I know this isn’t Switzerland, but it really isn’t very far away.

I came across lefrancophoney recently and thought I’d share it with you (although obviously, you’ll only be going to France on a day-trip; we don’t really want you leaving Switzerland).

Annecy is a beautiful town less than an hour from Geneva, and has its own stunning lake. With the backdrop of mountains, it’s an ideal location for a bit of sightseeing.

Take the opportunity to stroll by the lake and then sample the shopping delights of the Rue Royale before a spot of lunch. Although you might care to look at one of April’s other posts to check out how your translation skills compare to a French Restaurateur’s…

Maybe you’re thinking of proposing? Take your loved one to the Pont des Amours…

And let’s face it, where else other than the chateau in Annecy will you find such a scary sock monster?

April’s blog is always highly entertaining, and very well-written, so don’t be afraid to tell your friends!

Photos: leFrancoPhoney

Post from: The Switzerland Traveler

Well, nothing like coming back with a bang!

If you plan to be in Switzerland on December 3rd, how about a guided tour round an atomic power station?

I’ve done the tour and it’s fascinating. You get the whole deal, dressing up in white suits like the baddies in Dr No, and they wave Geiger counters at you all the time.

It’s really interesting and the best bit is the cooling water for the fuel rods. The water has to be totally pure and de-ionised and is the most amazing blue I’ve ever seen.

Looking round the control rooms is fascinating if you’re into switches and dials, and you really come away with an impression of just how much heat is given off by those little bits of Uranium.

The tour is done when the station is closed for maintenance, so there’s no danger. And because it’s Switzerland, the station is maintained thoroughly every year.

The tour is at the Kernkraftwerk Leibstadt near the border with Germany, just down the road from Zurzach.  

You’ll need to show a passport to get in, you can book on +41 56 269 00 60

Photo: Flickr mbeo

Post from: The Switzerland Traveler

A bit of a light-hearted post to take your mind off the EM.

Apparently in the film “21″ there’s a scene where Ben (Jim Sturgess) is cycling to the MIT, with a blue and white Freitag bag over his shoulder.

In the next scene, it’s slung over his other shoulder, which is a pretty neat trick while riding a bike.

So, either the continuity guys screwed up, or there are some magic bags being manufactured here in Switzerland…

I’ve written about Freitag bags before, look here if you can’t remember

Photo: Flickr Studio Mohawk

Post from: The Switzerland Traveler

It might not be the Pompidou centre, or even the South Bank, but the citizens of St Gallen have their own feature to be proud of.

Designed by architect Carlos Martinez and Multimedia-artist Pipilotti Rist, the Stadtlounge is a novel way of making a clinical financial area (Bleicheli) seem more people-friendly.

The entire  area is covered in a red surface, a playground surface for pedestrian areas and tarmac for the car areas. Even the Porsche 911 shaped lump that’s supposed to discourage you from parking. You wouldn’t want to come back and find your car has been resurfaced, would you?

At night the area is lit by floating “things” that are variously described as blimps, eggs or even planetoids. What do you think?

The stadtlounge is considered to be Switzerland’s largest outdoor living room.

So where’s the TV?

Photos:  Flickr – mightymightymatze

Post from: The Switzerland Traveler

I’ll apologise in advance for this one.

This weekend sees the 5th annual convention of Swiss-French cartoonists in Champery.

That doesn’t seem like the type of event that needs to be advertised on a national website. Surely there can only be about four of them?

Anyway, if you do happen to be skiing in the Portes du Soleil and see a wild bunch of people communicating by drawing on large sheets of paper, please let me know.

I don’t why I think it’s funny, I just do.

As for the cartoon above, it’s in French, and I don’t think it’s funny, but it does relate back to an old post on theparistraveler, so I feel justified.

Normal service will be resumed after February 29.

Honest.

Post from: The Switzerland Traveler

I was lucky enough to see the inside of a nuclear power station once.

