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…
It’s no secret that I miss Germany and with so many German-speaking communes in Switzerland Basel is hard to miss. It has everything I expected from a typical mid-sized German city and more. German cities can often be boring, with roughly the same street names, churches with familiar names, and Read more…
Altdorf translates as “old village” and it is the capital city of the canton of Uri, it is the canton with the shortest name and the meanest flag featuring a black bull with a nose ring. Along with Schwyz and Nidwalden, Uri is one of the founding cantons of the Read more…
If you really want to visit the “Plymouth Rock” of Switzerland then you have to visit Schwyz. Schwyz is the capital of the canton of Schwyz and as you can guess the name of the entire country comes from this one small canton. Nobody really knows the true etymology of Read more…
At 2,126 meters above sea level, Juf is nown to be the highest inhabited place in Europe. In the Avers valley of Graubünden, Juf has just a handful of residents and fewer than a dozen houses, but the village has been continuously inhabited since the 13th century. Down the mountain, Read more…
As a former papal city the town’s pride over its history can be seen in the three papal keys on its coat of arms. The old castle thing listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, the broken bridge thing, and indoor markets stocked with colourful fruits are all icons of Read more…
I’ve wanted to come to Interlaken for three years before finally landing a chance when I moved to Switzerland. The German ICE runs a daily round trip between Interlaken Ost and Berlin Ostbahnhof and when I lived in the east of Berlin I always wondered where this eastern station of Read more…
Stein am Rhein means stone by the Rhine. There aren’t too many rocky geographical features in the area but there is a lot of cobblestone that is ready to destroy the soles of your shoes. Cobblestone aside, if you look up you’ll realise that many of the buildings in the Read more…
Having lived in both Germany and Switzerland, I can confidently say that even though Laufenburg spans across both countries, it definitely feels more German than Swiss. The buildings are practically designed with rectangular features and plain colours while religious buildings are placed on the top of a hill rather than Read more…
Located near the border with Italy, Silvaplana is deep inside Graubünden’s Engadine Valley where Romansh is taught in school and fewer than 1,200 people live in the village. The Engadine Valley is so beautiful that the Bernina Express runs through a fair section of it, though it does not pass Read more…