Switzerland

Note! For the visual guide (pictures), please check the gallery.

Plan: was simple and detailed:

• Pick up girls from the airport.

• Go and stay in one place for 2 nights, so we could go to Grindelwald after the first night

• Stay in another place for 3 nights, so we could go to Seealpsee

Picking up the girls from the airport:

• My trip started at 7:30 when I had just dropped off Kaspar in Munich airport, because no direct flights went from Zurich on that day and it was only ~4 hours to Zurich from Munich.

• I just had to drive, stop for a moment to buy the 40 EUR Vignette to be able to drive the highways and then airport and done.

• It really was easy finding the Vignette and attaching it, found it tens of kilometers away from the border. Lucky for me, I had the vignette for Austria as well, because, turned out that I passed Austria before entering Switzerland.

• Almost to the airport… Need parking. The height of the car with the rooftopbox is about 2,3 meters. The tallest indoor parking lot had 2.1 meters as height. So… I saw a sign about 3 parking places coming up. Surely one is an outdoor one. Drove towards them and stopped in the middle of the road. Turned on the emergency lights of the car and started backing up. All of them were parking houses.

• Okay, drove around a bit more, found parking places that were intended for employees, not me… Luckily I saw  the “arrivals/departures” sign. Drove there, no signs of my car being too high, so that was a plus, just pay more and wait there.

  • Arrived, took a ticket… 15 minutes max.

  • Waited for a while… Left… paid 5 Euros for the 15 minutes.

  • Went and took out some gas, that filled some time as well.

  • And then… Then… I was able to reach Reet and the girls, who had just gotten their luggage.

  • Drove back to the arrivals/departures… did the fastest ever pick-up to not go over the 15 minutes… and off we went… To the gas station again, because Saskia needed to pee… And then... off we went.

• A nice to know:

  • Switzerland is not part of Europe thus the mobile network data/fee blabla is not covered by the “standard EU data blabla” and I was using Google maps to navigate… and… well… my roaming was turned on in any case (even if not for the maps, facebook etc still would have synced). So, because roaming was turned on and because I was driving,  I did not see a warning that it will cost me ~10 euros for 100 mb per day if I keep roaming turned on… The costs were piling up (Saskia didn’t know how to turn off roaming either). 

The first ever proper vacation with the four of us 

Yes, we had stayed at my parents before and at some SPAs at home with our smallest one, but Switzerland, far from home, that was something we were really most afraid of at that point in time. How did it manifest?:

• Well, the girls flew to Zurich instead of cheaper destinations (like Milan or Munich), because the departure times were in accordance to Emmi’s sleep schedule.

• We packed a large bag of baby food to our car, and toys and travel bed (these I think are normal, though)

• We did not (and still don’t) want to drive more than we absolutely have to, because what if that messes with her somehow and she’ll be screaming for days after.

 But Emmi was perfect, I hear.

• The flight was fun, instead of scary for her.

• And she she has mostly slept okay (except for one night, after which we discovered that she has her fifth tooth now), just not in her baby bed but between me and Reet (yes, bad parenting from our side, still haven’t been able to let her scream until she figures out that she will be okay even when she’s all alone)

• She was on two sleep routine (plus night). One before lunch and one before ~17:00 and then off to bed at about 10 or so (so quite late)

  • She now sleeps some time between 10-17 either once or twice, depending on how she feels (or rather, how we let her).

Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen

At first I wanted to go to Lauterbrunnen, because I had seen on Instagram some images of the waterfall on a cliff… What an awesome sight it would be to see that and take that pic as well, I thought and I Bookmarked it.

Then when searching for accommodations and understanding that everything is expensive I saw the Grindelwald-First-Cliffwalk. At that point in time I  also thought that we could drive there and even spend the night there. But the night there would have been 2x+ the amount anywhere else and I believe You actually can’t drive there. But, I now really Really wanted to go there in addition to Lauterbrunnen.

So, we stayed at the lake 1,5h away instead, because:

• Cheaper (compared to other places near Grindelwald, not rest of the world, because still expensive)

  • enough to justify a 3-hour round-trip during the day of Grindelwald visit?

