weekend one- four corners of switzerland tour (and LIECHTENSTEIN!!!)
it was a typical diana-style awkward ending to an atypical week: week one of studying abroad in what i’ve come to appreciate as literally the most beautiful country on earth. but anyways — to sum up me leaving cité for my first weekend adventure: alex ended class late, i somehow fit 42 pounds of stuff into the backpack i was going to carry around for the next four days (help. so many later regrets…), drank an inordinate amount of milk, and then lizzy, kyle, ryan and i rushed to the train station in order to activate our raileurope train passes in what really was a deli style line complete with calling numbers and a queue — which i pointed out to ryan: “it’s like a deli??? diana, what.” — but it ended up all working out okay. even my slight fear of escalators didn’t get in the way of navigating the geneva station, nor did it impede my abilities to disembark and sprint through all the SBB CFF FFS train stations i had transfers at on my wild trip this weekend.
before i take you through everything i did/saw this weekend, i think you need to see a map of the general path i took to really appreciate this “four corners” of switzerland thing:
i also think you should see the size of the backpack i was carrying:
anyways, i got back and amna and the other people that went to prague this weekend were like… wait, you did what? hahaha… literally ran all over the place, which was wonderful because i saw everything i wanted to see in switzerland — save for lugano and interlaken — and definitely got the most out of my $250 swiss travel pass that i tried so hard and long to procure (see earlier post on my experience with raileurope’s god-awful customer service). so all and all a good weekend. i just spent way way too much money (ask me if i regret buying the 2016 liechtenstein olympic jacket. yeah… not at all :3) and am now making up for it by scrounging up whatever i can get at migros for hella cheap to cook for the next four days.
but without further ado — zurich:
my parents put in a special request that i not travel alone while i was here in europe, so stop one for me this weekend was zurich because lizzy, kyle, and ryan were headed that way to get to vienna and later prague and i was headed to go see my one true love, liechtenstein, and didn’t want to sleep alone so it all worked out that i go with them. like i said, we activated our passes at the deli counter, found our platform, and then set off to find food in the 15 minutes that remained. kyle really wanted a muffin and the rest of us split authentic german pretzels. sounds pretty ordinary, but we were all hella excited for what was ahead of us. after all, taking the train/backpacking around europe is sort of the quintessential thing for college students to do.
the train ride was beautiful (although i am putting in a formal complaint because it was over 90 degrees and why does everything here lack AC. ugh.). seriously cannot even begin to explain how beautiful (yes, i overuse words when they are accurate) the rolling hills, mountains, lakes, and small farm towns of switzerland are. i considered taking a picture out the window on one of my many rides this weekend, but something overcame me whenever i had this impulse and i didn’t because i knew i could never capture the experience of hurtling through a mix of hansel-and-gretel style everything. a real fairytale. it’s something you just have to go do yourself.
we got out at zurich after about a three hour trip. i listened to music, slept some, and read about “the magic of the market” so all was well in the homework arena. basically the second we stepped off the train, we could all tell that zurich was much more happening than geneva. the train station was an architectural work of art. we stepped outside and there was a lot more traffic. a lot more going on. the hustle and bustle of a real city.
we wanted to drop our stuff off in our airbnb before we walked around and saw the things in the old town that we wanted to go see like the operahouse and grossmunster. we routed it, and noticed it was a 45 minute walk to our hostel, but we decided to uber since it was cheap. little did we know what was in store for us…
first off, after requesting the uber, kyle gets a notification that our driver is hard of hearing and we are like okay this might complicate things but kyle speaks german so we weren’t too worried. we were sitting at our corner when our driver passed us accidentally, then stopped at a random other location on the map, and called us to tell us to relocate and meet him in front of some bank. so we threw on our backpacks and walked across the street and down the block a little bit.
then — get this — we find the car parked where he told us he would be but it’s empty. like legit no one is there. driver not in sight. we were all like… help. is this just coincidental? could this not be the car? but we just saw it pass. there’s freaking no way… but we keep walking, circle the block confused. kyle calls back and the driver says he is parked where the car we just saw was but like what. he wasn’t in vehicle??? so kyle starts getting hella frustrated (“level 4 frustration”) and is like WHERE ARE YOU, SIR but then the driver says hang on and drives to our initial location where we started like 45 minutes before. then we angrily walk back that way and find it. but lo and behold, he still isn’t in the car. kyle was legit about to blow, but then the driver wandered down the street, we threw our stuff in the back, and were off.
