Most extensive trip to date!

Looking by the calendar, it has been actually my third month here in Switzerland. As a token of appreciation to the cheap labour that is provided by the interns, the ILO gives 2.5 days of leave per calendar month. Me being a dilligent hard-worker (ahem, ahem), I have never actually taken any leave yet since my January internship start at the organization. In short, I already have one and a half workweek (7.5 days) of leave accumulated as a result of my over-work and underpaid intern position at the ILO.

So last Friday, I decided to use just a day of my leave and do what other interns have been doing in the past couple of months - that is splurge themselves into travelling. Besides, I have always felt out of place with their conversation as they talk about their travelling and alcohol-drinking pursuits during the term of their internship. In that way, when they ask me about my weekend, I have something exciting to tell and not just vague fillers that I invent from my imaginary travelogue.

First stop, the posh Swiss ski resort of Gstaad, about 150 km and approximately 2 hours by SBB train from Geneva.


Because of some left-over work c/o my French "chief", I was forced to take the last train at 8:36pm. With this train, I will arrive on my destination at about 11:00 and then need to find my hostel by myself in the dark. There was actually a 'minor' problem that occured on the way, as the train had a 10-minute waiting time delay in Laussane to accomodate a late train arriving from Berne. Looking by my schedule, I am really in trouble as I will not be able to catch my connecting train to Gstaad in Montreaux. What does this mean? Aborting the trip and head back to Geneva? Spend the night camping in the station at Montreaux? Perhaps try my luck to bitch with the SBB staff to give me hotel accomodation? Luckily, SBB was flexible enough on this situation as the connecting train in Montreaux waited for us being the last train to Gstaad.

I took the train to Brigg and needed to stop and change trains in in Montreaux

Upon taking my connecting train, I noticed that I am on a different kind of carriage. Compared to the regular commuter trains on Switzerland's plains, the train to Gstaad is way smaller with lesser passengers.

Travelling by myself in a place I haven't been before, I was actually scared and nervous as I don't know wheter I am taking the right step or not. What I find weird with this train is that all the stops are by demand and you need to listen carefully to the engineer for the name of the station. Since my French and German are not really good, I felt really paranoid about the pronunciation of the place names as I do not know how they sound like. What if the engineer said Gstaad or Saanen (my destinations) but I was not able to recognize their pronunciation? I will for sure be doomed!

Another thing I find a little bit scarry is that after about 45 minutes of travel, I am the only passenger on the train. All the rest of the passengers have taken off in their respective stops. That means I have no one to ask for questions or directions which made me more uncomfortable.

I arrived at the station at about 11:10. Next step is to find the hostel in the dark of the evening. I was walking with my wheeled luggage in the town's cobbled streets so just imagine the noise I have been creating. Plus, I really looked lost as I don't really know where to go. I ask directions from two Swiss-germans in French who has been drinking in a bar and they began to blurt out in rapid, machine-gun like Swiss-German. With their hand gestures, they pointed out that I should go to a certain direction near a certain hospital. I walked for about 30 minutes into the dark of the town but still to no success.

I finally decided to go back to town and head on to the police station, they might probably be able to help me. By coincidence, I met a guy who I suppose will be having a date with his girlfriend after a day's long work in one of the town's bar. I ask him in all the courage I have left in me and in French about the direction of the hostel and voila, he answered back in perfect English! My saviour indeed! And whats more, he even offered me to drive to that location. I then realized that I was pointed in the wrong direction by the two drunkards. I was already on the verge of panicking and my last resort was to go to the police station and have myself incarcerated in there!

The hostel was well worth it. For CHF 33 (~ $32.50 CAD), you get a bunk bed of your own and a free breakfast buffet. The rooms and the washrooms are just immaculately clean, very Swiss indeed!

Gstaad according to my Lonely Planet is the hideout of famous personalities like Paris Hilton, Roger Moore and Sean Connery. There's a lot of plush hotels and restaurants where millionaires (like me) indulge in luxury.

Next day, I went out of town to discover what it offers. It is my first time on a Swiss mountain region and I was really excited to see breathtaking sceneries that is definitely unmatchable in any of my previous travelling experience.

This is the view outside my hostel window, jealous eh?

I spent the entire day hiking in the towns of Saanen and Gstaad. Here are scenes from my hike.

