did we miss something?

We flew through today. It was another day of slightly over scheduling the route & as a result we ended up being over cautious & trying to make up the miles without ever really stopping. The last 200km of the Alps was appreciated, but towards the end everything started becoming very similar. The scenery was unchanging unlike before, & each town we passed grew with size but had the same characteristics. The marker & distinguishing factor was the lake at the end of the route. By the time we reached it we started searching for a spot to relax & have a picnic… & without realising it, we’d passed the boarder into Switzerland. The three of us stopped on the other side with looks of confusion trying to figure out if we were still in France or not.

A word of caution, when you pass over into Switzerland, find the first shop called Greyer & buy yourself a vignette (it’s your ticket to ride the toll roads). It’s a ticket you need to use the major highways. No one will actually stop you, & there are no checkpoints or toll booths, but you need it all the same. It will cost you 40€ & last you till the end of the calendar year. It sounds steep, but when you do the math it’s really quite fair.

After that we were basically on the highway for the rest of the day, aside from one or two pit-stops on the side of the road to stuff our faces. We made a brief attempt to drive around a town just outside of Zurich & some how ended up in the midst of some festival or other. We wound up trapped in the town for an hour trying to navigate the blocked off roads & find a way out. It was beautiful even amongst the chaos & the camp grounds we eventually ended up at were even more so. It’s just a pity we saw so little of the actual country.

I’m kind of feeling like I can’t tell anyone I’ve been to Switzerland. I mean, does it count if all you really saw were the national roads? It’s like telling someone you’ve been to a country just because you landed in their airport for a connecting flight…. you just don’t do it.