after about a two hour debacle, we quickly threw our stuff in hostel, regrouped, and went on our merry way to get much needed food and see the sights of zurich.
we wandered around for awhile, saw a lovely clock tower — which is sort of like the staple of every swiss city. they all have the same clockface on some sort of a tower (usually attached to church). then, after realizing we were headed away from the city, we doubled back and found much needed sustenance because we were all so hangry and hot — literally spent like three hours eating fries, nachos, burgers with sauerkrat while enjoying the best beer i’ve ever had ever (seriously went down so so so smoothly).
after we were sated :3, we headed towards the river to explore old town. we were sad to see that lindt — which is based in zurich — was closed (i was even sadder because ryan owes me chocolate.), ran into a carnival, and then arrived to see one of the prettiest views along a city that i’ve ever been to. (side note: i wasn’t expecting much from zurich but it ended up being one of my favorite places i went to this weekend. anyways, you can judge for yourself since i haven’t been to anything spectacular along the danube…)
after we roamed about for awhile, we decided to hit up the bar/club scene, especially since kyle’s friend had told him of some underground club we “had” to go find. instead of going to the bar that you couldn’t wear shoes at along the river, or the one dedicated to SOC-genius james joyce, we ended up in a nondescript location labeled “bar” where we dropped like 250 francs on drinks (or rather kyle did… confused how he actually can afford to buy nine drinks in a night) then debated the paredo optimum efficiency of us leaving and not paying tab because, at the end of the day, we still are students on a budget. i was beyond conservative with drinks. so totally safe — literally just tried some stuff that the others got and ordered a moscow mule. i wasn’t about to kill myself, especially because i had a 6:37 am train the next morning to catch to get in order to get to liechtenstein.
despite the looming specter of an early-morning train, evenings happen as they always do when you go out and we ended up finding zukunft (the underground club that kyle’s friend told us about) and literally stayed there until like 2:30 am (RIP to my chances of getting sleep for the next morning…). the whole experience was whack. basically was a shady house/funk/disco bar in the basement of a warehouse with a gorilla that greeted you when you came in and a very very large range of ages in terms of the people oddly gyrating to the largely nondanceable music…. also, there was the fact that the bouncer was a total asshole and tried to tell us you have to be 23 to get in. we talked him up for a bit and basically told him to stop being so obscene…
we eventually got in and i sat in an alcove watching the most incredible exchange of human emotion ever: this chick drunk out of her mind was wearing a sports bra running shorts and some weird snapback straight feeling herself for like 40 min when this guy wearing nike slides and nondescript black everything started doing the robot to flirt with her and slowly made his way over then extended his hand but was rejected finally she gave in danced with him for all of five sec, seductively put on her hat, and walked away. he rolled away after her.
my friends kept the drinks coming (couldn’t blame them. it was that weird. idk how you could enjoy it unless you were drunk.), but i literally died because of course they amused me. my fav moment of the night was definitely when ryan just leaned over across the table in our alcove and said, with no context, “did you notice that one of alex rosenbergs elbows is huge?”
they eventually finished drinking and we tried dancing… realized how that was actually impossible and then left. the walk home was honestly more eventful than the “clubbing” (in quotations because was about as nonexistent as you can get, but hey. at least we avoided the cover fee.).
