Too Poor for Switzerland
July 14-17, 2016
We love Beyoncé. She makes some of the most infectious music on the planet, is a bona fide tastemaker, and has progressive and uncompromising stances on important social issues. The nickname Queen Bey is entirely deserved – she is the closest thing to musical royalty the world has seen since Michael. Our musical tastes are pretty diverse, and we generally don't care about who is hot or what is currently cool, but we drink the Beyoncé Kool Aid hard, and happily ask for another glass. So when her European tour was announced, and it was not coming through Berlin, we decided that was as good of a reason as any to take a trip to Switzerland.
Another excuse to go to Zürich was the fact that a good friend of Mazz's from grad school was currently living there, and offered to let us stay with her. Shelly is an active outdoor enthusiast, and the prospect of spending the weekend hiking in the Swiss Alps with her and seeing the Queen was too good to pass up.
We were fully aware going into the weekend that Zürich is one of the most expensive cities in the world, but the fact that we had a free place to stay made it seem like we could keep costs manageable. That said, we were not expecting that everything in Zürich was going to cost at least 3-4 times as much as it does in Berlin. Shelly met us at the train station and walked us to her flat, where we unloaded our bags and started talking about what we wanted to eat before the concert. She informed us that she hadn't really tried any of the restaurants around her apartment, because even at the modest diner a few blocks away a burger and fries cost $35. Oof. We went to the grocery store, bought some uncooked pizza and vegetables, and made a reasonably priced dinner for ourselves. Thankfully, basic groceries were some of the only things in Switzerland that didn't have a heavily inflated price. We didn't eat out a single time on the whole trip, and were very grateful to be staying with Shelly, who had no problem letting us use her kitchen to cook all our own meals. That’s what she had intended to do while we were in town, anyway. When in Zürich, do as the Americans do, or however that saying goes.
Surprisingly, the concert was full but not sold out. Kirb took this as an affront to good taste by the Swiss. The tickets were expensive, ($125) but by Swiss standards that was seemingly cheap. The show was incredible, and had everything you could want from a big budget pop concert. There was a giant rotating video cube in the middle of the set, and tons of extravagant costume changes and backup dancers. The cube could open up and detach, revealing people doing acrobatic stunts between the screens. No one sings and dances at the same time better than Beyoncé. She played all the hits. When she performed Kirb's favorite song, "Countdown," he lost his damn mind and loudly sang along while wildly waving his arms and dancing, inadvertently striking an unassuming child who was standing next to him. Mazz felt fortunate she was able to properly document the outburst.
The next morning we made our way to the train station with Shelly to book tickets to Berggasthaus Aescher, a restaurant built into the side of a mountain with a panoramic view. Taking the train there from Zürich is about 2 hours, so we had planned on making a day of it. When we got the route planned out with the attendant at the station, he informed us that the round trip tickets were going to cost around $100 per person. This was more than our round trip flights cost, and we were still planning on taking a hiking trip the next day in another part of the Alps. We swallowed our pride, accepted our reality as low-budget travelers, and slunk out of the train station empty handed.
Trying not to be dejected, we used this time as an opportunity to explore the city, walking along Lake Zürich and having a picnic lunch on the shore as we figured out what Plan B was going to be. We decided on a day hike on Uetliberg, "Zürich's local mountain," as it still let us spend the day in nature with only around $17 in train fares instead of six times that. While not as breathtaking as the Alps, the paths through Uetliberg were still very pleasant, with excellent views of the city and lake below. There's lush, pastoral countryside butting up immediately with the city, and it made for a nice afternoon stroll. Getting back down off the mountain involved taking a gondola, and Mazz had never ridden one before. She was only kind of scared until the ride started and then she realized it was actually pleasant and fun (but still sort of scary).
Knowing that going out to a bar for drinks was going to be cost prohibitive, Shelly took us to an excellent bottle shop called Beers and More, which had an extensive selection of premium alcoholic beverages from all across Europe. We loaded up on some favorites we had discovered in Belgium as well as some recommendations from the friendly and knowledgeable owner. After making some cheap yet tasty pasta for dinner, we enjoyed our beers on the rooftop of Shelly's apartment as the sun set.
It was good that we waited to take our hiking excursion, as the weather had been overcast and rainy on the first two days, but was clear and blue on Saturday. We talked with a tourist guide at the train station and told her everything we were hoping to do and see on our day trip, and she recommended we go to Rigi Mountain. Our round-trip tickets cost around $100 each, taking us from Zürich to the town of Goldau at the eastern base of the mountain. The tickets also covered the tram that went up and down the mountain, and the return train from the city of Lucerne back to Zürich. The ferry that would take us from the town of Vitznau at the southern base of the mountain to Lucerne would cost extra, as would the gondola down to the town of Weggis if we decided we didn't want to walk all the way down.
