Switzerland -

Switzerland, Basel – gate no. 2

Gosia — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 20:25:21 +0000

I like landing at the Euroairport Basel-Mulhouse – Fribourg. In fact, there’s nothing extraordinary in this airport, except one thing. The list of my favorite airports is mainly limited to those that allow me to “sleep well” 😉 I focus mainly on cleanliness, location of the seats and lack of armrests. However, Euroairport has stolen my heart for a completely different reason. It’s funny because actually, it doesn’t have to with the airport itself, but it’s more connected with the exit. At Euroairport, you have three options of exit to choose, so you can visit: France, Switzerland or Germany. This time I chose the gate no. 2- Switzerland. The airport is located in France, but only 4 kilemeters from Basel. You can get to the city centre by bus no. 50. In addition, when booking a hotel in Basel, you receive a voucher for free transport from and to the airport. Basel is the 3rd largest city in Switzerland, but it doesn’t look like a typical European metropolis. People seem to be more relaxed here, and life goes much slower. The main meeting place is the promenade by the Rhine river. The symbol of the city is Mittlere Brücke bridge, which is supposedly one of the oldest bridges on Rhine. Especially in the summer, this is the main meeting point of the local residents and tourists. Near the bridge is the Cathedral – Basel Munster. It can be recognised by its characteristic pink colour and two high towers which can be seen from all over the city. Altstad – the Old Town, is one of the best preserved in Europe. The oldest buildings which you can see here were built in the 14th century. Characteristic architecture, colorful townhouses, shutters and sills decorated with flowers create typical vibe of Swiss town. Narrow, winding, quite steep streets are an inseparable element of Basel. In the maze of the streets you can find a lot of small squares with numerous restaurants and cafes. There are also many interesting murals. Basel is a very elegant city. You can see that the Swiss take care of every detail here. I would never have thought that shop windows could be so hypnotizing. Basel surprises at every step. Can you imagine that this building is the City Hall? Basel is a great destinantion for the weekend or as the first point to visit while travelling across Switzerland. Basel is also a perfect place for a trip to the fabulous village of Colmar, located in France. I wrote more about Colmar here:

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The sky is not that far… Switzerland – Interlaken and the surroundings

Gosia — Sun, 14 Jan 2018 19:26:17 +0000

Violet cows with bells, pastoral landscape of the mountain meadows with thoroughly mown grass and white peaks of the Alps in the background, that’s the picture of the commercial… no of Switzerland – Interlaken, maybe except the colorful cows. Exactly on the 3rd of January 2 years ago, I was bored waiting for delayed, by drifting snow, flight back from Riga to Warsaw. I was looking over the offers of airlines when suddenly I saw discount tickets to Basel. A better beginning of the year I couldn’t have imagined. Switzerland can be divided into the northern part which consists of beautiful and charming cities like: Basel, Stein am Rhein, Zurich or Lucerne and the south dominated by stunning, alpine landscapes. Going back from beautiful Lucerne, we knew that we’re heading in the right direction. The landscape was becoming more diverse and the road more winding. Our goal was the beautiful village of Interlaken, less than 70 kilometers away. The name Interlaken means “a place located between the lakes” and indeed this place is located between lake Thun and Brienz. Interlaken is an excellent point for excursions to the Alps area. By a cruise ship opearting on lake Thun, you can reach the city of the same name. You can visit the atmospheric old town and see the medieval defence castle with beautiful views of the city and the nearby mountains. While being in this area is also worth visiting the phenomenal Beatus caves, located on the top of the mountain, with stunning panorama of the lake Thun. More information about this place here. However, number one in the area is an absolutely spectacular valley – Lauterbrunnen. I won’t hide that this is one of the most spectacular places I’ve ever seen. The Lauterbrunnen is beautifully located in the valley, surrounded by three tall, Alpine peaks: Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau. The name Lauterbrunnen in German means a “loud source” and is not accidental. There are 72 waterfalls in this small valley! Some of them are so high that before they reach the earth, they almost turn into a mist. The most spectacular waterfall is the Staubbach waterfall, 300 meters high, descending from a high limestone cliff, almost to the nearby houses. Across the valley runs the river Weisse Lütschine, it begins in the mountain glaciers. It’s surrounded by green, Alpine meadows with thoroughly mown grass. No wonder that this fabulous scenery inspired the J.R.R. Tolkien to create Rivendell. The Interlaken region is also a paradise for extreme sports enthusiasts like: paragliding, bungee, rafting, climbing and skydiving. Imagine a jump from a height of 4 thousand meters and 50 seconds of free fall in this setting!!! However, for down-to-earth people, about 100 km further, driving the road which includes the transport of the car by train (what I wrote here) is the sunny town – Sion, well known from the wine growing. The most popular white wine of this region is Fendant. Sion is one of the oldest cities in Switzerland and its story dates back more than 7 thousand years ago. The main tourist attraction in addition to the routes between vineyards, are two castles Tourbillon and Valère, located in the hills. So, when you come to Switzerland, Interlaken is a must! 😉 ” order_by=”sortorder” order_direction=”ASC” returns=”included” maximum_entity_count=”500″]