so, anyways, we are walking back to the airbnb/hostel when suddenly kyle pulls over the side of the road to pick roses, comes back discouraged (“it had thorns!”), and then complains about how hungry he is and starts contemplating the question of “how are you supposed to satisfy your drunken cravings when nothing is open at europe at night? is this why they are all so skinny?” but then we passed a falafel place ~legit probably the only place open in entire city that served food that late~ and he made a beeline towards it, but then a really sketch limping bulldog wearing socks appeared (this is entirely accurate. still so unclear how this happened), he told me he was scared of it (this is like super buffed up, weight-lifts every day kyle… scared of a small dog wearing socks.), stared it down for a few minutes, and then went inside and bought what he determined must’ve been a “mediterranean churro”. then like two blocks later, as lizzy and ryan debate who ryan would eat first between lizzy and i, kyle screamed “HIDE AND SEEK” and ran off down an alley. i started freaking out because it was largely my duty as their largely sober babysitter to get everyone home safely (we already determined lizzy was mom for this trip. i guess we had also determined that if kyle ran off, i should just let him go and he would make it back to the train station in the morning *somehow*…but yeah, no. i wasn’t about to let that happen).
lizzy, ryan, and i just sort of sat on the side of a road cursing kyle’s stupidity until he reappeared. we had considered calling an uber because my phone navigation said we were still 2.2 km away from where we were going and i was convinced that kyle had purposefully lead us in the wrong direction, but it turns out i had the wrong hardstrasse or something… idk. we were close. we made it home like 10 min after kyle returned.
it was around 3:30 by then, so i basically took a brief nap before lizzy so graciously walked me to the train station like the mom that she is but I missed my train (honestly wasn’t that surprised… but i wasn’t that worried because train from zurich to sargans — which is where you catch the bus to get to liechtenstein — runs pretty often). i had like 30 minutes to kill so we got mochas from spettacolo and sat on a bench eating banana bread. even though i was beyond exhausted, i could barely contain my excitement. seriously though, LIECHTENSTEIN BOUND!!! like that shouldn’t have even been real. i still honestly can’t believe that it was.
liechtenstein:
[waves starts playing and I’m off!]
the train ride was even prettier than geneva to zurich. following the directions i had read on a travel blog entitled “how to get to liechtensteint”, i got off at sargans, and, true to the blogger’s word, there was the bright yellow-green bus labeled LIEmobil waiting for me at the station. essentially, all my dreams were coming true! but actually for real though, i almost cried on the bus. legit had an adrenaline rush when we crossed the border, but then typical me… proceeds to get lost almost immediately… gets off at messina and walks back along highway to triesen post instead of vaduz post because there was no service and i couldn’t pull up a map (stay tuned. i later found out that not only was there no service, but my phone was broken as well), i wasn’t clear on directions, and was actually scared i’d somehow end up in austria if i didn’t get off soon (later i realized that there are 58 stops along this route and i had no reason for concern). plus, i was legit pretty sure we passed the vaduz castle that is one of the like two things that shows up on google maps when you look up liechtenstein like 15 min ago so i was very confused. also, even after i ended up in the right place i still have several concerns about the fact that the sign i was looking at that was supposed to be pointing to vaduz is actually pointing the wrong direction???? #onlyinliechtenstein i was really lucky though. a girl around my age in the trieste post office saved me. she set me straight, bless her soul. gave me such detailed instructions. t god I came here v early because i had built in time to compensate for my general incompetence.
unfortunately, i somehow failed to get on next #11 bus toward vaduz, but i think i was a bit preoccupied because a bee legit landed on my glasses lens…. anyways, i finally got on the right bus, and walked off face to face with a guy wearing a putin shirt as a hail to che guevara #onlyinliechtenstein. i went to post office, then to the liechtenstein tourism center, bought the dope olympic jacket that you now can see in my cover photo (only frivolous purchase I swear!), explored a bit, saw their parliament house, and then walked around a church. i tried to get to the mini train stop to go on an actual tour of vaduz then realized I had misread the map, ended up at the rathaus/town hall, and then eventually found the right place and bought a ticket. i still had like 90 minutes to kill though so i decided to hike up to actual vaduz castle…
lmao. i literally think i found myself on the 45 degree angle hike all the way up the mountain. the view from the top was gorgeous. i took many poor-quality selfies because i was alone and the indian fam i gave my camera to didn’t take that great of photos when i finally reached the top. it was pretty cool though because i heard the royal family (they actually live in the castle. seriously liechtenstein is a fairytale complete with price charming and dentistry products) talk from a distance as i walked around the perimeter.
