Lugano, Switzerland (updated, images added)

GPS Coordinates of the campground: 45.99549N 8.90917E

We had heard that the climate in Lugano is mild and favorable - that the city has Mediterranean winds and it doesn't snow. Bearing this in mind, we set out to spend some time in the Italian Switzerland (and why not? we've spent plenty of time in French and German regions of Switzerland).

A note on the drive - I wish I had taken pictures. We had a great freeway system to climb the mountains, coming in from Germany. Beautiful views. Some snow, but the roadway was clear and wet. At certain parts, trucks must pull off and they are then queued back on the roadway - presumably this helps keep traffic backups to a minimum. Once we reached the peak and started the downward descent, the nice wide highway remained, but suddenly we had a series of serious switchbacks to deal with. At certain points, I could look out the side window and see the bridge we had just descended to my right! I don't really like this feeling and the road signs, showin trucks with their engines on fire didn't help to calm my nerves. Alas, engine braking and all, we make the descent just fine and all is well. =)

We stopped for the night in Chur - the oldest Swiss city (according to the signpost as you reach the city limits). The ground was wet and we tentatively found a spot to stay in a very crowded campground for 47 chf per night. Ouch. Welcome back to Switzerland. We had Internet access at the gate, but not at our parking spot. Bummer. We didn't do much here - the cost to stay is pretty prohibitive given that we have our own facilities and really just need power and a parking spot. I did enjoy a nice jog along the river - with the Swiss military using the side of the mountain as a firing range. And, I was saddened to hear that they used to have snow - but not for the past 15 years. Global warming.

On to Lugano. There are no campgrounds in Lugano, per sey. The nearest (and the only one open in winter) was TCS Camping La Piodella just outside of Agno. Steep price again - 47 chf per night. Summer rates are up to 60chf and vary depending on proximity to the lake. It's not that we mind paying to camp; but the facilities for which we are paying are closed for the season (swimming pools, tennis, boating, beach). Even the playground was closed - which we ignored and let the kids play anyway. On the funny side, walking to the shopping plaza, we found Sophie Lounge outside of the World Trade Center.

We came this far, we must see Lugano (tourist site is here) and see what all the fuss was about. Daytime weather was nice, warmer than Munich. Nights were frosty. Internet access was nill - so what is there to research? Nothing.

We embarked on a train from Agno and disembarked about 20-minutes later in Lugano. Where to go now? The train tracks literally dead-end and while you can see the town below, it's not entirely obvious how to get there. Crossing the street (up hill), we found the train station and fumbling our way around, managed to find the funicular that takes travelers down the mountain, to Lugano. Cool!


The city is comprised of narrow streets and tall buildings, much as one anticipates from European cities. We wandered a bit and found our way to the lake front promenade. Such a beautiful day and so nice to stroll along the lake, enjoying the scenery. Portions of the walkway contain a sculpture garden to enjoy as well. At some point, we stopped for our brown-bag lunch and felt a bit the tourist stand-outs as people walking by were mostly decked out in high fashion. Here we were, eating a picnic lunch, two kids running around like crazy, enjoying the beauty of the area. Of course, this is when I finally noticed how terribly dirty Megan's light pink jacket is. (sign) I especially loved the guy who was wearing a pristine suite, but had a knit Nike cap on his head! Such a contrast in statements - made me giggle. We saw plenty of fur and high heels.



Left: View from the lake front promenade, facing the city
Right: View from the lake front promenade, facing the mountains

Later, we wandered through what is probably the "Rodeo Drive" equivalent. With Louis Voitton commanding your attention on the corner, the shops we browsed were all for the rich and famous. One of the nice things about wandering these cities in low-season is there are no other tourists around to crowd us out or make me feel out of place. Short of a few security guards outside a jewellery store, I don't think we saw another shopper in the district. I dared purchase post cards along the way ... they are some of the most expensive post cards yet. About 2,00 EUR per post card, including postage.

