Mice in Switzerland, the Other Cheese Country! (page 2 of 19)

Hello,

Still, check if you need an environmental sticker on the German side (Umweltplakette)...

What's this sticker about? Is it valid throughout Germany? Where do we check that?

I have the French Crit'Air sticker.

Yeah, I’d love to see a bit of Germany.

For now, I’m still looking for a home swap—there’s not much left. Waiting for a reply in Switzerland.

If we have to go with Airbnb unless we find a great deal, we’ll stay for a shorter time.

Plus, it’ll all depend on the weather.

This summer’s been pretty awful!

We’d like to spend a few more days between Gruyères and Montreux to visit the cheese dairy and the chocolate factory! !

So I’m taking the opportunity to talk about Gruyères!

It was obviously the mice’s dream to go there, but we still haven’t visited the cheese factory 🧀

We visited the castle, which was pretty nice, and offered lovely views of the surrounding mountains. And the surprising Giger Museum! I really wanted to see this curiosity, which you wouldn’t necessarily expect to find in a small medieval village perched in the mountains!

The mice weren’t scared of Alien 🧀

Of course, we stopped by the Giger Bar across the street to taste the meringues with Gruyère double cream! Okay, I’m not a huge fan of that kind of thing, but I like trying local specialties.

Not many people in the bar, surprisingly!

Obviously, the village is super cute but tiny.

It’s mostly the setting that’s stunning! We really enjoyed the scenery!

By the way, there’s a great view from the Giger Museum, right over the village!

It’s obviously very touristy, but we knew that.

Lots of Asians and Spanish speakers.

People come from all over the world to discover Gruyères 🧀

We waited until early evening to stroll through the village again while the tourists were at restaurants! We even chatted with a shopkeeper... who was French! And his Polish wife, to talk a bit about life in Switzerland. As shopkeepers, they prefer it here. But his wife struggles a bit with xenophobia because of her Polish accent. Still, she feels safer here than in France as a woman. Anyway, Gruyères is a village, and villages have their own unique mentalities everywhere...

We also regularly chatted with waitresses and shopkeepers. No language barrier—so convenient!

The few French people living there generally like it and have a better purchasing power than in France, despite a higher cost of living. Salaries make up for it. Servers mentioned being treated better by their bosses here.

We talked to an Indian shopkeeper (I didn’t ask if she was born in Switzerland...), who told us about the somewhat peculiar mentality—again, it’s a village. Everyone watches everyone else, and there’s a noise curfew in the evenings.

Since I sorted the photos, I’m posting before it becomes a nightmare to find them in my smartphone folder...

Visiting Fribourg, a lovely local town!

We had the Fribourg City Card with several museums included, so the visit stretched over two days.

But it kinda annoyed me—because of the opening hours and days for some places, we ended up doing our visits when it was 😕nice out... And explored the city’s outdoor spots with unpredictable weather!

No one’s fault, but in the moment, I felt it was a bit of a waste...

We visited the Kaeserberg railway model (my partner really wanted to go! And I found it pretty cool too), the Tinguely Space, the Museum of Art and History (nice but not my favorite), the 1606 city model, and the small puppet museum.

A few hiccups with parking: when it came time to pay the meter, we realized it doesn’t take cards—unlike in Gruyères... We didn’t have Swiss Francs 🤦 And it doesn’t give change...

Had to register on a website, enter our card number, and download the app. Took forever to pay...

This Friday was free because it was a holiday, so we parked in the lower town near the model.

After visiting the two museums in the area, we took a nice walk and headed up to the upper town to see the stunning cathedral. Special mention to the stained glass by Mehoffer, a Polish artist I really like—and didn’t expect to find here!

Then we tried to outrun a storm... We took refuge in a crêperie, but the sun never really came back ☔

Ruined the photos from the viewpoints! Oh well...

Fun experience taking the funicular to go back down...

Really lovely town overall!

Not much going on this time of year, though...'

If you ask me, they don’t care about the Crit'Air sticker—they want their own... 😛

I guess it must be around somewhere...

Hi Jean Michel, So the Umweltplakette is kind of my specialty 🙂. It’s an "environmental" sticker, mandatory in certain urban zones—unevenly distributed across Germany, mostly in areas with deep hostility toward cars, especially in the Ruhr region. I bought mine online from the Berlin state for around 6 euros, but now lots of people are flipping them and selling them for 15 or 20 euros. You can find them at technical inspection centers in Germany, like De..a. You’re not risking much if you don’t have one—there’s no video enforcement, I think it’s even illegal in Germany, and the chances of someone bothering to fine you (which you won’t pay anyway) are slim…

The zones are listed here: https://www.adac.de/verkehr/tanken-kraftstoff-antrieb/fahrverbote-umweltzonen/umweltplaketten/ https://gis.uba.de/website/umweltzonen/index.php#uwz (Be careful when choosing sites—some scare you and lie just to sell you one)

The number of zones is dropping, with some regularly being removed.

Michel

I bought mine ages ago on the TCS website; you should be able to find it at Dekra when you're there...

I’d avoided naming the brand. Yeah, over 20 € for something that’s worth 6 €.

Michel

I recommend visiting Bern. Switzerland’s capital is really lovely and pleasant to explore with its arcades—so no problem if it rains. You can climb the cathedral tower, the Münster, for a great view. The Federal Palace tour is also interesting and free, I think. It’s best to book ahead.

The Rhine Falls are lit up in the evening.

These cities are beautiful: Schaffhausen, Lucerne, Solothurn, and Stein am Rhein. Stein am Rhein is small, and you can combine this visit with Kreuzlingen and Constance, then take the ferry to Meersburg, Überlingen, or Lindau.

St. Gallen’s old town is worth seeing, especially its library.

If I remember correctly, I had to pay about 12 francs back then, and I couldn’t care less—I don’t want to waste time on-site... I got a green one, so I don’t worry about it at all anymore, their signs, etc. That was the point, after all...

As long as no rock smashes the windshield! From experience, a traveler who wants to cross Germany with one or two stops doesn’t really feel like stopping at a garage—especially since it’d have to be open that day. And in Germany, that’s far from guaranteed. Buying online is still a great deal, and it was possible—and easy—before some people, no doubt, got their hands on the loot.

Michel

Yeah, thanks for the story about the vignette. Actually, it’s a bit like in France where I’ve never needed one either. I’ll never go back to Germany, so that’s not an issue for me. Still, I’ll check about Switzerland since I’m going there in two weeks. I won’t be in any big cities—just around Lake Neuchâtel...

In Switzerland, I think it's very limited and only during pollution peaks. https://www.touring.be/fr/articles/lez-suisse

Michel

In theory, my car insurance reimburses windshield stickers. I’ve taken some hits from rocks, but they were small ones—windshield repaired, not replaced...

In Geneva, the French Crit'Air sticker is accepted, but I don’t know about elsewhere. No risk of a pollution peak in two weeks; it’s usually in winter...

I don't think we'll extend...

The return of the mouse is both hilarious and comforting. It feels like rediscovering the VoyageForum of a past that isn’t actually so distant.

A slight clash of personalities with the Swiss Germans? 😛

A little mood incompatibility with the German Swiss? 😛

I’m not there yet, so I don’t know!

Yesterday was Lausanne! Ouchy in the sun, the Olympic Museum, then the old town with gray weather and a bit of fine rain at one point. Long live summer! 🤪

The view from the shores of Lake Geneva is really beautiful. The few streets in the old town are pretty, as is the cathedral—though it was just okay afterward. We took the metro, which is a curiosity given the slope. Walked back down to save money 😁—4 € for a ticket is fine for going up, but not for coming down...