i made my way back down the trail, bought a beer glass and then met show choir kids from south dakota that were singing across europe (too perfect) and randomly stopped at liechtenstein en route to a performance in austria. i chatted with them for a little bit, then boarded the tiny train that gave tours of the entirety of the small city. i basically spent the entire time talking with a mom and her young kids (alexandria and xavier — five and two, respectively) from Dallas that were there with husband/dad on business trip [side note: didn’t realize this was a viable business location. top commodities include clogs and barrels, so still unclear what a computer scientist was doing there]. i also met a doctor from argentina who had actually been at the fertility conference in geneva the past week and his wife, which was cool. i tried to speak to them in spanish and failed miserably, but that wasn’t surprising.
after the tour, i got bread and chicken from coop and decided i should head out and not go see schaan (liechtenstein’s second largest city) since the family from dallas had told me it was largely the same, except with kale fields instead of vineyards. also, the way to zermatt was a five hour train trip with three transfers so i figured i had enough ahead of me to get through. my analysis of liechtenstein: was all worth it for the passport stamp. not that many people can say they’ve been to the last remaining principality of the holy roman empire, but your girl has.
THE PART WHEN DISASTER STRUCK (or well… almost):
it was on my way to zermatt that i realized hey. i still have no service… that’s weird. what is going on??? ugh. parents are probably freaking out because i was supposed to meet my friend hannah dutler in liechtenstein, but she ended up not being able to come and they were already not too pleased with the fact that i was traveling by myself for one day. also, the free wifi avaialable in train stations wouldn’t work because i couldn’t get the text with the access code (btw, that’s how it works in europe: you click on unrestricted wifi, enter your phone number in, and then are sent a code to log on to the system, but obviously you need service to receive said code…so i was screwed).
so basically, i was alone with no way of contacting anyone anywhere with the thought that my fam was going to kill me and blame this whole entire thing on me traveling alone when it would’ve happened anyways even if i were with people because they are unreasonable sometimes and think that i purposefully would do something like this even though obviously I was freaked out that i had literally a shot in the dark of being saved by finding people I knew in zermatt. seriously was so so so blessed that i had written down some general things about the hostel i was supposed to meet aditjya, lauren, josh, and pansy at. but basically, this was the most stressful part of the trip, as i transferred trains (seriously owe so much to the information desk workers at bern and visp) and threw a prayer to the sky that somehow when i got to zermatt i’d run into my friends…
i got to zermatt, and went into a tourist shop to ask for directions to the hostel, but the woman working at the counter said she had never heard of it. didn’t know. i ended up stressfully stalking around the city for a bit. then came back to the train station — really freaking out this time because things close early in switzerland (like 8 is late for a business to be open) and it was around that time and i still had no clue where the hell i was supposed to go. i found what would be considered a cab driver, but is not considered a cabdriver in zermatt because cars are outlawed there, and asked him if he knew where the luchre bus stop was (conveniently this was also not running…). long story short, i ended up getting in a cab with some random german people who helped me find my way. it cost way too much but after a really stressful day of travel, i was delivered to the hostel and was about to relax when i checked in and the guy at the desk was like well, none of the people in your room are here. they never arrived. and i scried but went in to the room anyway, got on wifi, and was beyond relieved when josh immediately responded that they were in zermatt and had just been hiking all day.
zermatt:
after the ordeal that was getting to this tiny swiss village right beside the matterhorn (for those who don’t know, it’s the most photographed mountain in all of switzerland), i took the third best shower of life (behind after i hadn’t showered for four days on penn quest and got out and met my roommate Alisa and my first shower at IV) because lauren had been smart and brought soap (don’t ask me how this somehow was not included in the 40-some pounds of stuff i was carrying on my back…), and then went to explore zermatt by night with lauren and aditjya. we got toblerone and billberry (still unclear what this is) gelato. then, i turned in early to sleep with thoughts of going up to gornergrat to hike the next morning.
i got up early, packed all my absolutely necessary stuff into my liechtenstein jacket (i was not about to carry that backpack up the mountain if i didn’t have to), returned the hostel sheets, ate a hearty breakfast that consisted of bread, nutella, apricot yogurt, and chocolate granola and then headed down to the train station to buy my ticket for gornergrat. i took about a 50 minute train up into the alps, got out, and can’t really explain the rest. you’ll just have to look at the pictures to appreciate the beauty.