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Switzerland – fabulous Stein am Rhein

Gosia — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 06:38:14 +0000

I was thinking of going to Switzerland for a long time. But when we landed on the so-called Euroairport Basel – Mulhouse – Freiburg and we stood in the arrivals hall with three exits to: Germany, Switzerland and France, we chose France. We wanted to see one special town called Colmar, which is located only 50 km from the airport. However, during the preparation of trip, it turned out that only 200 km from Colmar, there’s a similar charming town in Switzerland, ominously called Stein am Rhein. Long time before I saw photos of this place in the one of travel magazines and I fell in love from the first sight. So I ignored this ominous name, as the subtlety and finesse of the German language became almost a legend. Stein am Rhein is a small town located in northern Switzerland, near the border with Germany. It is only a 5-minute walk to the border. The border location of the city, resulted in its total bombardment on 22nd of February 1945, as it was mistakenly considered by the Allies as a German city. After the war, the city was rebuilt, and now is one of the main tourist attractions in Switzerland. The city has only a little over 3 thousands of residents but every day is visited by thousands of tourists. We arrived here late in the evening, after a long journey from charming Colmar. It was the perfect time because all the tourists have just left, and actually we had the whole town to ourselves. When we entered the bridge leading across the Rhine to the medieval part of the city, we saw an amazing view of the sunset and medieval buildings. Stein am Rhein is one of the oldest cities in Switzerland, and its origins date back to the Roman Empire. The Romans built fortifications to protect the borders of the empire against the Germanic tribes. However, the true bloom of the city falls on the 10-11th century when the Benedictine’s monastery was founded here. Stein am Rhein preserved the medieval layout of the streets with a fragment of the old ramparts. Some of the townhouses in Stein am Rhein are still from the 12th century. And many of them are beautifully decorated with frescos. The most beautiful place is Rathausplatz – a square around the representative City Hall building. Formerly it was a shopping house, and now there is a museum with a collection of weapons. The town hall is surrounded by richly decorated, colourful townhouses. The frescoes depict the history of the city and the canton. It’s amazing that every building has different decorations and intense colours, and the whole colours and details surprisingly go togehter. Close to the town hall, there’s a Monastery of St. George (Kloster st. Georgen) which was abandoned in 1524 during Protestant Reformation. It’s now a museum dedicated to the history and art of Stein am Rhein. It’s worth walking away from the main tourist trail and getting lost in the winding streets. Here you can see the interestingly painted, wooden buildings and numerous cosy cafés and restaurants. The medieval old town is not the only attraction in Stein am Rhein. Just above the city on Klingenberg hill is the Hohenklingen castle from the 11th century. The road to the top leads through numerous vineyards and offers stunning views of the countryside. Once the fortress served to protect the city, now there’s a restaurant and a terrace with beautiful, panoramic view of Stein am Rhein. ” order_by=”sortorder” order_direction=”ASC” returns=”included” maximum_entity_count=”500″]

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Switzerland – driving on the edge!

