The second leg of our trip was Switzerland (and surrounding areas), and this is where our trip started to get really stressful.
First of all, we were still insanely jet lagged. The night before our flight from Copenhagen to Zurich we got literally 1 hour of sleep. Jesse and I were exhausted but could not sleep and ended up sleeping for one hour, woke up at 3:30am to get to the train station in time to get to the airport.
We landed in Zurich where we were met by Indie Campers, the company who we rented a campervan from. We planned to drive the campervan around Switzerland, Germany, and France, thinking we could just park it anywhere to sleep along the way. Sounds fun, right? They were so kind and helpful, so I don’t want to say anything bad about their company. They picked us up from the airport, and drove us about 45 minutes away to Germany where their headquarters is. Wow, this little town in Germany was breathtaking. The cutest little houses and miles of corn and sunflower fields. It took a while to get all the paperwork sorted, but finally we were given the keys to the camper and we were off. Or so we thought. Jesse knows how to drive stick, but it had been a while, and he had never even driven a van that huge, let alone a manual van. So not even a mile down the road we had to pull over into an Aldi parking lot and call them, because he couldn’t drive it. The roads were TINY with lots of hills, we kept stalling and really thought we were going to die. So they came over and did a quick driving lesson in the parking lot. When he felt comfortable enough they let us go again (which to me is crazy, he obviously wasn’t ready). So we drove up the street a little and pulled over again because we didn’t know where we were going. Our original plan was to drive through Germany that day, spend the night, then drive through Eastern France the next day, spend the night, and drive through Switzerland on our third day. It was already getting late so we didn’t think we had time to get to our original destination and he definitely didn’t want to drive at night, so we decided to head back to Zurich. Bad decision. Zurich streets are even tinier, with more pedestrians, tiny parking spots and we still didn’t have a destination. After almost running multiple people over, almost tipping over, running red lights, and both of us crying our eyes out (remember, one hour of sleep) we found a parking garage, needed some food so Jesse ran into mcdonalds, and we tried to come up with a solution. We called Indie Campers saying we’d like to return the van or at least exchange it for something smaller and/or an automatic. They didn’t have anything available, and if we returned it we wouldn’t get our money back. We didn’t know what to do. We just sat there in that huge van inside the parking garage, not even in a parking spot, both girls sleeping in the back (thankfully), and cried. Worst trip ever. First our laptop, then this. How could it possibly get any worse?
Somehow Jesse heard about this overlook spot outside the main city, so we drove up this HUGE hill, and parked. It was a little creepy. But we thought we had no other choice, even though you technically weren’t supposed to park overnight. As Jesse was checking out the area he came across a couple that was hiking and they told us about a campsite near the lake in Zurich, Fischers Fritz Campsite. So we loaded up, drove back DOWN the HUGE hill, and found the campsite. We booked a spot, had to have one of the locals help us park the van, and breathed a breath of fresh air. Now what? There’s no way we were going to drive that thing through Germany and France and Switzerland. But then we had no means of transportation. That was supposed to be our hotel and rental car in one. So we decided to get an uber to the airport to rent a car in the morning. Thankfully we already had carseats in the camwpervan so we didn’t have to rent extra.
So we got the rental car, the guy upgraded us for free to a BMW convertible, and we headed to Luzern. Jesse and I had been to Switzerland 7 years ago. A friend from bible college lives in Switzerland so a group of us stayed with her for a few days before our semester in Israel. We fell in love with it. One of the places we visited before was Luzern. We carved our names in the famous bridge and wanted to see if it was still there. It wasn’t :(
We spent our time in Luzern walking around and eating on the canal. What a beautiful city.
Our next stop for the day was supposed to be Lauterbrunnen, I was DYING to see it, but it would be about 10 minutes to sunset by the time we got there, so we decided not to go. We did however see the most gorgeous little village on our way before we turned around. I have no idea what the name is, but it was something out of a fairytale.
Day three:
Our first stop was Rötteln Castle, where no one spoke English. It was so gorgeous. It’s thought to have been there since the beginning of the 11th century. It was so fun to explore and imagine what each room used to be, and the views were breathtaking.
Next, we wanted to check out Freiburg, Germany and Colmar, France. First stop was Freiburg, and it was cute, but we were not very impressed. It was dirty, and couldn’t see much history there. We may have been in the wrong part of the city. Last time we were in Europe we visited Constanz and loved it so much, so we thought we would love Freiburg. We did find a taco shop though!
Colmar, France, was, again, straight out of a fairytale. They call it the Venice of France. It looked like a town out of Beauty and the Beast, which is what we told Ever, so she spent our time there searching for Belle. She also asked, “why isn’t anyone sticking their head out of the windows saying ‘bonjour!’?” 😂
We wore our matching For Love and Lemons dresses and got all the stares. We were completely smitten by this city. So so beautiful.
After Colmar we headed back to our campsite to clean the camper and prepare for out 3:30am drop-off to catch our 6am train. I’m still al little bummed our first day on this part of the trip was wasted dealing with the campervan. I would have loved to see lauterbrunnen and more of Switzerland. But overall everything worked out, even though we ended spending way more money than planned haha. Stay tuned for the next leg of our trip: ITALIA 🇮🇹🍕🍝