so i spent the next three hours hiking down to rifflesee from gornergrat and then took the train back to zermatt. i really really wish i could’ve done the full thing and gone all the way down but alas! there wasn’t enough time. i had to catch a train to bern at 12:37 and i was not about to miss it. not going to lie, me going to zermatt was an entirely impromptu thing — i wasn’t planning on coming here, but once again, i wanted to sleep with other people i knew so the group going to zermatt sort of hijacked my plan which was initially to stay over in an apartment in bern… i’m seriously so so glad i came here though. there’s a certain serenity that comes with the sound the wind makes as it rushes along the alps in otherwise total quiet. i’m never going to forget it.
bern:
i got off the train at zermatt and found aditjya. then, i met up with the group who had gone hiking elsewhere on the edelweiss trail since they’d already gone up to gornergrat while i’d been gallivanting through liechtenstein. we were hungry but didn’t want to spend much and decided we should try swiss mcdonald’s, which was honestly an interesting experience (they sold curry there for some reason?). then, we got on the train to visp where lauren left us to go to lausanne on the way back home to geneva and then the rest of us headed to switzerland’s capital.
we were greeted by plenty of beautiful graffiti and actual aquamarine water when we got off at bern. first stop, information center to get a much needed map of the city. conveniently there was a walking tour that took around three hours and routed us past all of the main spots and several random dog statues (the great bernese, right?), so adityja decided he’d be our map/guide (“map. i’m a map. i’m a map map map”) and took us around the city where we saw more wonderful architecture: government buildings, clock towers, churches, along with the brown bear exhibit, and einstein’s house. i also bought watermelon from a farmer’s market.
all of this went down in the midst of a thunderstorm, but it was low-key. just drizzling in the midst of thunder so we weren’t too concerned. after all, people were still swimming in the river (or rather being carried by the current…) the entire time #safetythird. we took a brief break around halfway on our tour because we were dying after carrying our stuff around for so long and put our feet in the river to cool off. it was around then that we realized there was no way we were going to get to lucerne that day. so we concluded that we might as well just enjoy our time in bern before heading up to basel, which was where our hotel was for the night.
so after we finished the tour and josh beat “grand master” pansy in chess, we found food. i had rösti dauphine—literally the most incredible potato dish ever with cream, garlic, cheese, and other goodness — and was actually full for first time since getting to switzerland.
hahahaha so very very heavy… time for backpacker confession time: i literally washed my face in the bathroom sink of the restaurant. but back to the story, after we were full, we headed back to the train station, where adityja left us since he was planning to go home that night. so then it was just me, pansy, and josh. and then there were three, i said. ready for basel, lucerne, and whatever else the last day of the weekend would bring us.
basel:
on the way out, at the bern train station, we bought chocolate from läderach (literally the best chocolate ever). i asked the guy working for all his dark chocolate recommendations, bought one of each, and then ate it all in one sitting because idk it might melt? #deferthatgratification :3 i floated in bliss all the way to basel, which was saying something because we were legit all dying/burnt out from bern.
we got to basel in around an hour and then walked to our hotel, which was exciting because i got to see the rhine river for the first time… but other than that basel was super underwhelming and also hella weird.
i guess this all starts with the fact that we got to our hotel, which was entirely empty btw (ghost town probably explains why it only cost us 33 francs a person to stay over…) and then some lady outside told us to go check in at an alternative location down the way. so we did. finally got up to the room, collapsed, and then cried inside because once again no AC and weird soviet era TV was not exactly comforting… i washed my hair with hand soap because it was day three of backpacking and i was legit disgusting. then, since we all agreed we’d wake up as early as possible to tour basel before heading to lucerne, i went to bed.
i woke up the next morning at 6 am and realized that my laptop, which had directions toward all the stops we were supposed to go to in basel, didn’t work. [side note: why have all of my electronic devices broken within the first week that i was abroad???] also that it was sunday and my weekend was coming to an end… which sucked.
