My Europe Trip pt.1 Switzerland

On the 25th of September, my family and I got on a plane, a plane that went far, far away. 9 hours of movies, turbulence and plane food later, there we were sitting at hot, humid Bangkok airport at 12am. I tried to sleep, but with the noise, weather and repeated translated announcements, I just couldn’t. After playing on my phone for 3 hours, we boarded another plane, this time 10 hours to Zurich, Switzerland. I think I slept on this one, maybe for 5 hours? All I can remember was the tasteless chicken curry and the 3 old movies that I watched.

Finally, we landed. There we were standing around waiting for my uncle to pick us up. I remember having a feeling of relief as soon as we stepped out of the plane. A rush of cool, airport air brushed against my cheeks and I thought ‘thank God I’m off this plane’.

My uncle was on time (yay). We loaded our suitcases into the small boot of his Hyundai i20 and squashed into the back seats. I was in the middle, next to my dad and my brother, and my mum was at the front (sister privileges). The drive to Le Landeron was 1 hour and a half, so there was plenty of talking to be done. My mum and her brother talked most of the way, in French. Myself, my brother and my dad just sat in the back of the car whispering back and forth about how none of us could speak French.

Around 15 minutes before we arrived we started passing all these mountain vineyards and I thought ‘Jeez, we are definitely not in Australia’. I passed my phone to my brother (he was on the window side) and he took a photo of the vineyards in Autumn colour. After a little bit of adjusting, I started to like the photo so here it is:

15 minutes after that photo was taken, we pulled up in the driveway of my auntie’s white, brick house. We unloaded our heavy suitcases and knocked on the frosted glass door. Answering the door was a huge smile and a French accent - my aunty. We said our hellos and gave our kisses, then were shown to our rooms. After a little bit of unpacking, we all went downstairs for a leftover curry with rice (that actually tasted good), and had a nice, long talk about life back in Australia.

Soon after that, we heard jingling keys at the door. Coming through the door was my youngest cousin, Nabil. We casually said ‘oh hey’, then we all sat down and tried to understand the French that was coming out of his mouth.

A little later on, we decided to take a short car ride to a lake called Erlach. This lake comes with a playground, some scenery and rocks, lots of rocks. The water was crystal clear (actually, more like ‘I can see 10 meters in front of me’ kind of clear). I was wishing I had one of those cases for your phone that protected it from the water. I have to say, I was picturing some pretty awesome underwater photos. Anyway, besides the fact that I was missing some awesome underwater photos, I got some nice photos of the scenery. One of my favourites was a panorama which had the lake, playground and scenery in it. This is the one:

After that, we went home, fell asleep at 6:30pm and woke up the next day at 10:30am with slobbery pillows, and a full bladder.

That day was more of a ‘stay at home and figure out how to use the coffee machine’ kind of day. As you can tell by the name, we didn’t really do much except cook a little bit for lunch, play in the playground and unpack. Basically, trying to stay awake was the aim.

The 29th of October was the day where we got in the car and drove for 2 hours. What was planned was for us to walk on a rickety old bridge across the alps. Maybe that is exaggerated a little bit, who will ever know… Anyway, after driving up the vineyard road full of one-lane hairpins and getting lost at least twice, we arrived at Torrent Neuf. We had a quick cheese, lettuce and baguette sandwich, then started to make our way up to the start of the trail.

Parts of the trail were made of wood, some were carved into the mountain and a lot was suspended in thin air. Along the trail, there were 5 suspended wire bridges, some 20 meters long and some 150 meters long, but all of them were very high. The overall walk was around 1 hour and a half one way, then a return of another 1 hour and a half. Here are some photos of the bridges:

Once we had arrived at the cafe (which was closed), we sat down, ate some really salty bretzels (bread pretzels), and took a 360 degree photo. Oh did I say I took it on my phone? Well, I didn’t. Instead, here is a panorama of the beautiful scenery and view of the mountains:

Oh and here is a mountain goat that we found eating grass on top of a viewing platform roof:

An hour and a half later, we were back in the car, me squashed next to my brother and my cousin. Next stop: France (actually a hotel over the border but anyway…).

The hotel that we stayed in was nice - clean, nice toilet paper and it even had decent internet! We played in the pool for an hour, then went back, had showers and ate plain pesto pasta for dinner. It was actually really good (there was cheese in the pesto), just what we needed.

The next day was a day full of vertical mountain trains, climbing rocks and amazing views of the Alps. After another hour and a half drive back to Switzerland, we arrived at what looked like a power plant with a small, old train station. Once we went around the back, we found the ticket dealer, bought some tickets and waited. Half an hour later, we boarded the train. The rails for the train were at something like a 60 degree angle. The seats in the train were also on a 60 degree angle, so if the train was flat on the ground, you’d basically be lying on the floor with your feet over the seats. These two photos are of the start of the rail and from up the hill. You can see how the rail just goes straight up:

Anyway, once we boarded, the train started moving upwards. The angle got steeper as we made our way up. It was a little bit nerve-wracking but we all made it.

After the vertical train, we caught another train, this time completely horizontal (phew!). This one took us around the mountain to the next vertical train. We went through dark tunnels, across old wooden bridges, and even got like 30 cm away from the mountain edge. The only things keeping us from falling was the train walls (no windows, just walls), and our sensibility.

After the train ride, we got into this mini red train that looked like an elevator, and travelled vertically, again, up to the viewing platform and trail. Where we were going, there was a giant, blue dam.

By the time we were at the top, we were around 2000 meters above sea level. The dam wall was around what looked like 40 meters high, made of concrete wide enough for a road. Again, I took a beautiful panorama (I do love my panoramas) of the view and the gigantic wall. Here it is:

We took a walk along the wall and on a trail in the mountains. My brother, cousin and myself took lots of photos, climbed lots of rocks, went on lots of trails and took lots of photos. On the way back from the walking trails, I stopped, walked closer to the edge of the wall, freaked out my mum and took some really nice photos of the Alps. After a little bit of sharpening and adjusting the white balance, here is my favourite one:

Anyway, after catching the mini vertical train back down to the horizontal train, then catching the horizontal train back to the vertical train (phew, that was a mouthful), we stopped at a restaurant and ordered some freshly cooked chips. They were really good, but because of the boys (and me), they were gone in seconds. After that, we had an hour and a half in the car, then magically, we were back home.

A few days of resting, then we were back on a plane, this time flying to Casablanca, Morocco.