After about 45 minutes of hiking, I reached the neighbouring town of Gstaad. From there, I took the train to start my entire afternoon of hiking in a neigbouring town whose name I forgot.

The train ride was awesome. It was a different kind of train with wide windows for panoramic views and lots of rich lovers cudling inside. Heres the view inside the train:

Hiking in Switzerland is comfortable and easy. All hikepaths are marked with directions and approximate hiking time to the next destination. In my case here, I need to make 1hr 30 min of hiking time to get back to Gstaad.

Some impressions from my hike:

Come noon, my stomach was already rumbling with my half-a-day hike. This was what I have for lunch. It was very economical indeed (Sfr 2.90 for the salad and SFr .60 for the yoghurt) but the salami sandwich just tasted awful.


Continuing my hike, I was surprised to see vestiges of Canada with this Yukon souvernir plate in one of the farm vehicles I passed by.

Switzerland is a very bike-friendly nation. All its major cities such as Zurich and Geneva have dedicated bike paths. Even hiking trails have dedicated bike-paths that are well signed like this:


Here's some more scenes from my hike:

Now, halfway into my hike, I encountered some standard Swiss road traffic signs which means I am pretty safe and near into civilized/domesticated teritory. I'll take this opportunity to orient you with Swiss (or probably pan-European as well) road signs:

If this is for Manitoba, Canada

this is for Switzerland (Mario, which one do you prefer?)



If this is for Canada....

Here is how a Swiss speed limit sign looks like

And streetsigns are different and confusing for me as well. Don't expect to find a streetpost on internsections the way you are accustomed to here when finding directions as you would have no luck for sure.

Heres a street post you'll see in every North American street intersections

And here's a Swiss streetsign which you'll find on building walls, and on the middle of the street itself, makes me puzzled on where to look for street names and confused in finding directions

Somewhere in my hike, I was able to see vestiges of Canada again.... it seems to haunt me on this hike actually:

After almost a day of hiking, I left the ski resort town of Gstaad to my next destination, Interlaken.

I left Spitz at about 20.42 for my train to Interlaken arrived at the city at 23.00. Next challenge as usual is finding my youth hostel. To make a long story short and save myself from further embarassment, the search took me an hour and a half and it was really disappointing indeed. I even had mistakes with another hotel that has already closed for the evening and demanded them that they let me in because I have a reservation. It turns out that it was a hotel with the same name on its first two syllables and with a different name on the last syllable. How embarassing indeed!

Interlaken is a touristic town. There are tourists all around - Germans, Spanish, English, Americans, and of course the lovely Japanese and Koreans! They take the town over like an invasion which on deeper thought is good for the Swiss economy.

First impressions:

For brunch, guess what I had... of course the cheapest meal in town:

Yes my friends, a big mac meal with Uncle Ronald costs almosts $11 CAD in Heidi's hometown. And thats the cheapest meal in town. Wanna dine in restaurants? Prepare to spend like $20 and above! And guess how much guys and gals make when they make themselves one of the capitalist slaves of Uncle Ronald in the land of Heidi - $17.60 CAD/hour! Yes, that's $17.60 per hour, more than a Ph.D. intern would make working in a government lab in Canada.

Strolling down the city, I can't help but be attacted on the shopping displays on town. And of course, I bought them all with my tremendously high and very much "on-time" intern salary!









After strolling on town, it was now time to go to the top of the world. Here are some pictures and videos:






Arriving by the train station, we need to take a cable car for an upward descent to the mountains.

And here's the magnificent view on the cable car:

And another small train to get to the summit:

Once on top, this were the views that awed me:

I underestimated the effort needed in mountain hiking. It was tough and makes you hot and sweat on -5 C temperatures.

If you may ask, why wasnt I wearing a jacket at 2,000 metres above sea level? Hiking was just too tasking and made me perspire a lot.... Apparently, it is the only picture of myself on my trip.

I further hiked into the afternoon until I got tired and decided to come down back to Interlaken. To have a decent meal, I closed my eyes and paid 22 Fr for some Chinese take-out food. I met two Singaporeans who like me are bored of Geneva during the weekend and would like to explore the real Switzerland and get out of that snobbish towen. I finally took the train to Zurich to meet my friend Alain.

What a long trip!