Mice in Switzerland, the Other Cheese Country!

I'm starting my first travel journal since VF reopened!

This will mostly be to share my impressions and some photos, with a few days' delay, but I'm starting this journal while I'm still here.

First, I'd like to thank those who helped me prepare for this trip.

I was able to organize this stay in one of the most expensive countries in the world thanks to the home-exchange principle. Not necessarily a direct swap, but through a points system, which is more practical for choosing where you want to go without it having to be a reciprocal exchange.

For this trip, there will already be two different accommodations. We'll see how it goes after that.

The first place is near Yverdon-les-Bains, close to Lake Neuchâtel.

So, we're going to explore this area!

We arrived under capricious weather that won’t leave us for the next few days!

We had dinner at a pizzeria recommended by *Le Routard* in Yverdon, then took a little nighttime stroll through the town center before heading inland to settle into our accommodation.

We discovered a very large, quiet house—and especially the cat that stayed behind! Funny for a couple of mice! He’ll be sleeping with us 😹

The next day, we discovered the lovely little town of Morat, which was recommended on VF.

Murten in German, with 9,000 inhabitants, is officially German-speaking. In practice, everything was written in both languages.

Before exploring the town, we stopped at the top of Mont Vully, between Lake Morat and Lake Neuchâtel (much larger!).

A clearer view of Lake Morat.





Next up, Morat!

This charming medieval town by the lake is surrounded by ramparts on one side.

They’re freely accessible, offering a lovely view!







Then we strolled through the center. It’s cute, even if it’s not very big!



The weather turned cloudy, and rain started. We took a cappuccino break while waiting. The rain stopped after a while, and we continued our walk.





We did some shopping at the local Coop, and when we came out, it was pouring! We finally found a restaurant serving fondues, and given the weather, we couldn’t resist!

Hi there, I happen to be heading to Yverdon in two weeks. Even though I won’t be spending much time in the cities since I’m more focused on the hikes possible in the area, I’ll still follow your travel journal. You didn’t have much luck with the weather... To think it’s been so hot until just a few days ago! Well, in the southern Vercors, just a few drops at night. A few years ago in the Valais around August 15th, it was 8°C in the evening, and we were having raclette outside... with our mountain jackets on! We’d left home with 32°C...

Always interesting to hear impressions about my Swiss neighbors. Especially a mouse in the land of cheese! I'm off! !

Thanks to all of you!

Yeah, the weather isn’t great right now—it’s been raining every day.

It *should* get better starting tomorrow, but we’ll see.

So, the viewpoints aren’t exactly ideal at the moment...

That said, I don’t love it when it hits 35 °C either 🏴‍☠️

I’m joining in with pleasure too! 🙂

We’ll have to wait for the good weather 🐭

We’ll have to wait for good weather again 🐙

14°C this morning on my way to work—what a lovely November day 😉

Maybe next time for the good weather 🐸

Same for us in Slovenia. Today, two 10 km hikes, unfortunately in the rain.😕

Oh, in this case, I don’t wander around in the rain as much! I’m like cats—I don’t like it 😺

Finally, a really beautiful day! With the landscapes I’ve been dreaming of!

It’s not chronological, but I’m posting while it’s still fresh!

Visit to Chillon Castle and walks along Lake Geneva.

The road to get there already offers some gorgeous scenery.

These mountains are impressive!

Coming from the French Riviera, it reminds me a bit of the area, but with a lake. And the mountains are everywhere!







The castle is pretty cool! We spend time taking photos at our own pace since it’s crowded. The audio guide is interesting.







The views from the keep are just stunning! I’ll admit, that’s what impressed me the most.









We continue with a walk along Lake Geneva to admire the view of the mountains... and the castle!

After that, we went to Montreux—or more precisely, Clarens, a neighborhood in Montreux that Rousseau chose for his novel *Julie, or the New Heloise*.

Actually, we didn’t find a spot in central Montreux, and we weren’t in the mood to stress about it...

Driving through Montreux 😏 didn’t really inspire us...

We mostly wanted to enjoy the view!

So we took a walk from Clarens, and it was gorgeous!









It’s so nice to have beautiful landscapes in the sun 😏

Honestly, I think everything’s been beautiful since I arrived! Even when it’s gray.

But I *loved* the views of Lake Geneva. The day before, we’d seen the Lavaux terraces.

Hi there,

Just in case, for Miranda or others, every Saturday in August the parking at this shopping center in Geneva is free...

https://www.planete-charmilles.ch/

Hi there,

Just in case, for Miranda or others, every Saturday in August the parking at this shopping center in Geneva is free...

https://www.planete-charmilles.ch/

Unlimited for the day?

For Miranda, love the photos! I’m checking out your post closely—I’ll admit that every time I go to Sion, the view of the lake from the highway is still such a treat.

I thought of you yesterday while heading off on vacation—I passed by Lake Neuchâtel. I also personally love the La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle area. Le Locle is 50 km from Yverdon if you're ever in the area. As always, it’s soccer (and the Swiss Cup for small villages) that brought me to these charming little towns!

Hello,

Yeah, usually it's only the last Saturday of the month...

You buy a ticket at the entrance. Before leaving, you scan it in the machine, which says 0 francs...

Noting it down, but Geneva isn’t on the agenda for now...

Last day here at this accommodation tomorrow.

We’ll have seen Gruyères and Fribourg!

Tricky weather...

Supposed to be Lausanne tomorrow! Right now, we’re back in Estavayer-le-Lac for the fireworks.

