Switzerland 2024

 Adventure Trips in the Cities and the Nature of Switzerland

  Since it's really easy to travel to Switzerland from Freiburg, I decided to take this chance more often in 2024. Even if Switzerland isn't a big country, it has a lot of beautiful areas. Since I'm living in Freiburg, I've been to Bern, Zurich, Thun, Lucerne and the surroundings, the Matterhorn and of course a couple of times to Basel. Nevertheless, there are even more beautiful cities and natural landscapes to explore.

  The first weekend of January, I decided to use my "Deutschland-Ticket" for a one-day-trip to the Rhine Falls near Schaffhausen. When I was on the way to Schaffhausen, it started to rain and unfortunately, the bad weather stayed for the rest of the day, even if the weather forecast promised a change. Nevertheless, I tried to make the best out of the situation and since it was rainy and cold, the city of Schaffhausen was really empty - perfect for taking great pictures. From the train station, it was just a short walk and I was already in the centre of the city around the Fronwagplatz - the centrepiece of the pedestrian zone of Schaffhausen with numerous beautiful buildings like the Fronwagturm, a tower with an astronomical clock from 1564, or the Landsknecht Fountain, symbolizing the defensive strength of the city. I continued walking in the city and found the Haus zum Ritter, a house built in 1492, known for the fresco paintings by Tobias Stimmer on the facade. Before doing a little walk around the Rhine, I climbed up the stairs to the Munot Fortification, a ring-shaped fortress and landmark of the city, which is surrounded by vineyards. The round tower to climb up to the observation area was a spectacle and the panoramic view of the city was breathtaking too. I really liked the charm of the city and it reminded me a little bit of Innsbruck, even if Innsbruck is much bigger in general.

  The main attraction of the day were of course the Rhine Falls. Therefore I had to take a train to Neuhausen am Rheinfall, followed by a little walk. For having different perspectives of the Rhine Falls, I followed the adventure path first, before I decided to go back and visit the Laufen Palace for having a view from the terrace. I got even more surprised, when I realised, that there was another path to follow to be even closer to the Rhine Falls and luckily, it was for free on that day. The flow rate of the waterfall was really impressive and the highlight on this side of the Rhine Falls was definitely the little cave to reach a platform in the height of the middle of the waterfall. So, even if it was a rainy day, it was a spectacular experience and adventure.   

    Every first Sunday in a month, there is a free entry in some of the amazing museums in Basel, so I decided to take the train to Basel on the first Sunday in February. For a long time since moving to Freiburg, I wanted to visit the Natural History Museum with its more than 11 million objects based on the fields of zoology, entomology, mineralogy, anthropology, osteology and paleontology. For me, it was absolutely interesting to see the different kinds of exhibitions, especially with the highlights of the evolution of the mammals, showing skeletons of a mammoth andd sabertooth tiger. Moreover, there was a part of the exhibition about the dinosaurs and their living environments. I was also really surprised about the ammonite fossils, found in the Basel region. I was really glad, that I finally managed to visit the Natrual History Museum and I'm pretty sure, I would also come again.

  The next part of the trip to Basel was a visit of the Cartoonmuseum. Unfortunately, it wasn't part of the museum program with the free entry, but nevertheless I was interested in the exhibition "Blutch Demain!". The Cartoonmuseum in Basel is the only museum in Switzerland, devoted exclusively to the art of narrative drawing in comics, graphic novels, cartoons, satirical drawings or animated films. It collects individual works and presents them in special exhibitions to contribute to the debate about the art of narrative drawings and about the social and political issues it addresses. The exhibition "Blutch Demain!" was focused on the French artist Blutch, who was born in 1967 as Christian Hincker in Strasbourg. He is considered as one of the most important artists of the new French comic style. In the centre of his extremely diverse work is the fast, expressive drawing, complemented by subtle paintings in free technique. In his often experimental works, Blutch often crosses the border into abstraction or leaves it to the reader to freely associate blank spaces - mostly focused on the genres of science fiction, mystery, western, drama or comedy. Since I'm always impressed by street art, I was also really impressed by the art of Blutch. His style of drawing cartoons reminds me to the fantasticm street art sceneries of France. In the end, it was worth it to visit the exhibition and also doing a sunshine walk around the Rhine before leaving Basel.

  In July, I spent a weekend in Switzerland with Sarah-Maria and Manuel and we decided to start our trip by taking the train to Bern, the federal city and de facto capital of Switzerland. We stored our luggage and started to walk in the direction of the magnificent and medieval old town of the city, which became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983. For me, the old town of Bern is still the most beautiful one, I saw in Switzerland - especially with the Baroque style Käfigturm and the Zytglogge, a medieval landmark tower and former guard tower, prison and clock tower, built in the early 13th century, the Swiss and Bernese flags and the market places. Since it was a warm summer day and we didn't have a cooling bag, we skipped buying some of the chocolate or cheese on the markets, even if it looked super delicious. We continued walking to the Bern Minster, the tallest cathedral of Switzerland. The terrace in front of the cathedral offers a phenomenal view over the Aare river and the terraced gardens. We spent some time there, before we wanted to have some ice cream at "Nobile Cioccolateria", where I had the best chocolate and pistachio ice cream I've ever ate. Moreover, I also tried a fancy orange-olive ice cream, which surprisingly tasted quite well. Afterwards, we went to a Tibetan shop, where I got some tea and then, we continued our sightseeing tour at the Nydeggbrücke, a bridge crossing the Aare, which connects the eastern part of the old town to the new part and which is also close to the Bärengraben, an enclosure housing bears in the direct neighborhood of the river, where we made another little break, putting our feet in the water and watching people starting their rafting and stand-up-paddle tours. It was really tempting to jump into the water, but unfortunately, we didn't bring our swimming clothes with us, so after a while, we walked into the direction of the Federal Palace, but the guided tours were already sold out, so we could only see the Swiss government building from outside. Since we had a flexible train ticket to go to Lausanne, we decided to go a little bit earlier, so we had a bit more time in Lausanne to explore the banks of Lake Geneva with some drinks in the evening.

  On Sunday morning, we took a bus from our youth hostel to Ouchy - in the South of Lausanne - to make a morning promenade around Lake Geneva and afterwards to explore one of the main attractions of Lausanne, the Olympic Museum. Since we decided to postpone a trip to Montreux and the terraced vineyards of Lavaux for the next time, we had enough time to admire more than 10,000 artifacts of the Olympic history. Moreover, we learnt a lot about the history of the ancient Olympic Games and the motivation to rebirth the Olympic Games in the 19th century. In the 3rd floor, there was also a part time exhibition about the preparation of the Olympic Games 2024 in Paris. It was quite interesting, because it was like a time journey through many decades of the summer and winter Olympics and as a general sports fan, I found many interesting exhibits and stories of athletes, which are part of my generation. Also the exhibition of the development of the Olympic torches and medals was quite impressive. In total, I was happy, that we went inside the Olympic Museum, before strolling through the city centre to walk up to the Cathedral of Notre Dame of Lausanne, where we climbed up the church tower for having the perfect view of the city with the lake and the mountains in the background. It was possibly the best panoramic view of Lausanne, we could have had, so we stayed for a while until we got hungry. On our way to the Greek street food restaurant "O Mylos" - the food was absolutely amazing and the location remembered of staying in Santorini - we also passed by the Florentine Renaissance style Palais de Rumine at the Place de la Riponne. Then, we enjoyed a short after-food walk in the sun of Lausanne, before we slowly had to walk back to the train station to return back to Freiburg. It was a perfect short trip in Switzerland and I'm definitely planning to come back to Lausanne soon.