  • On the other hand, we would have driven 1,5 hours longer on the day of the arrival and the same on the departure day.

• It had everything. Even toys for children. So, it seemed like a perfect place to start.

Name of the lake we were near to: Vierwaldstättersee. And the town: Altdorf. Both of which, turns out, is well known to tourists. To me, they weren’t and we really did not see much of either in the end, other than driving to our accommodation next to the lake and then a stroll to the lake from our accommodation on the first evening. Lauterbrunnen was better anyway?.

Anyway, Grindelwald

• Arrive > Parking… ~4 euros (no problem finding a place at the fartherst corner of the city)

• Wait for women to pee.

• Walk to Gondola.

• Buy Gondola tickets > TOO MANY euros for an adult, a bit cheaper for Saskia and FREE for Emmi.

• Enter Gondola and start the ride > See that you can do lots of fun things coming down, if you have money (we didn’t, because when You travel with Dario, you can’t justify fun expensive things) and time (which we didn’t either I guess).

• Make some pictures going up (that’s the last you have the view, because at the top there are only clouds).

• Arrive up, inside the cloud, see nothing.

• Start walking to the lake of which we knew nothing about, but what else do you do when there’s nothing to see at the Gondola place.

• Make a self-discovery: “hey, hiking on mountaintops, is quite awesome, why don’t we do it more often?”. Because in Estonia, there are no mountains, Dario… And corona… and Emmi was too small and… and… and…

• Arrive… Cows everywhere… Awesome… could stay there for the whole day.

• Understand that

  • first of all, the gondola will stop driving at one point

  • Then find out that Emmi’s lips are getting blue… We had lots of clothes for her, but… maybe not enough, or maybe we put them on too late..

• Hurry back to the Gondola station.

• Arrive back ~1h before the gondolas stop driving, still nothing to see, do the cliffwalk, which was not scary at all, because of almost zero visibility.

• Go back down. On the way down, out of the clouds, was able to produce a few more snapshots out of Gondola.

• Everyone Tired. Go to the car, say “One more stop, Lauterbrunnen”. Hear no excitement (in either my voice or others), but still going, only ~15 minutes or so off-course from our stay.

That awesome Lauterbrunnen waterfall

So, I remember reading in the morning about the awesome waterfall. And it said something like: When spring, it’s more powerful and will reach bottom as water, not fog. That did not sound good. But still, only 15 minutes away. Drove there, a parking lot was close by, had to pay like an euro for an hour, why not then. From afar it didn’t look very promising. Close by it wasn’t much better either. Can’t explain it…. It was exactly what it was supposed to be. A cliff where some water falls down and by the time it reaches down it’s more like a light fog. Worth the 15 minutes drive? Yes, because otherwise it would have been “what if”, but nothing more, I’m not a good enough photographer to get an awesome picture out of it (and it’s not like there’s a big field and you just have to find the right spot… There are fences etc in it’s way and who has time to walk around the city to find just the right angle (anyone with a day less planned I guess). So I’m happy that we went to Grindelwald instead.

And off we went to drive home after a day of driving, hiking, driving, seeing a waterfall.

And and then, after all this… we needed to start thinking about packing up to go to the next place to stay.

Family travel

Then it really hit me. It’s different now, travelling the way we plan to travel (or at least read about how others like us have travelled).

Travelling with just Reet:

• A day that’s fully planned with activities, with very little buffer. We can rest in the evening when sitting on the toilet or something.

• Weeks that have no free time. Want to write blogs, edit videos, edit pictures? Do that after the vacation, not during

• No my time. After the vacation, we go to work, we can rest from each-other when we’re at work or hang out with friends.

• A long hike? Of course! Every day? Of course! We can rest our feet when back at work.

Travelling with family:

• Well, firstly there are more people who all want different things and it’s really difficult to understand if that thing is to do nothing all day.

• Then… You can’t just go home and rest on the toilet. Emmi and Saskia want food. And while Saskia is addicted to her phone (yes, awesome parenting from our side again), Emmi is not (yet) and wants some play time as well. And then to be put to sleep.

