Touring in Switzerland - any thoughts/advice/tips?

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Nov 16, 2015
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Have a great time, talked to my friends today about 3/4 of an hours drive from Interlaken, and it's 25 c. Have a safe trip.
Hutch.
 
Dec 6, 2013
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Camping Jungfrau is fabulous, bar the fact that some of the pitches are rather too close together. That said, we were given a larger pitch on a terrace above the main camping field, which included electricity, water and drainage and was lovely. The facilities are plentiful and spotless.

Lauterbrunnen and the surrounding Jungfrau region of Switzerland are staggeringly beautiful and everyone should visit at least once before they die.

We were less impressed with Lausanne, which to be honest felt a bit like being back in Birmingham. Some attractive buildings, including museums and a cathedral are all but lost in an ugly urban sprawl. However, Lake Geneva and the nearby Lavaux wine region are wonderful. We've brought back quite a lot of bottles!
 
Apr 1, 2010
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Glad you enjoyed your trip. Personally we prefer Austria to Switzerland. We find it much prettier over all the country whereas Switzerland has less spectacular places.
Austria is a much more friendly country and the natives very hospitable and helpful.
Then Switzerland is a most expensive Country especially the Vignette. Austria together with Germany being the cheapest countries to visit, Don't know now what will happen as since we came back two weeks ago the big out has happened.
 
Aug 11, 2010
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i'd beg to differ with regards who has the more spectacular places. Switzerland or Austria .it depends what one considers spectacular, scenery wise for me Switzerland has an abundance but then I've been discovering it on and off for 25 years by car and motorcycle and of course most are not caravan friendly so maybe there lies the problem where one has actually explored, i am.staying a week on .lake maggiore this year and from passed experience i already know the people of the ticino canton are a friendly bunch. Austria is nice too no question about that . As for tolls, if one uses the yearly charges Austrian toll roads are vastly more expensive than Switzerland, but for travelers thankfully they offer decent discounts although, still on some stretches there are other tolls on top of the Vignette there are several extra tolls on the A10 .Alrberg being the dearest at 9 euro's the .Katschbergtunnel will cost you € 11 A19, ,A9 A11 all have extra tolls in a place or 2.. some Alpine routes,[ 3 that i know of with spectacular scenery are also toll roads the.. Großglocknerstraße which is indeed spectacular will cost you €33!. .all in all there are at least 13 places/ routes in Austria that have extra tolls attached..first time travelers should be aware .
 
Apr 1, 2010
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Who would use the yearly toll in Austria? not the average tourists. You have the choice you pay the tolls for the Tunnels of which the Price is ridiculously cheap, or there are ways around but not always with a caravan on the back. You would have a job to go over the £80 odd you have to pay for the Swiss Vignette, when with a caravan. The 11 Euros for the Katschberg Tunnel also includes the Tauern Tunnel two very long Tunnels.
You have to pay extra for the Swiss Tunnels too Grand St Bernhard 30. 90 CHF.and the Munt la Schera 38.00 CHF lot more than Austrian Tunnels.which are in Euros
A9-Gleinalm 8. 50.& Bosruck 5.00 A10-Tauern + Katschberg 11. 00. S 16- Arlberg 9. 50.. They are the only tunnel charges when travelling in Austria. The other two are to other countries the Karawanken 7. 20 to Slovenia and Brenner to Italy 9. 00. .
We have been travelling in Germany and Austria for over 40 years. When we go on holiday we do not just travel with the caravan we travel around the areas and explore as we did in Switzerland. We found any train journeys we wished to do and mountain railways very expensive. The Jungfrau being over a £100 per person if you went at the crack of dawn.

Don;t be afraid to go to Austria or Germany they are two of the cheapest countries to visit for Fuel especially diesel, Eating out, Food in the shops, Clothing and Visitor Attractions. Most areas and campsites give you discount cards to use for Attractions and Rail/Bus Fares..

DianneT
 
Aug 11, 2010
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DianneT said:
Who would use the yearly toll in Austria? not the average tourists. You have the choice you pay the tolls for the Tunnels of which the Price is ridiculously cheap, or there are ways around but not always with a caravan on the back. You would have a job to go over the £80 odd you have to pay for the Swiss Vignette, when with a caravan. The 11 Euros for the Katschberg Tunnel also includes the Tauern Tunnel two very long Tunnels.
You have to pay extra for the Swiss Tunnels too Grand St Bernhard 30. 90 CHF.and the Munt la Schera 38.00 CHF lot more than Austrian Tunnels.which are in Euros
A9-Gleinalm 8. 50.& Bosruck 5.00 A10-Tauern + Katschberg 11. 00. S 16- Arlberg 9. 50.. They are the only tunnel charges when travelling in Austria. The other two are to other countries the Karawanken 7. 20 to Slovenia and Brenner to Italy 9. 00. .
We have been travelling in Germany and Austria for over 40 years. When we go on holiday we do not just travel with the caravan we travel around the areas and explore as we did in Switzerland. We found any train journeys we wished to do and mountain railways very expensive. The Jungfrau being over a £100 per person if you went at the crack of dawn.

Don;t be afraid to go to Austria or Germany they are two of the cheapest countries to visit for Fuel especially diesel, Eating out, Food in the shops, Clothing and Visitor Attractions. Most areas and campsites give you discount cards to use for Attractions and Rail/Bus Fares..