That’s not something that many people will ever see, which is a shame because the colour of the pure water used to cool the radioactive rods is quite simply the most amazing blue I’ve ever seen.

But! The engineers amongst you need not fret.

Untill April 16, 2008, the nice people at the Grimsel HEP (Hydro-Electric Powerstation) are offering guided tours of their plant.

The power station is located not too far from Interlaken, so is about 2 hours from Zurich, closer if you are in Berne.

It’s open to visitors on Wednesdays from 13.15 to 17.15 hours. Booking is manadatory – if you want to go that is, you don’t have to book if you don’t want to!

After a short introduction  visitors are taken by bus to the departure station of the Handeck cable car. There, you board the cable car and enjoy an exclusive ride up with magnificent views of the white Grimsel landscape.

Then, it’s time to explore the mineral mine with an electrical car and visit the underground Grimsel power station. And, although I have no idea what a crystal cleft is, you get to visit it.

The guided tour takes roughly four hours and costs CHF 24.—for adults and CHF 20.—for children.

Sounds tempting to me. Especially if it’s raining…

Grimselwelt
KWO-Besucherdienst
3862 Innertkirchen
Tel. +41 (0)33 982 26 26

Post from: The Switzerland Traveler

How many times have you heard people talk about flying pigs?

Of course, more often it’s done a bit more subtly, in answer to a request – such as looking out of the window and replying "well, we might be able to do that, if only those darn pigs would stop flying past".

But in Switzerland anything is possible. Well nearly!

A cow-shaped hot air balloon, who’d have thought it?

But maybe a ride in a normal hot air balloon ride would be interesting? HB Adventures offer a range of flights from 300CHF per person.

HB are reachable on +41 56 424 31 44 for bookings. Don’t forget to check the long distance weather forecast!

Photo: galasmile

Post from: The Switzerland Traveler

I think all of us writers on the channel thought "Ha, that’ll be easy" but it opens up soooo many possibilities.

My initial thoughts were of wristwatches and clocks.

Everybody knows there are two types of watch: those that are Swiss, and those that aren’t. And frankly, there’s no excuse for choosing one from the second group! Am I promoting my new home land too heavily here? Fear not, this is not going to turn into an advert for Rolex or Longines.

Nor am I going to try to sell you a cuckoo clock. For they are not Swiss, but originate in southern Germany. Of course we sell them here. Shop keepers would be crazy to turn away business, but it’ll be cheap foreign versions you find here.

So let’s take alook at how a group of bloggers have chosen to view this month’s theme:

Filipina Soul explores time as a concept (reminds me of that great quote from the Young Ones where in answer to the question "Is that the time?" Mike replies "No, time is an abstract concept, that’s a watch). Here we get to understand how  Filipino Time works, and frankly, that seems to be how most people in my office react when it comes to attending meetings.

Moving from concepts to philosophy and poetry, Lynn at The Paris Traveler thinks it’s  time to avoid writing about time . Clearly she put enough time and effort into the piece, so please take the time to go and read it. OK, I’ll try to stop all these "time" puns…

If that sounds a bit too much for you, Alex at Sirened clearly has his head screwed on properly, as he thinks it’s time for a beer and in October (Oktober if you prefer the Munich spelling) you have to admit he has a point. Personally I think he should be trying a nice pint of Harvey’s Sussex ale, but that’s tricky to find unless you are in the South of England.

On that note, Jed at the London Traveler reminds us that Big Ben is in fact a bell, not a clock, but as it strikes every fifteen minutes it’s one of the most famous audible means of marking the passage of time in the world. His post also has a great photo of the palace of Westminster, which you’d be crazy to miss. 

Speaking of photos, Jon at the DC Traveler always has great pictures in his posts. And he’s decided it’s finally time to do something he’s been putting off. And that something sounds like a great thing to do – taking a trip along Skyline Drive. And as he’ll be taking his camera, that means more great photos so keep coming back for more.