Gosia — Wed, 22 Jun 2016 19:01:50 +0000

Push yourself to the limits… Swiss roads can be described as the drivers’ wonderland. Apart from highly developed highway network, driving here isn’t monotonous. The travel is full of amazing landscapes, numerous tunnels (even 10 km length), sharp bends and black spots, which are marked with the signs informing about masses in nearby churches. Additionally, reasonable speed limits and the lack of police patrols make the drive very pleasant. In any case, speed controls seem to be unnecessary here because the list of penalties is a reading more thrilling than the best thriller. But it doesn’t mean that Swiss drivers observe road rules. From the driver point of view, who sits at the wheel of 1 – liter Ford Focus, driving on Swiss roads isn’t plain sailing. When you have to keep the pace in the cordon which consists of Ferrari, Bentley, Porshe, Tesla or Wiesmann, believe me the pressure is really high. Cars on the rails! Apart from facultative expenses for tickets, driving on the Swiss roads requires buying a vignette which is valid 1 year and costs 40 CHF. Fortunately, we didn’t have to buy it, as the hired car was equipped with it. Nevertheless, the balance must be sustained in the nature and our happiness didn’t last long. A little bit later we spent 30 CHF in 15 minutes!!! So if you have the extra money, go the road from picturesque valley Lauterbrunnen to Martigny, through the Lötschberg tunnel. Here you’ll have a unique possibility to travel by car inside the train! In practice it looks as follows… But it’s not the end of the road attractions in Switzerland. There’re some places in the middle of nowhere… One of these places is the town Bourg St. Pierre. In view of the fact that there’s only one road, full addresses of the buildings are unnecessary. In such conditions getting to the ho be a hotel seems to be a piece of cake but in a fact it took us over an hour. Of course, we didn’t waste this time 😉 During searching the hotel, we visited border crossing, where sleepy and a little bit annoyed customs officer snarled only “Italia” for our question about the road. Next attempt also resulted in failure because we fetched up just in front the sign informing about no passage till June, in the snow drift somewhere in the middle of the Alps. Finally we decided to key in GPS coordinates. After 3-km drive our GPS announced gleefully that we were on the spot. In a fact we were on another mountain peak with the company of the skulk of foxes on the path without any possibility to turn back. In the end we managed to get to the hotel but as you can see it’s not the destination but the journey that matters 😉 ” order_by=”sortorder” order_direction=”ASC” returns=”included” maximum_entity_count=”500″]

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St. Beatus caves – a short visit to elves’ wonderland

Gosia — Sun, 24 Apr 2016 16:37:42 +0000

St. Beatus caves which are located close to the town Interlaken, at the picturesque Thun lake, is an exceptional place. Here one can move to the magic world of the Rivendell – the elves’ residence, created by J.R.R. Tolkien. The similarity isn’t coincidental because this place was the inspiration for the author of the Lord of the Rings, who visited it during his voyage through Switzerland in 1911. What’s more, the visualization of The Last Homely House, presented in Peter’s Jackson movie was made by John Howe – Canadian book illustrator, who lives in Switzerland. The name of the caves is connected with St. Beatus – English missionary who, according to the legend, defeated the dragon which was living there. The twisty path with Bridges leads to the top. It’s a perfect place to see the spectacular waterfalls falling from the top and the beautiful panorama of the Thun lake as well. Only 14km of the caves are explored and 1 km is opened for visitors. Just after the entrance you can hear the swoosh of the waterfalls which builds up with every step. The 1-hour route leads through the maze of the dimly lit limestones which have different shapes and colors. Narrow passages and Winding path it’s a one big surprise because you don’t know what’s on the other side of the corner. Indeed, there’re a lot of attractions: cascades, ponds, stalactites, stalagmites, grottoes or even vegetation. St. Beatus caves are the secret of the Thun lake. This place is sometimes omitted in tourist guides and the lack of the visible signs makes it really difficult to reach. To get there from the town – Interlaken, you need to head the road in the direction of Thun, which leads on the North side of the lake. Caves are located close to the town Beatenberg. There’re a few parking lots on the way, from which you can go up the hill. The last parking lot is located just beneath the caves and it’s well marked. It’s also possible to get there by the bus no. 21 which runs between Interlaken West Bahnhof and Beatushöhlen (details you can find here).

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