We visited three churches - the second only briefly as it appeared worship services were in process. The first was deserted when we entered and we were overwhelmed with the frescos. And so, we were free to wander Di Santa Maria Degli Angeli A Lugano church. This church was started in 1490 and completed in 1499. It contains a fresco that details the history of the Ticino region on the interior walls as well as very ornate religious paintings. (dates are provided on the Italian tourist site but I was unable to translate the full history of the church into English. Sometimes, Bablefish just doesn't work its magic.)

The third church we visited was an accidental find. By this time, we're tired and ready to go home for dinner. Coming upon the funicular again, we peeked around the corner and saw the street running up hill, in parrallel. Megan was bargaining hard to take the funicular again. Dan and I thought we should take the street path. Grown ups win on this one - though she gave us "frowny" faces the entire walk up. Picture to the right: tryin to give perspective to the hill we walked up.

Imagine our surprise to see the beautiful church when we reached the top of the hill! We basically walked right in to Cattedrale San Lorenzo. From our reading, we see the church was referred to as early as 818 with the facade errected in the 1500's. We explored the church in detail, again, we were virtually the only people there and it was simply marvelous. So many details to study, so little time (and hey, it would help if we spoke the language - it's simply not all in English!)

Right: One view of the Cathedrale, as you approach

Lower Left: As you turn the corner, the view changes
Lower Right: View of the bright colors and details of the altar (no, I didn't use flash)

Bottom: View of the landscape upon exiting the Cathedrale

Steckborn, Switzerland

Feeling like we've all but exhausted our stay in Winterthur, we finally decided to move on. Looking through the Reisemobile Bode Atlas book, we found a Stellplatz in nearby Steckborn for only 12 chf per night (vs. the 22 chf at the campground in Winterthur). Why not? Instant savings of 10 chf per night can't be disputed - even if the dump station is 1.3 km from the parking lot.



An easy 30-minutes drive (after filling up propane in Winterthur where there is a huge facility for propane, helium and other gasses), we arrived in a sleepy town on the edge of the Boden See. Across the water is Germany, where we're planning to head for the winter holidays.



The town is tiny and very old (from the 1400's). Most recognizable to me is the Bernina manufacturing facility on the outskirts of town. If I felt more confident in my German, I'd be planning a visit to their "Creative Center" for some lessons.



Our first night in town, there was a knock on the door and a visitor offered us a bottle of wine. His wife is from Paris, and she told him to bring the Americans some "good" wine! Very sweet of them. We chatted a bit and expressed an interest in having them visit us again - which resulted in a dinner invitation to their home for the Swiss specialty, fondue! We're looking forward to an enlightening evening.



We were met by another American in town, and enjoyed a nice conversation at the marina. It's nice to be able to speak one's native language. After wandering through town for one afternoon, I felt like the entire town (population 3,000) must know us! Cute town and everyone we've met has been super friendly.





Pictures from the area:

Bernina Factory:

Church:


Center of the city:


City Hall:



View from Marina:

Brrr! Winterthur, Switzerland

Still here in Winterthur, probably will be for another week. The campground is rather pleasant - quiet, clean and folks here are very friendly. I think the entire campground came out to greet us when we pulled in. To give them credit, the site is not really laid out for a vehicle of our size; neither is the lane one must take to get here (think "alley" size). Most speak English – all speak German. Nice! I feel like we can understand our surroundings again.

We’ve spent a lot of time wandering the city and not doing much else (well, besides feeding the ducks that seem to be at virtually every campground we've visited. I'm starting to think they are following us).

Winterthur is a cute little town and has a lot to offer visitors in all seasons. On the agenda for this weekend: a marionette show (in German), a family concert (free!), the kid's science museum and maybe the “winter mässi” (mässi = fair) and hopefully some winter holiday festivities. Things are gearing up for the holidays with the decorative street lights hung; the Christmas trees up (there’s about one on every block in the center of town) and the stores decked out with trimmings of the season. Megan and I decided we really liked this non-traditional Christmas tree in the window of a nearby store (see right). Megan especially was excited about the oversized butterflies on the tree!

