Hi everyone,
Just wanted to start by saying a million merci, vielen danke, grazie to all who helped make my trip to Switzerland very successful!! We had such a great time and it was a perfect start to what i feel is going to become a life long obsession to keep returning to Europe and experience its magic.
Especially thanks to the people who answered my posts regarding Swiss cow bell souvenirs: I went to the Saturday flea market in Lucerne and had a spectacular experience bargaining in German and bought a bell for CHF 5!!
I will post some general thoughts about my trip and will try answering questions if someone needs help for Switzerland! And Nadine, if you are reading this, you were right-I had to wrench my heart out from the Alps in Muerren-it is simply out of this world and no words or pictures can do it justice. One has to just be there to experience it.
Again, a big thank you to everyone :)
Posted by
southwest, Missouri, U.S.A.
1717 posts
Hello aRies. I will go to Switzerland in 2009. What do you recommend doing at Muerren and other places in the Berner Oberland ? I do not want to do much uphill walking. I know about the high altitude (high elevation) rides.
Posted by
OP
Seattle, Washington, United States
91 posts
Hey Perry,
I haven't looked at your pics yet and will do so, but we did go to Basel. It seemed very nice although we saw it int he rain. We went and saw the Dreiland(3 land) area and looked towards France and Germany! I was pretty excited to see it coz I couldn't cross borders as I only have a greencard and didn't have the Schengen visa! I guess its not that big a deal for Americans as they can actually go to the country!
We still have to sort through our pictures..
Posted by
OP
Seattle, Washington, United States
91 posts
Ron,
When will you be going in 2009? That will determine what you can do. We were there in late October and it was very quiet and almost dead. This might be an issue for some people although we didn't care. We wanted it to be dead and quiet. We also got a lot of snow. Generally speaking, you can just enjoy all the gondola rides, train rides and enjoy the views that go with them if u are not a hiker/climber. (FYI: My husband and I are NOT into hiking , climbing etc) However we did love the downhill hike from Muerren to Gimmelwald. It was snowing hard when we did it and it took us an hour where normally in Rick's book it says it takes around 30 mins in fair weather.
You can visit the cities nearby: Lauterbrunnen, interlaken, Bern (we love this city-we visited twice!) and Lucern. Rick has what to do specifically for each of these. In Bern, defintiely go to Einstein's Haus.(There are 2 different places: his house and there is the Bern Museum also called Einstein Museum.) If you have a Swiss Pass, the museum is free but you will get a student discount with your pass for his House. Just pay the 4 CHF or whatever fee coz u will enjoy this better than the Museum (atleast we did). The lady there was so nice to us: she allowed us to sit at Einstein's actual desk and take pics, she took pics of us near his sofa etc. She also got very excited when we todl her we were from the U.S. She asked us if we would vote and had some interesting opinions to say regarding the candidates :) Also at his house you can get these awesome coins (my husband is a coin collector so he loved them) as souvenirs. The Einstein Museum will not have these although we got a cool magnetic bookmark for like approx 1.50 CHF(I love reading) saying BErn=MC (square).. get it??