Bursting Myths about Switzerland
Hello readers,
I visited Switzerland in the month of October of the year 2019 and after looking up a lot about this beautiful country I had certain prejudice about it thanks to the internet. Although when I placed my foot on the land of Switzerland,minute after minute these prejudices were removed. As I am a big time procrastinator, I am bursting these myths in 2021, more than a year later I travelled to Switzerland but as they say better late than sorry.
Hope this article helps some of you.
Myth 1: Only Swiss franc [CHF] currency works
- Oh no, this my friend is not the case. Switzerland is surrounded by many countries. Hence, not only Swiss franc, currencies like Euro [EUR] and US dollar [USD] work as well. All ATMs have the option of extracting money in either of the currencies.
Myth 2: You have to pay for public transport
- Your accommodation (hotel/Airbnb) provides you with a free public transport pass, which includes free rides of trains and buses but only for the area you are staying in and not for other areas. For example, I stayed at Wilderswill, so my pass was applicable in Wilderswill and Interlaken. *
Myth 3 : Nobody speaks English
- No, that is not true. Switzerland is a major tourist attraction so a lot of the locals speak English especially the people working at the transport department.
Myth 4: Book all tickets to tourist spots online
- I, personally, would not suggest that. Switzerland has very good ticket booking centres at every train station. The customer support officials there are quite helpful and in my case, helped me out in booking the least expensive tickets to all tourist attractions.
Myth 5: A Europe sim-card works in Switzerland
-Umm no, this was a major disaster for me. I was travelling to Switzerland from Italy so I had bought a sim applicable all over Europe, what I didn't know was that Switzerland is not a part of European Union (EU). So you will have to buy a separate sim card for Switzerland.
Myth 6: No public WiFi
- Well, public Wifi is what got me through my whole trip. As I stated previously my sim card wasn't working in Switzerland and I did not want to buy a new sim card just for one country since I had practically no use of it except using Google maps for directions. The public WiFi came to my rescue, not only was it 5G, the connectivity never was an issue.
Myth 7: Unfriendly locals
- All the locals I interacted with were very friendly. Apart from relying on public WiFi, asking for directions from locals was what got me to places. Some locals were friendly to the extent of drawing a map for me so that I don't end up forgetting the directions.
Myth 8: Switzerland is an expensive location to travel.
-Well, this myth is true but only to an extent. There are many options which you can take to reduce your expenses which are as follows:
- Half pass/Half-rate cutter: This is a special pass which every tourist can get made at any of the ticket centres. It is valid for a month and with the help of this pass, all the tickets you buy will cost you half of the original price.
- Early riser discount: If you visit Jungfrau,the ticket is usually for 100 Euros or more but if you go before 9 AM then you get an early morning discount.
- Eat preserved food & buffet: One place which was my go-to for food was 'Coop'. Coop is one of Switzerland's largest retail and wholesale companies and they have a supermarket literally everywhere, so I either ate noodles, frozen pizza etc from there or they have restaurants as well and these restaurants usually have lunch buffets which are less expensive than eating at a restaurant. The best part is that the buffet food is actually quite good.
- If your caffeine intake is a lot then instead of splurging on expensive coffee you can get good quality coffee from the vending machines at practically every other step.
Myth 10: Night life is amazing
* Please confirm this once with your accommodation.
** This is the case for non-city areas. For cities please confirm.
Comments
Post a Comment