This is an interesting country – many of you may know there are 3 official languages: German, French and Italian. However, there’s no indication of what language each city speaks. So we find ourselves wondering how it’s determined and by whom. The folks we encountered in the French region did not speak German and definitely did not speak English (something we knew we would encounter in France, but in Switzerland?). Here in the cities that speak German, folks appear on the surface more friendly and they want to speak English! We’ve had more conversations with people from the area in Winterthur than in our travels to date. (Note: It's Swiss German - so I still miss a lot of the context sometimes. One mom I talked to told me that the kids are now being taught "high" German (aka: formal) in schools.)

On a whim, we jumped on a bus to the “Gürze Markt” – based on an advertisement on said bus. The advertisement listed MediaMarkt, Coop “bau and hobby” (which would be building and hobby supplies) and a few other stores. We were looking for a hardware store. We found the Coop complex (this is the primary grocery brand over here… this particular one was a huge store with sub-stores and a hardware/hobby store surrounding it). Not finding what we needed, we wandered out and looked around the streets…. Hmmm. Couldn’t see any sign of any other significant consumer stores. Later that evening, at the Migros (the other grocery store) near us, I found an ad for Obi (large hardware store) – and, guess where it was? Just about 2 blocks from where we were earlier in the day. Sometimes, you can’t see the forest for the trees (especially true if you don't know the name of the forest...we only saw Obi stores in Germany). The morale of the story is – the city centers seem to have the more boutique shopping and you have to wander out to more industrial areas for the hardware or other specialty stores. I know the same is probably true in Seattle, but I’m so used to our mass merchant, big boxed stores – with several of each in the shopping areas. Of course, it could just be that I’m used to having a car and being able to drive around, wandering a bit vs. hoping on/off a bus and hoofing it. =)

On the RV side of the house…
Dan took on the project of wrangling together a grey water drain hose. For a few bucks and an hour or so of work, we can now stretch a hose over to the dump station and empty our shower/dishes water. This saves us about 50% of the movement of the RV (we were needing to move about every 2-days to empty tanks). Though if we stay still too long, we might just freeze in place (there's about an inch of ice on the roof already).

Weather is very crisp but this city is only infrequently graced by snow (yeah!). Lows are in the mid-20’s and highs in the mid-30’s. A little chilly. During Dan’s outing to the hardware store today, he also found a propane filling station – this is GREAT news for us as it’s less than 5km away and we are definitely using the propane to stay warm these days. For others considering this trip, we recommend an electric oil heater (looks like a radiator) and a fan to help circulate air. (We had a little 12v fan that runs off a cigarette lighter, but it met an untimely death under someone’s foot.)

Condensation is a daily battle. We welcome any input or ideas from other folks who overwintered in a cold climate in their motorhome. We have the calcium carbonate blocks, intended for dehumidification in boats and RVs. They can't compete very well with a freezing window though, so aren't the most effective. We have been experimenting with running the AC and fans each day. The best solution seems to be to air the unit out early in the morning… which is not the most pleasant of exercises as we are all just crawling out of our warm, cozy beds. We’re also pulling the bedroom slide in at night to help minimize the amount of surface area exposed to the cold air.

The holidays…
The winter holidays are coming quickly and we are going to start asking around for local customs. We see bags of shelled peanuts mixed with candy in the stores (presumably peanuts for the reindeer and candy for the little guy?) as well as long sticks formed in the shape of a broom with candy tied to it. Add in the delightful display of all sorts of Christmas cookies and cakes and I'm wondering how we'll survive the cold, cold winter and NOT gain about 30lb each on all the yummy goodies.

Will update again in a day or so and let you know how the Marionette show and concert go. Hopefully we'll have some holiday market pictures soon too.

Keep the emails and comments coming. We love hearing from our friends and family - it's like little presents everytime a new message shows up.

Ciao for now!

Sherry, Dan & kids

Winterthur, Switzerland

We're settled in for a week or so in Winterthur, just outside of Zurich. No Internet at the campground - but there is free WIFI (30-min/day) at the local McDonald's. So much for staying away from the big scary man dressed in a clown suit.

For those RV.NET readers - Switzerland has only 7 propane filling stations! One was in Interlaken; the rest are supposedly near Zurich.

That's all for now - will post pics and more later.