We opted to take the tram up most of the mountain and then walk the final section to the peak. In the same way that we weren't quite able to grasp beforehand what it meant for Zürich to be "one of the most expensive places in the world," we were equally unprepared for exactly how breathtaking "hiking in the Swiss Alps" actually is. The rolling green hills with snowy peaks in all directions was the sort of thing we'd only seen in movies, and it was exhilarating to finally enjoy it in real life. The summit was full of tourists who were simply riding the trams around the mountain, so we didn't stay there long, making our way down the southern side of the mountain to hiking trails that would lead us along a scenic ridge.
Before long the views changed from green valleys speckled with yellow wildflowers and alpine cows to panoramas of Lake Lucerne. Eventually we stumbled on a small restaurant not far off the trail and stopped for beers with a cliff side view. Though the sky was blue and there weren't many clouds, a misty haze covered the mountain ranges in the distance, making the skyline strangely opaque.
From the ridge we had to decide whether we were going to walk down the mountain to the town of Vitznau or take the gondola to the town of Weggis. The day was still young, everything was amazing, and we were having a blast, so it seemed like a no-brainer to keep hiking. The trail heading down the mountain was a little harder to find, and we quickly realized that not a lot of hikers made the decision to descend to the bottom by foot. After making our way through several cow enclosures and wooded switchbacks, we entered into a stunning meadow, where a wood cabin sat with an unparalleled view. A young girl was walking two donkeys outside of the cabin, and we couldn't help but think that regardless of what her backstory is, this girl must lead one of the most charmed lives on planet Earth.
Though the hike down the meadow was arguably the most beautiful section of the mountain, the trail that followed it was torturous. For the final few kilometers, the trail was steep and covered in rocks the size of grapefruits, forcing you to walk in tiny scurried steps, constantly trying to keep your balance and avoid tripping. We had to move so slowly and carefully that the final 2km or so took an hour and a half. By the time we reached Vitznau our quads were totally shot and we were very done with walking for the day (except Shelly, she was fine). We got on the crowded ferry to Lucerne, and it's hard to imagine that lakes can get much more gorgeous than that one. When we arrived, Shelly told us what a cool and beautiful city Lucerne was, and we could see just from the ferry dock that this was definitely a place that we wanted to explore. But we were hungry and tired, we still had a train to catch back to Zürich, and we had already overloaded our pleasure sensors for the day, so we didn't force it. We grabbed some more food to make dinner from the grocery store in the station and caught the next train back to Zürich for a laid back evening at Shelly's place, though the thumping rooftop dance party her neighbor threw made it slightly less relaxing than we would have liked.
We had enough time on Sunday for one final hike before heading back to Berlin, so Shelly took us to one of her favorite trails outside of town. The hike starts in the middle of Lake Zürich on the eastern coast, moving away from the water through lush green forests with several waterfalls dotting the trail. We had a limited amount of time, so we set a timer for a halfway turnaround point, which went off right as we approached the charming town of Meilen. There was a stand set up in front of a house as you entered the town with fresh vegetables, eggs, and homemade sausages for sale, with a little tin set up to leave payment. Theft is not even a consideration in Switzerland; Shelly explained that people don't think twice leaving their bags out on the train when they go to the bathroom, and a lot of people don't ever bother locking up their bikes. We'd already spent all of our Swiss Francs, but Shelly grabbed some produce and sausages and plopped her cash in the tin, which already had quite a bit of money in it. She gave us one of the sausages for the trip home. Unsurprisingly, it was delicious.
Our Polish friend Marek is quite vocal about how much he hates Switzerland, and it was hard for us to understand exactly what he meant until we visited ourselves. It's almost too perfect there. It feels like a country-sized club for rich people, and having grown up in the affluent asshole mecca of Bellevue, WA, Kirb has no patience for such clubs. Though people who live in Switzerland are used to the inflated prices, there's absurd sticker shock for those visiting from virtually anywhere else. For budget travelers like us, it was hard not to feel like poor losers who couldn't even enjoy basic pleasures like eating in a restaurant. Switzerland is a paradise, for those who can afford it. The countryside is indescribably beautiful. The trains run on time, all the time, and go everywhere. Everything is clean. They pride themselves on having it all figured out. Based on your perspective, and perhaps your bank account, there's a lot to love and loathe about Switzerland.