The road trip from Germany to Switzerland was a success!! It ended up being a fun trip with good snacks and fun music. I believe it was around 4 hours. It’s crazy how close you get to France along the way, we were able to look right across the river at it. In order to get into Switzerland via car, we needed to get a sticker at the border since the car was registered in Germany. I think this was around 40 Euros. The police were really friendly, spoke English and we didn’t even need to get out of the car.
The plan was to stay in Switzerland for about a week. My mom and dad were flying in from the United States, while my brother was flying in from China! It was going to be a house of 6 including myself, Rainier and Mike. THANKFULLY one of our close friends has a house there and was kind enough to let us stay there for the week! This worked out perfectly for using her place as a hub and making day trips from there. Thank you so much Tess for letting us stay in your beautiful home!!
**One of the tips I really recommend when going to Switzerland**
Switzerland is one of the most expensive countries in Europe. If you are able to drive there, do all your grocery shopping in Germany, and load up your trunk. This will save you quite a bit of money, due to the high costs surrounding eating out and grocery shopping. We took full advantage of this… especially with the Christmas booze that didn’t last very long.
The city of Bern is beautiful and really has a nice area to walk around. Where we stayed was a little more in the suburbs, but we were able to take the metro in and out whenever. There is some amazing old architecture and there were shops and restaurants everywhere. The city was extremely festive due to Christmas being right around the corner. There were stands from Christmas markets scattered around everywhere. We checked out a few bars that were fun like Cuba Bar Bern, and some others I really can’t remember.
Aside for the Christmas markets, we spent most of our time at the house trying the get the damn fire started. Of course a bunch of Floridians are completely incapable of getting the fireplace going. It took awhile for us to realize that the wood was far too wet and we should probably stop burning all of our newspaper. What made things better is I spent hours driving around trying to find where in god’s beautiful green earth to buy firewood… needless to say, we quickly abandoned hope.
Bern really is a great city to visit. We just had such a great time spending time with family that it felt like home. I recommend checking it out if you have the opportunity.
Chasing Rain 