Here in Switzerland the children have gone back to school, but down under, Lauren at The Sydney Traveler tells me it’s school holiday time and provides great recommendations for restaurants to visit if you have kids, or presumably, restaurants to avoid if you don’t.

Melissa at Europe String:  knows that  saving money takes time and similarly Ruth at Lets Visit Asia points out that  timing is important when it comes to booking travel. Two different viewpoints on a similar theme, which just shows there are two sides to a story.

Mary Jo, our illustrious channel editor and task master, has come up with two pieces. At Flyaway Café she describes an annual Halloween Time event:  Terror behind the walls. This just shows how much the Swiss have to learn, we still think that Halloween equates to Pumpkin Time, and don’t get any scarier than making a statue of a crab out of gourds.

For her second piece, Mary Jo (at The Seattle Traveler this time) demonstrates the one time it’s okay to be thinking about Christmas this early in the year. I’d have to agree with her on that, which reminds me I need to check the schedule for the Zurich Ballet, as I think the Nutcracker might be being performed here this year.

Sherry at The Geeky Traveler: tells us about a great new clock/timer/pill holder which seems astounding value. On the downside it reminds me of the device my friend uses to feed his cat while he’s on holiday, so I might not buy one just yet.

Clocks (of the non-cuckoo variety) can be beautiful things. And Matt at The Chicago Traveler would like to tell you about clocks in Chicago. I certainly learned something about American culture from it, but I’m not telling you what!

Finally, Heather at The Las Vegas Adventurer proves that nostalgia is in fact what it used to be, and takes us all to a drive-in movie. We never had that in the UK when I was growing up, so maybe a trip to Vegas is called for.

So, that’s about the lot for this month’s theme. And while discussions about the nature of time, when it began and other similar matters are best discussed with friends over a bottle of wine late in the evening, one definition always works for me: Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once. Use it wisely.

Post from: The Switzerland Traveler

Wherever you go it seems there’s always at least one visible, but somehow it doesn’t seem to distract from the beauty of the place.

Obviously industrial building sites like this one are never going to be pretty, but somehow when used for domestic building work, cranes seem to blend into the Swiss landscape.

Swiss builders need no excuse to put up a small crane, I assume the logic is that their time is expensive and using a crane cuts the time taken to do any job. Having a new garden fence?  Don’t be surprised to see the gardener turn up with a small portable crane.

So here’s a useful tip, if you’re travelling through Switzerland with children that get bored easily, ask them who can count the most cranes.  Or challenge them to find somewhere you can’t see one at all (tunnels don’t count!).

It might just make your journey more entertaining!

Post from: The Switzerland Traveler

Luzern is a place that you will visit if you come to Switzerland, or take visitors to several times if you live here. It’s the ideal place to get an appreciation of the country, with its bridge, mountains and the lake.

Lake Lucerne, or to give its local name, Vierwaldstättersee, is simply beautiful. But it does highlight the issue of names. Lakes, mountains and towns all have different names in different languages.

This has long irked me,giving our own names to foreign cities; Florence instead of Firenze for example. Other nations do it too, the Italians for example refer to what we call Munich as Monaco, which seems a bit daft when you consider that the principality of Monaco is only a few kilometres from the Italian border. But as the Germans call Munich, München, I guess we have no right to complan about that.

Switzerland has four official languages; German, French, Italian and Romantsch – so things can get a bit complex. German speakers call Geneva “Genf”, whereas the French prefer “Genève”. Such a lovely name, why would anyone resort to “Genf”? Jealousy perhaps?

That’s all quite normal stuff, but in areas of mixed language, residents of one town can’t decide what its name should be. Biel, aka Bienne, being a classic case in point. This is particularly the case for regions such as Ticino (Tessin) or Vaud (Waadt). Most confusing.

So if you’re looking for directions to a particular area in Switzerland, and can’t find it, make sure you try any alternative names.

Post from: The Switzerland Traveler