DianneT
I don't believe you can compare what is now a regional route like The gran st Bernard that links Switzerland to Italy and is far less used than say 40 odd years ago, to the Austrian extra toll routes on major motorways, i mentioned that you could well come across just touring Austria, as i did. has anyone on here towed up the Gran san bernard route say in the past 20 years? given the route options available? its off the beaten track! as is The munt le schera awesome route don't you agree and the unlined tunnel one way traffic changing hourly or when i used it on a Saturday morning having to wait nearly 2.5 hours , obviously i wasn't towing be warned its 2,5 m wide spooky again anyone every used this route? possibly so as its good for the cheapest fuel and many goods in all of western Europe. again it takes you into Italy and is only good if you are going into duty free livigno or to see the switz dam that the tunnel was build for so again hardly a toll route that one could use to make a comparison to the extra tolls that apply on some major Austrian motorways and dare i say, I've never come across anyone on here mentioning those extra Austrian motorway tolls , surely it is useful to give people the whole picture? .. like i said Austria's a nice place i wont knock it , i wont knock any place but personally i like Switzerland more . ps we did the bernina express 2 years ago tirano to chur and back absolutely awesome and i don't even like railways .sometimes the cost is well worth it quality costs!
PS the switz vignetter is not £80 for 2 ,at todays rate its £62 even with the pound crashing.!!!.
 
Nov 16, 2015
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Went over to Switzerland in April, this year Vignette, is 40 CHF, about 29 £. But given the way of getting around Switzerland without using motorways, its worth the money. Using the Gothard tunnel there are no extra tolls going through int Italy. . We stayed south of Zurich in Pffacicon, and its cheaper to drive with three people, to Constance in Germany than stay local, for lunch. 55 miles. €35. As to CHF 200. And tastes a lot better. Eaating out in Switzerland , use the bakeries, good food wine and beer.
Lovely place but nothing like the Karakoram mountains where I used to work.
But I am now retired. Yeaheee.
 
Apr 1, 2010
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No doubt about it Switzerland is a very expensive country 38.50 Euro's for Car and same for Caravan = 77 Euro's is still a lot to pay to use the Motorways in a country, Most British Tourists only visit these countries for 1 week to 6 weeks when the Vignette for Austria is only 8.80 Euro's for 10 days and 25. 70 for 2 months. All details for Tunnel charges are on ASFINAG website the Road Authority for Austria and they are well advertised.

Fuel is another expensive item.
Swiss Diesel 1,25 Euro's. Austrian 1.008 Euro's.
Petrol 1.28 1.108

Eating out costs an arm and a leg
.
 
Nov 16, 2015
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Fuel costs, you have travelled so far so is the difference that much?. Vignettets, I use the sanoff tolling as we use the paege routess. And have the Swiss yearly one , we tour so we pay.
 
Aug 11, 2010
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DianneT said:
No doubt about it Switzerland is a very expensive country 38.50 Euro's for Car and same for Caravan = 77 Euro's is still a lot to pay to use the Motorways in a country, Most British Tourists only visit these countries for 1 week to 6 weeks when the Vignette for Austria is only 8.80 Euro's for 10 days and 25. 70 for 2 months. All details for Tunnel charges are on ASFINAG website the Road Authority for Austria and they are well advertised.

Fuel is another expensive item.
Swiss Diesel 1,25 Euro's. Austrian 1.008 Euro's.
Petrol 1.28 1.108

Eating out costs an arm and a leg
.
First point why on a thread about Switzerland not Austria is Switzerland being slated ? and compared to Austria? second point why would anybody buy a Switz vignette in Euro's! when the currency in Switzerland is Swiss Francs and i stated the proper rate pounds to Swf... earlier.. incidentally the Euro is at 1.14 today which means it would cost 70 Euro's and not 77 as stated above.but atleast its less than the £80 quoted earlier .both your toll prices you gave for the 2 swiss toll tunnels are incorrect one is for a 18 tonne lorry not for a caravan, . Its a positive thing to inform travelers as to what to expect so maybe one should mention that fuel is cheaper in Switzerland than back here in the UK given your own figures , i mean at the end of the day one can only compare prices with those you have back home. nobody has ever claimed Switzerland was cheap, fine so some don't like it each to their own.. bare in mind the state of Luxembourg there is an area named little Switzerland, because of its alpine look note its not called little Austria .enough said really... oh PS you might want to look at the league of shame crime rate for 2015.... not pretty reading the UK tops it Austria comes second followed by South Africa.....!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Dec 6, 2013
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Well DianneT, you've certainly sold Austria to us - maybe next year - but I'm really glad we went to Switzerland. The Jungfrau region in particular is somewhere that I had been wanting to visit for a long time and I loved it even more than I thought I would. There's no getting away from the fact that it isn't cheap but that's one of the reasons why we took a caravan instead of flying and paying for accommodation. The scenery is so spectacular and the air so pure that I wonder if God spends time looking at it and thinking 'How did I get the rest of the world so wrong'? As i said before, it's somewhere that everyone should visit at least once before they die.

One day when I've finished going through the hundreds of photos we've taken of this amazing country, I might even try and put an article together ...
 
Apr 1, 2010
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Hi SamandRose Have you had a look at my website as in my signature.below. If you have any questions or need any help please contact me will be pleased to help with areas to visit, routes and campsites. New sites visited on this years trip are listed on the Trip page but I have not updated the Campsites pages for Belgium or Germany yet..

Travelling through Germany is a good way to go to Austria another wonderful country with so many lovely and picturesque areas to visit.
 

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