So this is all a bit late, but I have been taking several trips around Schweiz using the medium of thumb i.e. hitchhiking and it has been fantastic! I thought I would roughly split these into two parts.
The first part I was with my good friend James, from Skye. This crazy cat lived in Svalbard, worked in Norway then hitched right to my front door here in Basel where he lived on my floor for three weeks.
On our first trip we went to Lauterbrunnen after Googling ‘nice places in Switzerland within reach of Basel’. What a place! This is our route:
Since it was so long ago, I can’t remember specific lifts properly, but as usual we got many lifts with all-sorts: a German man and his son, an extremely enthusiastic Swiss guy and his girlfriend, a cool young guy who took us out of his way to Thun. Hitching with James is great because he has a ukulele! So much fun to play while waiting for lifts. Five Years Time by Noah and the Whale is literally the only song I could play half decently, so it was all we heard from me…
In Bern we saw the Bern bears and sat in the sun by fountains drinking beer, playing the ukulele and making an arse of ourselves in front of the locals and tourists. Bern is very nice!
We then went to Thun to get closer to our final destination, and it was where we ended up sleeping. In Thun, we sat until it got dark in a cafe/bar place wondering where we would sleep. We drank two maß and the crazy Italian man who worked at the cafe seized the ukulele and proceeded to lay into it with a spoon.
We then walked around and James started filming EVERYTHING, including the lights, spiders, flies, ME, bridges etc, uuuurgh. Anyway, we walked up the hill and camped in a wee flat bit in the woods above all the houses, not bad in terms of comfort and cost, terrible in terms of normality.
In the morning, after food and admiring the lake/fish/ducks/etc (which James filmed) we hitched to Interlaken, then the Grindelwald/Lauterbrunnen junction. Then we hiked. Seriously exhausting, but the views of the valley were fantastic, the proper Alpine mountains are properly cool – just big walls of rock and ice stretching into the clouds!
I don’t understand why there are so many wee barns in the Swiss alps, its like they were put there just to look stereotypically Swiss for the tourists to take photos of. They didn’t appear to be used recently or anything.
Eventually it started raining and we walked along the edge of the valley and got the cable-car to Lauterbrunnen. This is when I first learned the horrors of the Swiss rail-prices. CHF 67 to get to Basel. But we had no choice since it was too late for hitching and I had work the next day…
Our next trip was also cool! It involved less hiking, more hitching and more obscure roads.
So we hitched from Sissach to Olten with a combination of local people just going to the next village etc etc so it took ages. Olten was nice, standard beer in cafe here then on to Lucerne! Some family took us to their house, then the son and his friend took us all the way to Lucerne, very generous lift – so we bought them a beer. Got some food in Lucerne blah blah blah then walked around. Another very nice city in Switzerland, though unfortunately the view of the mountains across the lake was shielded by cloud.
We couldn’t be arsed hitching out of the town, so we got a train to Sarnen, where we walked around the lake, ate fruit and nuts from the trees (WHY IS THERE ALWAYS MAGGOTS IN MY FRUIT?!) and camped in a morally-questionable place on the edge of the lake. Had a cheeky wee swim, drank beer and ate the standard bread-cheese-salami meal. Awesome stuff!
The following morning we walked for miles before getting the BEST RIDE EVER – a horse and cart! Hahahaha. More filming by James.
Since it was Sunday, I was panicking about getting back for work and we were on some tiny road in the hills with few cars. As usually, hitching came through with no problems and we got a ride along panoramastrasse with some Zürich people who asked for money which we didn’t pay and instead played them the ukulele and a German-speaking old couple. Seriously nice road though.
Fantastic bratwurst in wee cafe and then hitched pretty steadily to Dagmersellen with a boy racer, cool young fun girl and man in a van who was returning from visiting his girlfriend.
We followed this leg by catching a ride with an old German-only couple to Olten where we caught the train home after not being arsed to hitch as it was getting dark and we were knackered. You tend to do a lot of walking when hitching.
So that was two awesome trips! Showed me that hitching in Switzerland was easy and fun. You get to meet tons of locals and get to know random little places that you would never see if you got the bus, drove or took the train. Seriously cool and I think it has instilled in me an eternal fondness for Switzerland.
Tatty Bye for now
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