once everyone was up around 7:30, pansy, josh, and i decided we’d take the bus everywhere in basel because we have realistically walked like 500 miles this weekend and we were beyond tired by this point. then another electronic device i own went rouge: literally on stop one of the tour: basel minster, my camera battery died and i was like man oh man… but realistically there wasn’t much to see. also, everything was closed since it was a sunday and literally the only people we saw were those playing ping pong in the park (yeah. this exists. public ping pong is actually kind of cool) and we even walked into a church blasting organ music, but no one was in there… so yes. very confused by the lack of general human inhabitants in the apparently third largest city in switzerland.
despite the fact that basel was the place i enjoyed least, i still got in some wonderful pictures (with josh’s camera so josh, here’s your s/o). pansy and i essentially had a photo shoot in the corridors of the building right next to basel minster, which was wonderfully gothci.
after we’d seen basically the three things we wanted to see in basel — basel minster, rathaus, and gate of spalen — we decided we should try to go to germany since basel realistically is right on the border… of course, instead of going to germany, we first ended up in a forest were like lmao wrong way. need to get back to hotel anyways to check out before 11 though before our German adventure commences for real.
so, then we rode the bus back to where we thought we had gotten on initially. actually end up at same station we were at like 40 min before and a worker who had seen us earlier approached us and was like you clearly help… so she directed us to the way to go. i probably could’ve done without it. about the only thing that was added to my existence from the trip to cross the border into germany, was the knowledge that german mcdonald’s adds use memes and the amusement that was someone walking on the bus without shoes totally nonchalantly.
lucerne:
we barely made the train out of basel and essentially starved until we got to lucerne. i legit ate .45 kilos of the most rando amalgamation of food ever from a buffet in the station when we got off (i hadn’t had breakfast either)… like seriously best liege waffles i’ve ever had but was simultaneously eating stir fry and a lebanese salad so peace love anything and everything you can put on one plate.
i was excited to be in lucerne since my dad had told me it was his favorite place he went in switzerland so many years ago, but when we got out, i was shocked to see so many people about. like damn this place is overblown with tourists…. even on a sunday seemed way too packed. and with everything open too… like way out of the ordinary. it was raining, so i threw on my liechtenstein jacket (multipurpose souvenir/raincoat!) and we headed across the way to see the famous medieval chapel bridge.
after that, i was sort of like well… that’s really it for me in terms of what i wanted to do here… so we wandered around a bit more and i was like all in interest of somehow shooting down to lugano??? since that’s the one place i really wanted to go to. but it was awkward with transport time so we decided not to (damn) and then walked uphill all the way to the castle, reveling in our mutual suffering along the way because nobody wanted to take a single step further after all the walking that we’d already done the past few days. but wait — it got worse. we got to the castle, walked inside, and were greeted with a never ending series of increasingly steep stairs but wow the view up at the top really made lucerne for me, especially because the rain finally cleared up and I could see lake and mountains that surround this medieval masterpiece.
it was so beautiful and seriously just this view made lucerne one of my top places that i visited this weekend. i climbed up even further onto the roof and took a super artsy photo which i’m sure i’ll put somewhere eventually and some israeli guys were like “jump! jump! jump!”, and i was like dude, what. but anyways, we spent some time up by the castle soaking in the breathtaking vista and enjoying the company of the random alpacas that were there for some reason. we wrote our names on the wall (like many people before us) and then walked back down to the river with goals of trying to take a boat onto the lake (because theoretically that was included in the swiss travel pass we’d all bought for the weekened). BOOM! out of thin air, dustin’s parents and sister appeared (dustin is another kid on the duke in geneva program) and we decided to go on a boat tour with them along the lake, which was also beautiful and made me fall even further in love with lucerne.
after the boat ride, we left. the train ride back was pretty normal. josh got on after us at one of the transfers because he went to go find food and then didn’t re-connect with us which ended up being awk because he accidentally slept through the geneva proper stop and ended up at the airport, but by 11 pm we were all back at cité — showered, clean, and scrambling to read the harvard business case that martha had assigned for monday.
thus finished weekend one — my four corners of Switzerland tour and my once-in-a-lifetime visit to liechtenstein. yike-os to the fact that i literally blew so so so much money this weekend… your girl is back to starving in geneva.
