“Brugg” sounds like the German word for “bridge” and its name came from having a bridge that crossed the River Aare connecting a major trade route between Italy and Germany. The municipality has a little bit of everything, it was founded in Roman times, has a famous monastery founded in Read more…
If a tourist were to look for sites with Roman history, they might think of visiting Italy for entire Roman towns, or going to the south of France for arenas still used for bull fights, or seeing Hadrian’s wall in England, but few think to come to Switzerland to see Read more…
Romont is one of those towns that are easy to miss. It’s not along a motorway and it’s not even along a smaller B-road. In fact, you have to turn off a B-road and onto a country road with no lane markings to get to the hill that Romont is Read more…
On Polish independence day, Chen and I took our scooters over to Poland. November isn’t exactly the best scooter weather in Eastern Europe, but we made do anyways. On our way from Berlin to Frankfurt an der Oder, we passed through Fürstenwalde, the name means the forest of the prince. Read more…
Yes. This is where Evian water comes from, but the picture of the mountains on the bottle had me fooled. Evian water is not from an alpine glacier but from protected sources of groundwater in the area. In fact, Evian water isn’t even from the town of Evian, it’s from Read more…
The town of Bulle is in the Gruyère region where the cheese took its namesake. Being near the dairies and pastures that produce the famous Gruyère cheese, the significant Gruyère castle, and the nearby Cailler chocolate factory in Broc, has really stolen the thunder from Bulle. Bulle has been inhabited Read more…
Between Thun, Interlaken, and Brienz, Brienz is the littlest of the three siblings. Thun is a major city in the Bernese Oberland Region and Interlaken a traditional resort town, so the hotel proces in nearby Brienz can be a steal if you know where to find the right deals. Small Read more…
Singen (Hohentwiel) has the name of a nearby extinct volcano appended to the town’s full title. This name appears on official documents, train system information, and road signs. Frankfurt (Main) can get confused with Frankfurt (Oder), but Singen shares its name with zero other places at the municipality level so Read more…
After the Château de Chillon, Schloss Lenzburg is the second best castle in Switzerland. Lenzburg is another one if those cities that is named after its castle. The Schloss Lenzburg is just over 500 meters above sea level and looks over the surrounding plains. The oldest parts of the structure Read more…
Surrounded on three sides by Germany, Schaffhausen is just a 20 minute drive away from the German exclave of Weil am Rhein. Perhaps the only time a foreigner has heard of the place would be on an IWC watch, where its headquarters are. If you get there by train, you’ll Read more…