For the second accommodation, priority is Lucerne and Thun.

I’m looking for another place to extend the stay—I’d love to see the Rhine Falls and Stein am Rhein!

So far, the people are friendly. We’ll see if it’s the same in German-speaking Switzerland.

Well, I was really disappointed by the Swiss organization! Stuck for 25 minutes just to get out of the parking lot, with zero traffic control... Sure, there was a festival, but I’ve never seen anything like it—even after a big concert! 😮

We weren’t expecting that... For 10 minutes of fireworks, it really wasn’t worth it...

Okay, so we were in Estavayer-le-Lac the day after Morat.

The weather was pretty sunny that day!

We took a little stroll around the town—it’s super cute!

We visited the municipal museum, mainly to see the surprising frog collection 😮

This year, the keep is exceptionally open to the public—and for free, so we took advantage! The view is gorgeous, of course!

Then we went for a walk by the lake, which is just below.

The area is really nice. I love walking by the water! It reminded me a bit of my trip to Stockholm the year before, with water everywhere! You can see quite a few little wooden houses along the lake.

Note: Since adding photos to the forum from a smartphone is such a pain, I’m sorry but I’ll keep it to a minimum. Maybe the forum should get a bit of an update…

Hello,

Looking for accommodation in nearby Germany will probably be cheaper... 😛

If you're heading east, Schaffhausen, etc., try staying in Konstanz. Lake Constance is really beautiful. A lovely spot: Mainau Island!

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...

The return of the mouse is both hilarious and comforting. It feels like rediscovering your old VoyageForum from a time that isn't actually that far away.

I don't know how I should take this 🤔

A few photos

The day after our visit to Estavayer-le-lac, the weather was really awful 😅

We weren’t even motivated to go out because of the non-stop rain. We stayed cozy in the house with the cat (the irony for a couple of mice 😏)

We got motivated after a break in the clouds. Off to Yverdon-les-Bains, which we’d only seen at night when we arrived.

The plan was to take a walk between showers and grab a coffee break.

Of course, a huge downpour just as we arrive 😂

Then it calms down, so we explore the little town center and its church.

It’s cute! A bit of an Italian vibe...

Of course, another big downpour, so we stop for a snack in a cozy tea salon.

One of the cakes was way too sweet—almost inedible for us 😅 The rum baba wasn’t great either.

The rain stops, and the sun comes out! Off to the lakeside, a little further away.

Like in Estavayer-le-lac, it was pretty nice, and the view was lovely.

We check out the Menhirs. Yes, there are menhirs in Switzerland!

The sky clouds over, so between the menhirs and the weather, it feels like we’re in Brittany!

Back to the center in a light drizzle. I’d spotted an Ethiopian restaurant on The Fork. A nice change, so we go!

The food was really good, and the welcome was top-notch. We chatted a bit with the waitress.

That’s it!

I’d say Yverdon wasn’t necessarily our top priority, but since we were nearby... It’s actually pretty charming.

Ah, the mice really enjoyed the pubs in the Lausanne metro and train station! 🐭😆

Little anecdote: when leaving the accommodation, we had to take out the trash. Well, the regular trash in the communal bin (with the taxed bag) and the glass in the container. I saw that it’s forbidden to throw out trash in the evening and on Sundays because it can make noise 😮

Oh well, had to take it out anyway

A few updates, but photos will come later...

We stopped for a few hours in Bern, located between our two accommodations.

We parked near the Rosengarten to admire the stunning view, then walked back down to the center, strolling around to see the views from the bridges.

We obviously explored the center of Bern, with its main street, the town hall square, the cathedral façade (closed), viewpoints from the terraces, the clock tower, Federal Palace square...

The viewpoints are gorgeous, the city is definitely worth a look! It’s cohesive, it smells like old stones, the arcades and fountains add a lot of charm to the city, though it remains austere (no colors!).

A pleasant discovery.

We ate at an Italian restaurant on the square not far from the Federal Palace. Well, everything is expensive, obviously. We walked back up—helps burn off the calories 😇

On Monday, we discovered the small town of Zofingen where we’re staying, not touristy but really cute! More colors, a few murals, little streets... I love it!

Then off to Lucerne for a different vibe! 😮 First, we went to admire a viewpoint by car, before parking slightly uphill near the Royal Hotel.

Then some great walks along the quays and in the city.

Huge visual impact: it’s beautiful!! The surrounding landscape, the lake spillway, the architecture, the bridges, the buildings with pretty murals...

On the other hand, it’s obviously very touristy! But few French speakers, lots of Asians, Indians, and visitors from Gulf countries (I think). It’s the first place in Switzerland with so many tourists. At the same time, I get it—it’s super cute! Let’s just say you don’t come here for "authenticity."

The city’s setting reminded me a bit of Annecy.

We had dinner at a sort of Thai snack spot, then a walk during the blue hour with the lighting, ice cream by the quays, and we walked back up! We’re wearing out our shoes...

Watch out, Street Parade in Zurich this Saturday...

The return of the mouse is both hilarious and heartwarming. It feels like reuniting with your old VoyageForum from a time that isn’t actually that far away.

I don’t know how I’m supposed to take this 🤨

Extremely well done! Just seeing the mouse’s face in the foreground of the photos cracks me up already. And well, I love you guys—what can I say, there’s nothing we can do about it...🙂

Oh thanks!

For Zurich, thanks, but I don’t think we’ll go after all... There are much nicer places to see. Unless I manage to extend the trip a bit, but even then...

A few photos of Zofingen where we're staying