A visit to beautiful Zurich, Switzerland
Published on: Tuesday, January 22, 2019
ZURICH: “Then one day, when you least expect it, the great adventure finds you.” This quote by Scottish actor and director Ewan McGregor perfectly sums up my recent trip to Zurich, Switzerland, with two grandmothers and a toddler in tow.
I was assigned to cover a one-day conference on antivirus in Zurich in November and I had to bring along my son Naqib, who is almost two years old and is 100 percent breastfed, on the trip.
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As my husband was unable to join me due to his tight work schedule, my mother, Roseni Suliman, 66, volunteered to come with me to take care of my son. With my mother, a retired nurse, tagging along, I decided to extend my trip to Switzerland to eight days from the initial three days as it was my mother’s first trip to Europe.
Then, my mother-in-law, Faridah A. Rahman, 64, agreed to jump on the bandwagon as she had rarely been out of Malaysia and was thrilled at the prospect of seeing the natural beauty of Switzerland.
Before the trip, I constantly monitored the weather in Zurich to ensure that we, including young Naqib, went there all prepared as the temperature could fall to a range of between 10 to two degrees Celsius.
In Zurich, we stayed at the beautiful Marriot Hotel, located at Neumühlequai Road and also the conference venue, and my room had pleasant views of the Limmat river and Platzspitz park.
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While I was busy at the conference, my mother took the opportunity to take a stroll in the park and enjoy endless cups of latte, something she had never enjoyed back in Kuala Lumpur.
Once the conference ended, we immediately left our extra baggage at a homestay in Zurich, booked in advance via online hospitality service provider Airbnb, and got ready for our trip to Lütschental and later to Jungfraujoch in the Bernese Alps, also referred to as the Top of Europe.
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First, we proceeded to Zurich’s main train station, also known as Zurich Haupbanhof, where I purchased second-class return tickets for my group to Lütschental on the spot, which cost me around 157 Swiss francs per person (RM650). It would have been cheaper if bought online.
On board the train, we accidentally went to the first-class compartment and were taken aback when some locals who were seated there refused to let us sit by placing their luggage and bags on the seats. Well, things were soon sorted out when the ticket inspector came around and took us to our rightful seats. But talk about discrimination!
The train journey to Lütschental took two and a half hours. Lütschental is a village and municipality in the Interlaken-Oberhasli administrative district in the canton of Bern.
We reached there around 5 p.m. and being almost winter, it was already dark. Since I did not have a local SIM card, I could not contact the owner of the homestay that I had booked for us to stay. Thankfully, the owner noticed our presence and took us to our accommodation.
Our homestay was located across the Lütschental train station, overlooking beautiful mountains and a river with crystal-clear water.
I also discovered that my mother-in-law has a knack for reading maps and she helped us to find our way around when we went sightseeing.
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