  • Also, what kind of food will she be able to eat while you’re all out all day… Not something proper for sure.

• Also, Emmi has her mid-day sleep time. This problem comes later, we did not know this at that time yet, just started being aware of it… But our hiking child backpack or however you call it, doesn’t have a “head rest” which we now think we need, if we’d be able to solve that, then it’s less of a problem, but rather a good thing.

• A day…or two, is fine, but after that…

  • On the other hand… We’re here for a short time only, how can we waste this time on downtime? < This has been my attitude and mindset always… even now, even when knowing that I really need that ME time and just some Downtime with the whole family, I feel like every time I sit down and do something at our “hotel”, it’s wasted time that could be used to explore and enjoy. I hope that by the end of this small vacation that we’re doing, I’ll be able to enjoy just enjoying the fact that I’m not at work - where ever I am, either on top of a mountain or watching tv with the children.

 The point is. We needed to start packing. And pack and then drive to the next location, which was… 

Near Altstätten

 A bit better we planned this stay (for the family).

• 3 nights

• First day, just get there, stay in the hotel, rest up.

• Second day. Seealpsee.

• Third day. Do nothing.

• Fourth day. Go away.

So, we drove a bit, stopped at a park near vineyards to have a picnic for an hour and there we were. 

The picnic was meant for Emmi to rest up. But we (as someone who always need to see something new and amazing and a normal resting place is just not enough) were a bit disappointed, because the park did not have the perfect views - trees in front of mountains and the vineyards a bit too far away. Sad, really, how we don’t enjoy the smaller things like “just being able to enjoy the park with the family”, but maybe we do after this small trip of ours.

Anyway, reached our place. It was just perfect. The previous place felt like it was someone else’s home, this one was an apartmotel. This felt like when we take our stuff out of the luggage, it’s ours, though, a bit empty maybe. It also had a dishwasher, which we had started to miss in our previous place – little things that can make you feel happy.

Because we are we, we also went for a small stroll already on the first evening to the store (~40 minutes by foot to a store) to put Emmi to sleep. While on that stroll, we were discussing places where we could get some nice pictures if we’d come strolling here and there again.

Sidenote! Now you will probably hear this a lot in the coming blogs that I tend to make us… not get lost, but… go somewhere, then find out that we can’t get to the end goal through that route and then walk back and take another route, especially when we have Emmi with us and can’t climb stuff and run across “high”ways with Emmi in her stroller.

Nothing special happened here, just our trip took a bit longer than expected, but… got the food, Emmi got her sleep… We were ready to go to Seealpsee.

The road to Seealpsee

• Wake up at ~8

• Wash, eat, stuff like that… be ready by 9 latest.

• Wait for 3 hours for the women to get ready.

• Drive for 30 minutes.

• Park, pay like 5 euros for parking, no problems.

• 3 routes to take to the Seealpsee

  • An easy one… paved road… could take stroller with us. No thank you. We have our hiking-child-carrying-backpack with us.

  • A bit more difficult, unpaved, supposed to have a waterfall on the way as well. No thank You.

  • A gondola ride on top of a mountain to see a restaurant and b&b? named <insert name here> and then downhill to Seealpsee from there. Oh yasss… Reet had seen pics of that on istagram, we needed to go there.

• Go up with gondola (50 euros or so)

  • Did I mention that Switzerland didn’t like us very much and that it was cloudy? Well, it was, so the top of the hill… between the clouds again.

• Go to the restaurant, I bet the view would have been great had there been no clouds.

• Learn that I haven’t become a photographer in 2 days and couldn’t create images as awesome as the Instagrammers’ before us.

• Move on to seealpsee.

• Find out that walking downhill is more difficult with a child that’s on your back. More afraid of falling and thus takes an hour longer to get down. Especially when people coming up are telling us “might be slippery”… oh, how we didn’t like the road down to Seealpsee. But on the other hand… Would I have wanted to get the other route? Oh hell no, the downhill battle made the experience in the end a lot sweeter.

The great Seealpsee

• When we first saw the merging of our road with the paved easy road we were happy.

