Overall our observation is that Switzerland is expensive. It is more
expensive than any other European Union Country or really any eastern
country, including Japan, that we have traveled too. Eating out costs
more than 25 Francs per person (McDonalds was 15 pp), a pair of warm
socks was close to 14 Francs. The grocery store was unexplainably
expensive (we walked out with 13 items at over 50 Francs).
Switzerland knows how to help their economy grow by providing higher salaries, a
very inexpensive graduate education and having a true democracy among
their citizens. There are strict rules and people follow them. They
are small enough that their government can be supportive and helpful
to all of their citizens at once, not just the super rich or the poor
like we see back in America. Most all policies are for the good of
every citizen, not just one sector. The highway system is extremely
advanced and flows quite well. The “toll road” is a once a year flat
fee of 40 francs which gets you a sticker and the ability to take the
“toll roads” to travel around faster instead of stopping every 10
miles to pay a toll.
The scenery and villages coexist as a watercolor puzzle that you pick
up from the store. Even though every village doesn’t have a bakery or
a grocery store or even a restaurant, they all have a bus stop so
their villagers can more about without the use of their tractors or
bicycles.
Our first official stop in the country was Geneva which to be honest,
worked out to be more of a slow crawl-through. As in most of Europe,
the RV is not designed for parking within city limits and as we
cruised through most of the streets of Geneva in search of parking
(unsuccessfully), we decided we’d seen enough and headed a few clicks
north to a campsite for the night. Our site was in a pretty little
spot on the northern side of lake Geneva and offered up a chance to
recharge for the night with an added bonus of wifi to load about a
billion pictures.
Bern, capital city’s next!
No comments:
Post a Comment