Ciao!
The Scherer Familiy

Saint-Blaise, Switzerland

We're enjoying our visit to Saint-Blaise, a charming little village, just outside of Neauchâtel. The marina provides a Euro-Relais spot for motorhomes (basically a parking lot with self-serve station for electricity, water and dumping). We're oversized for the lot, but with virtually no one else here, it's no problem. Our guide book indicates the cost should be 8 CHF per night, but the man at the marina declined to accept payment from me. (Note to other European RV'rs - on one side is the autoroute, on the other train tracks so it has quite a bit of road & train noise.)



The town is quite tiny and everything is closed on Sundays. In addition, most shops are closed from 12/12:30-1:30 or 2:00! We keep wondering how businesses stay alive around here. I guess it's a part of the culture we still need to learn about. We arrived Sunday in dire need of going shopping. No such luck - everything but the bakery was closed! Dan and Megan headed out to get bread and came back with chocolate eclairs! YUM. Photo of the bakery that initiated us to all that is yummy and chocolate:



We've been mostly taking it easy - relaxing a bit and enjoying the scenery in the area. There's a playground at the Marina and the kids love it. Megan is so proud that she can use the rope glide by herself. She was a little scared of them when we left the States. She now loves them! She's growing up so fast - it's amazing to watch her play on the climbing rope structures and mastering how to ride her scooter. She's a great fan of small hills that she can glide down.



I was struck by the sunlight on the back of the church. It looked like the church was glowing and I couldn't help but snap a quick shot. Hopefully we'll visit the inside during our stay here - I'd imagine it's quite beautiful.

2) Sunset at the marina

The temperatures are dropping. It dropped below freezing last night (was 32-degrees outside at 9am this morning) and I think today's high was 45-degrees. So far it only rained one day - we went out for a walk anyway, but it was just plain unpleasant with the wind. The mountains are still hiding behind clouds, though when they peek out, you can definitely see the snow line creeping down.

We're hanging out here for a few days - mostly to get caught up on Megan's schoolwork and to allow for some packages from the US to arrive. We're finally in a spot that is central to shopping and a post office. It's great. We plan to take a day trip to Neauchâtel. Dan's bike was fixed today, so I think we can bike it - the trails are clearly marked from the marina.

We're also looking in to either a day-trip to Bern or we will relocate to a campground closer to Bern. The train from Saint-Blaise is about 40CHF per person for a 50-kilometer trip. Seems kind of expensive for such a short trip - but we may do it anyway given that we are enjoying a relief from campground expenses right now.

Not sure if anyone is reading the blog or not - feel free to post comments, even if it is just to say "hi." We miss our friends and family and love hearing from you and we would be thrilled to meet other travelers as well as folks from the towns we're in or near.

Lausanne, Switzerland

Goal: Find an inexpensive campground with Internet connectivity, near shopping, not in the mountains, and not too far of a drive from Geneva.


Destination: Camping de Vidy, Lausanne - about 1.5 hours drive from Geneva.


Enroute, we found an "outlet" mall with an IKEA! We were actually able to park, though it was a little tight getting in and out of the sub parking lot. We were hopeful that we might pick up some new pants for Dan and perhaps find a good deal on better winter wear. Did I mention that Switzerland is expensive in my last post?


At the "Outlet" stores, a pair of Dockers were still 89 CHF; ski gear was 200+ CHF. The only place we found close to inexpensive pricing was IKEA - where we happily spent about 2 hours wandering around, trying to understand the store directory, which is in French! New housewares in hand, we set out again for Lausanne.


We found the campground with ease and were only confused by the fact that directly in front of the campground was a "Euro-Relais" spot for 20 CHF per night, with the dump/water station nearby. Staying at "Camping de Vidy" would run about 34 CHF per night. Blame it on a launguage misunderstanding or tactics to get customers, someone came out and told us that camping at the Euro-Relais spot was "no longer possible" and that for a 1-week stay, they would give us a good discount - just come back to reception at 6pm. Needless to say, checking in at reception at 6pm resulted in there being no discount - only the 10% for the CCI (camping card international) on the per person rate (e.g. 1.60 CHF/day discount).