• Then we saw cows, we liked cows in the previous mountaintop lake, so we will definitely be going to like them here as well.

• Switzerland gave us a break, gave us sun, so Emmi wasn’t cold

• And we had also packed with us some food.

• So when we finally reached the place:

  • Water was as calm as it could ever be.

  • Cows everywhere

  • Sun is shining

  • Ducks… There were even ducks there.

  • The place was just perfect.

• So, we had lunch, made some pics from the first place we saw (maybe should have walked a bit to find better places first, but hey, we have time to do all of it later as well).

• Stomachs full, off we went to walk around the lake.

• Then it got cloudy… windy… cold… Just like last time.

• Did not like that place too much anymore. Still the most magical place ever, it’s just, we were with two children and it got really cold all of a sudden AGAIN.

• We didn’t do picnics just walked and wanted to just get through it, get back on the paved road and be done with it.

• Of course I ran around pointing my camera towards the cows and girls, but nothing got close to the calm-water-sunny time pictures.

  • And probably my most awesome experience with a cow: Went really really close to one with my 15mm wide angle lens. And the cow didn’t like it and hit it with one of its horns. Didn’t break anything and I was filming… so… Probably not as fun on the actual video, but… hell yeah!

• Now we didn’t go back home on the paved route, because… I was navigating as always and turns out that the route Dario had chosen to walk on, was the unpaved one and when Reet asked to recheck, it was too late for us to turn around and walk back. Why not… push a little and see the waterfall on the way then.

• Well, the waterfall was the tiniest thing ever and I believe I didn’t even take my camera out for it.

• But we saw some goats, they were friendly, and one ate from a tree. I had never seen that before, another box ticked on a list that I never knew I wanted to see/experience. So, we were all happy that we took that path. Naturally we believe that because of the unpavedness, it was more scenic as well, but… can we really be certain of that?

• And back home we were.

Then, it’s time for Dario’s classic “let’s worry too much” time

It’s two nights until Italy and it’ll be Sunday on the day of the trip to Italy. And while I and Reet are vaccinated, Saskia can’t be, because too young - but old enough for needing to have proof that she’s not coronasick (the most idiotic thing ever in my opinion).

As the best googlerer ever, I Found out that in Switzerland it costs 180 euros to have the test. And in Austria it’s free for all and we’re close to Austria. So I wrote to our “landlord?” that maybe they can point us to a place in Austria we could have our daughter tested at on Saturday.

They of course replied quickly and kindly that the tests are free in Switzerland as well for tourists and locals and pointed us to the correct place. And we went there, and it was as easy as 1-2-3, because we didn’t know the language and the nice girls at the testing centre filled everything for us and back she came with a negative result (took 15 minutes in total). Only the longest form until today to be filled for Italy by both me and Reet and we were ready for Italy.

Yeah, that’s all we did on the second full day in Switzerland (as a family, Reet also went running in the rain, but that’s just… why and yes, it was raining). It really was one of the most boring days I have ever had on a vacation and the next one, the one when we travel to Italy, will be the same, because we‘ll drive for 3-4 hours and after that everyone’s tired from driving “all day” and then probably no one wants to do anything the day after as well and the day after and we won’t have the mountains in the background anymore and then we’ll have THE MOST BORING VACATION EVER.

What do I take with me from Switzerland?

• Cows are awesome!

• Neet to start earning more money. Too expensive to want to go back in the near future.

• Austria had mountains. Switzerland had mountains and lakes. Switzerland beats Austria (for me from the limited experience I had).

• The Mountaintop Lake views are as rewarding as some other stuff I have experienced (like Iceland with its winds and fjords and WATERFALLS and Northern Norway with its endless days and fjords… and the vastness of the US national parks near Las Vegas and Los Angeles and the Azores with the mount Pico as our first ever hike with Reet). And I bet Australia and New Zealand and Western Canada and Some countries in Asia and Hawaii… and maybe sometime in even farther future also, Africa and and… Will be on that list of my and Emmi’s (yeah yeah, others as well) awesome experiences… But corona, all those are not going to happen during this vacation of ours, probably ours is going to be the MOST BORING VACATION EVER moving forward.