Switzerland....The Most Expensive Place on Earth

As a fair warning, this may come off as more of a rant than an actual blog.

This trip actually happened a couple of weeks ago, but I'm really too lazy to write about it. A group of us went down to Zurich, Switzerland for the weekend of Mar 27-29. My friend Maja has her own car here, so 5 of us drove by car and the other two, John and Jenna, went by train. In the car was Maja (Slovenian), Samantha (American), Erika (Slovakian) and Karlijn (Dutch). John and Jenna are both from America.

Anyways, enough of the introductions. We made it to the Zurich after about 5 hours of travel but it took us about an hour to find somewhere to park. We then went to change our Euros to Swiss Francs then to check-in to our hostel named "City Backpacker". The hostel was fairly cheap costing about 25 euros per night for a dorm room with 6 people.

After spending a little bit of time relaxing, we went out to explore the city. Although there wasn't much more daylight left, we were able to get a few sights in then we went to dinner at a local Bierhalle. The food was pretty good, although ridiculously overpriced as well as the drinks. It was impossible to find a sit down restaurant for less than 16 francs (about 11 euros) and all of the beer was at least 5 euros per drink. Liquor was basically holy water it was so expensive.

Also on a side note, the Swiss are the biggest bunch of rude assholes I've ever met in my life. They speak a shitty dialect of German, which Germans can't even understand, much less a bunch of exchange students learning German.

One example of the Swiss hostility pissed all 7 of us off. After dinner at the Bierhalle on Friday night, we decided to walk around to try to find a place where we could order an after dinner meal and a few drinks. We stopped at a seemingly fancy restaurant, but nonetheless affordable for just drinks and dessert. So we begin to order and not all of us order both dessert & a drink. I myself ordered both, but a few people just ordered one or the other.....well, tried to. Our waitor said quite rudely, in his shitty Swiss-German, that we cannot be served unless every person orders both a drink & a dessert. We argued with him for a few minutes, then basically told him to shove it and that we wouldn't be back. I'd like to teach those bastards a little bit about running a business.

Saturday was a much better day for the most part, quite funny actually. Jenna, John & I went to the travel agency in the train station to buy tickets to Mt. Rigi (1800m up in the Swiss Alps). We heard that there would be a wonderful view and possibly a little snow. After paying a ridiculous amount of money for a train ticket up, which was worth it I guess in the long run, we asked the travel agent how the weather was, if there would be any snow. She replied with, "Yeah there could be a little bit of snow, maybe 6 or 7 centimeters or so." HA, was she wrong and were we unprepared.

We took a regular train to the base of the mountain then one of those old school cable cars (which was pretty cool) up the mountain. Well as we got higher and higher, it started getting colder & snowier. We made it to the top where this little diner & nice souvenir shop stood, but there wasn't anything green with a little bit of snow, nor a clear view more than 50 yards. The base snow was about 10ft and the drifts were anywhere from 20-30 feet. After grabbing an expensive but good lunch (25 euro for a bratwurst, soup, soft drink, and a piece of bread), we decided to try to hike up a trail to the radio tower. However, it started snowing harder & harder during our lunch, basically to the point where it was a blizzard. We couldn't see more than 10 ft in front of us and we were getting pelted in the face with snow. Well, we still tried to go up the trail. So the three of us, dressed in jeans, tennis shoes, medium jackets, and no gloves, did our best to make it up the trail, but probably only went about 30 feet. We were like 'screw this' and decided to go back to the diner. We played out in the blizzard for a few minutes or so (all we could bear), then just hung out and talked to the people inside. It was definitely an experience, and worth the money I suppose.

After we made it back to Zurich, the three of us decided to go out for the famous Swiss dish known as cheese fondue. It was absolutely magnificent, but we definitely paid for it. After we finished the fondue, John and I decided to have our typical dessert drink: Double Baileys on the Rocks. And I believe there's a reason the menu didn't say the prices of the drinks, because when we got the bill, that wonderful double Baileys that I ordered costed me 15 euro. OUTRAGEOUS! I can buy an entire bottle in the grocery store in Marburg for 11 euro! Anyways, the restaurant was small and cozy, but the waitress, like all the other Schweizers, wasn't the most friendly of charachters. I don't know if these people are like that to everyone, or if it was the fact that I looked like a stereotypical American with jeans, tennis shoes, a T-shirt and a faded Red Sox hat. I'm sure I'll never know, but they were the same way to my Slovakian & Slovenian friends so I'm going to stick to my guns and say that they're a bunch of snotty assholes that need to learn a proper language instead of using shitty versions of German and French.

Sunday was the beginning of the end of the somewhat bad experience I had in Zurich. We get in the car to leave and we make it about 4 miles away from our hostel when Maja's car breaks down. We sat in the car waiting for help for about an hour and a half, when finally a roadside-assistance-car stops to help. We somehow got our car transported to the service station where we wait about 2 hours for the news...That we have to stay another night in Zurich until the car is fixed the next morning. They couldn't do it then because they couldn't buy the part for the car until Monday. Because there is absolutely NOTHING open anywhere in Europe on Sundays. The only thing you can get on Sundays in Europe is a meal, some beer, and I'm sure if you look hard enough, a hooker. But that's straying away from the story. We arrange a rental car, but we must first go to the airport to pick it up. We called a taxi for the 5 of us (because John & Jenna took the train back) and headed to the airport.

IF I YOU GET ANYTHING OUT OF THIS BLOG.....KNOW THIS...DO NOT GO ANYWHERE BY TAXI!!! We went just 10km (about 6 miles) to the airport, and we payed 77 Swiss Francs. That's 52€ or $68! We definitely were not happy at this point....But we finally got the rental car and I drove us back to the city where we had to get another night in our hostel.

The next day might have been worse than the previous, but it's kinda funny now that I look back on it. We picked up Maja's car then took the rental car back. We all decided that we wanted to visit a chocolate factory, since that's what the Swiss are actually known for, so we drove about 30 miles east away from the way we came. We visited the chocolate factory (which was pretty interesting), bought a bunch of chocolate, then decided to head home....well tried to.

This is the last time that I'm going to let a girl navigate us. Herself & a few others wanted to see some snow, so we drove around the country backroads a little bit until they finally got what they were searching for. Karlijn, the Dutch girl, was navigating us and told us to "take this road, now this way." BAD IDEA. So I took a nap and when I awoke, we were about 120 km SOUTH, not north like the way we were supposed to be heading. We were on the correct road, just the wrong side of it. Well we find out that we drove through Lichtenstein and were only 30km away from the Italian border. We turned around, drove back through Switzerlan, Lichtenstein, Austria, and finally back to Germany. So what took us 5 hours to get down, literally took us a little more than 10 hours to get back to Marburg. Oh Scheiße. What a trip!