Most campgrounds we found in Switzerland charge a fee for the motorhome plus a per person fee. For example, 15 CHF for the motorhome plus 7.50 CHF per person plus 4 CHF for electricity. What's included in that price varies from site to site - most offer a warm restroom and free showers; but we are self-sustained and don't need those accomodations.

Lausanne is a very pretty city as is Ouchy, the area nearest our campground. We took the bus in to a market, but found only 3 stalls - guess it's not as popular in November. =)

Sample food/services pricing:

• Broccoli - 8 CHF per kilo - 1 medium head of broccoli costs about 3.80 CHF


• Chicken - about 10 CHF for 2 small breasts


• Sandwich meats - about 4.00-5.50 CHF for a tiny package (about 6-8 slices) of turkey or ham


• Internet - at the Camping de Vidy is 7CHF per hour or 40 CHF for the day (for comparison, T-Mobile offers 1-month cards in Germany for 20 Euro)


• McDonalds - about 20 EURO for our family in the rest of Europe; closer to 40 CHF in Lausanne

We're starting to miss Costco! And our always-on Internet.


The campground (even though I whined about the price) is right on Lake Geneva and situated among a huge park with extensive biking/running/walking trails. There's an onsite restuarant and grocery store. In the summer, it must be quite the place to enjoy the beautiful surroundings. Now, in the off-season, everything is closed up except for one restroom/shower area near the reception desk and the laundry room.


Mostly hidden in clouds during our stay, the mountain views must be quite beautiful in the summer. Lake Geneva is huge - the largest lake in Central Europe at 224 sq. miles. It's also known for seiches, which are water level fluctuations believed to be caused by atmospheric pressure (Encarta 2007). Was a little eery as I was walking alone along the quiet lake, and suddenly it started rippling but there were no boats in the area. No worries, the campground is more than 5 feet above water level, or is it? =)


Area stores close from 12/12:30-1:30/2:00; food is even more expensive than Geneva - even at the grocery store, and eating out seems cost prohibitive. We found ourselves wondering more than once how people survive in this area. Homes are not cheap (we looked at signs posted in a real estate window - they were 1M CHF and up) and the cost of living, once you have a home seems prohibitive. We're wondering what we are doing wrong - should we be shopping in speciality stores vs. grocery stores?


Everyone is healthy and happy. It's getting colder, but so far, no snow. We spent a day just wandering Lausanne and enjoying the hilly terrain (it's reminiscent of Seattle) and the lovely buildings. Our last day there was windy and it poured rain all day and snow was forecast for some of the mountain regions. Not nice weather at all. We huddled inside except for trips to the laundry room and Dan experimented with baking a cake... yummy way to spend an otherwise dreary day.

Pictures:

1) Cathedral de Lausanne

2) Entrance to the Cathedral

3) Inside the Cathedral - art students were sketching, light was filtering through gorgeous stained glass windows and someone was practicing the Organ. Beautiful.

4) Overlooking Lausanne from the sitting area outside the Cathedral

Geneva, Switzerland

We arrived safely in Switzerland - spent two days in Geneva at Camping du Bois. We would have liked to spend more time, but the campground didn't work well for our situation. It was really too bad - the campground facilities were nice and we were able to park across the road from a fantastic playground. However, it was a 25-minute walk to the bus (further to the closest grocery store) and another 20-minutes or so to Geneva by bus. In addition, the campground's Internect connection wasn't working correctly. We could see 4 antennas, but weren't able to connect. The manager of the site was not willing to discuss it further than to indicate he knew it was a problem, and they were in "test" mode.

Prices are expensive - lunch at a Thai resturant ran us 18 CHF per plate. With beverages and rice, the meal was over 70CHF for the family. Yikes! The city has some really pretty buildings - and great history. We were intent on fixing Dan's bike. We finally found the bike shop, only to discover they were closed for the day.

At 45 CHF (Swiss Franc) a night for camping with no Internet access, it was time to move on.

Pictures:

1) Playground at the campside - look at that slide!

2) Dan initiating the girls to the slide

3) Typical picture of Geneva