazing view of the city, lake, moon and stars :D

Later that night, after finding our accommodation at Neuhausen, we each had a little turn at driving on the wrong side of the road...and for me, driving a manual for the first time in too many years...but the car was in one piece, so all was good!

Monday goes pretty close to being the best day of the trip -- a late start after sleeping in, then we checked out the Rheinfall by day. Next stop is Shaffhausen - a fantastic castle and overall a lovely historic village with more pretty statues of funny men.

Our final Swiss destination is Appenzell - the best part of this place is the route Heidi takes us on - up and down, round and round snow covered mountains and valleys, with gorgeous views... :D