Feb 10th, 2012 at 10:00AM:
Germany and Switzerland have long been known as bastions of cool efficiency, where the trains run on time, locals scold visitors for jaywalking and everything works. But travelers might be surprised to know that these countries are also home to four of the world's most crooked towers, all of which lean more dramatically than the much more famous Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy.
Since ...Click on a label to read posts from that part of the world.
Switzerland posts
The battle of leaning towers: Germany wins
Feb 10th, 2012 at 10:00AM:
Germany and Switzerland have long been known as bastions of cool efficiency, where the trains run on time, locals scold visitors for jaywalking and everything works. But travelers might be surprised to know that these countries are also home to four of the world's most crooked towers, all of which lean more dramatically than the much more famous Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy.
Since ...EuroCheapo launches budget travel guides for Switzerland
Feb 9th, 2012 at 2:00PM: While Switzerland is not usually thought of as a budget-friendly destination, there are actually many worthwhile hotels, sights, and restaurants that won't cost you a fortune. To help travelers navigate their way around this usually costly country, EuroCheapo has launched budget travel guides for the cities of Zurich and Geneva, marking their first Swiss guides on the site. These guides will not ...Adventure Vacation Guide 2012: Interlaken, Switzerland
Jan 5th, 2012 at 9:30AM:
Interlaken, Switzerland, is a hotspot on the backpacking circuit and is located in the beautiful Bernese Oberland.
For those that like to spend their time jumping out of planes, diving into canyons, and hiking glaciers, Interlaken in Switzerland is your perfect destination. Surrounded by a diverse landscape of jagged peaks, roaring rivers, snow capped mountains, and lush greenery, it ...Enjoy nudist hiking? Rethink that holiday in Switzerland
Nov 18th, 2011 at 3:00PM: Last year we reported on a major victory for nudist hiking in Switzerland. A hiker in the conservative Swiss canton of Appenzell got fined for baring all, appealed, and won.
Now that victory has turned into defeat. The BBC reports that Switzerland's highest court has ruled that local authorities can fine people for hiking in the buff. Naked hiking isn't illegal per se, but but public indecency ...Serial public art around the world
Oct 17th, 2011 at 4:30PM:
Public art exhibitions featuring a common sculpture that is multiplied and then embellished by various artists have been popping up in cities worldwide since 1998. Artistic director Walter Knapp first came up with the idea and convinced artists to dot Zurich, Switzerland with a collection of artfully-decorated lions. Within a year, Chicago businessman Peter Hanig had taken the idea and ran ...Swiss village Obermutten has more Facebook fans than residents
Sep 30th, 2011 at 1:30PM:
A tiny Swiss mountain village is taking social media to a new level. Obermutten in Graubuenden has promised anyone who "likes" the town on Facebook that they will put his/her photo onto the Commune's official notice board. By doing this, they say, anybody anywhere in the world can "become Swiss". After only three days, the village already has fifteen times more fans than residents, and this ...
Video of the Day - Through the Alps
Sep 13th, 2011 at 5:00PM:
The Alps. Stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Germany and France in the west, it is one of the greatest mountain ranges in Europe and arguably the greatest range to navigate by car (or motorcycle) in the world.
Today's Video of the Day captures one man's motorcycle trip through Austria, Italy, Switzerland, & France along routes ...
Photo of the day - Cocktail hour
Jun 16th, 2011 at 5:00PM:
It's always cocktail hour somewhere in the world, they say, though if you're 8 months pregnant like me, it's not for another 5 weeks or so. Even as a non-whiskey drinker, I looked at this and wanted a nice warming glass of scotch and perhaps a fire to drink it by. Flickr user JRodmanJr snapped this drink (and presumably drank it) in Basel, Switzerland; it's a 14-year-old single malt from the ...Five unusual destinations from London
May 30th, 2011 at 7:00AM:
London is incredibly well served as a transit hub. Collectively, London airports see more traffic than any other cluster of city airports in Europe. An impressively broad network of routes connects the city's airports to destinations across Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa. For anyone predisposed to travel, this range of destinations is inspiring.
Many of the world's most visited ...Zurich to vote on suicide tourism
May 15th, 2011 at 10:00AM: Zurich is set to vote on whether to continue allowing foreigners to seek assisted suicide in the city.
Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, but the public has become increasingly concerned about the number of people coming to their country with the intention of killing themselves.
Two proposals are on the table: one to ban assisted suicide for everyone, the other to limit it to city ...Five great European thermal baths
May 3rd, 2011 at 3:30PM: Before the spa revolution saw most upscale hotels offering spa services to guests, there was the venerable European spa town tradition, centered on thermal baths built around natural hot springs. The water on offer for bathing at these sites has historically been thought to possess therapeutic qualities. The tradition of taking a "cure" remains an enthusiastic habit across Europe today, in ...Dolder Grand revives the artists of 80s at Live at Sunset
Apr 15th, 2011 at 4:00PM:
You can run, but you run far enough to get the music of the 1980s out of your head. True 1980s music fans wouldn't even try and there's good news for them: your favorite artists of the 80s (and a few who started in the 1970s) are taking the stage at the annual Live at Sunset concert at Dolder Grand in Switzerland.
This year's concert takes place from July 13 - 24 and features John ...SkyWork launches Bern-London route with iPads
Mar 27th, 2011 at 12:30PM:
Today SkyWork, a small Swiss airline, launches service between Bern-Belp and London City. SkyWork will be the only airline connecting the two cities with a direct service. London will join a short list of destinations in the SkyWork summer schedule stable: Barcelona, Berlin, Elba, Hamburg, Ibiza, and Palma de Mallorca.
There are a number of small airlines in the Alpine region flying ...Top 20 countries for life expectancy
Mar 21st, 2011 at 10:00AM:
"Old people" - we all hope to live long enough to earn this distinction. In some countries, the probability of living well into your eighties is much better than in others. The worldwide average for life expectancy is just a smidge over 67, with the highest and lowest countries fluctuating by over 20 years in each direction. 39 of the bottom 40 countries are located on the African continent, ...Top 20 travel destinations - The 2011 Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report
Mar 10th, 2011 at 3:00PM: Every couple of years, the World Economic Forum crunches a bunch of numbers and releases a list of the top countries in the world to visit. While ranking 139 countries, they measure aspects such as pricing, culture, environmental protection, safety, and infrastructure. For the 2011 report, Switzerland remained at the number one spot - the returning champion from the last report in 2009. Nine out ...Schengen and the disappearance of European passport stamps
Mar 1st, 2011 at 10:00AM:
Creative new use for border crossing posts at German/Austrian border.
In the late 1980s, an American spending a summer traveling across Europe with a Eurailpass would see his or her passport stamped possibly dozens of times. With a few exceptions, every time a border was crossed, an immigration agent would pop his or her head into a train compartment, look at everyone's passports, in most ...Gadling's favorite destinations for 2011
Dec 7th, 2010 at 10:00AM:
We travel a lot, to destinations both well-known and unfamiliar. In our defense, it is our job to travel like mad, to explore the world and then write about our discoveries.
Though most travel writers find something or other of interest in most places we visit, there are always those personal favorites that rise above the rest. This year, we decided to scribble our favorites down for you. ...Top ten hostels in Europe
Oct 25th, 2010 at 5:00PM:
Staying in a hostel in Europe is a rite of passage for budget-conscious travelers making their way around the continent. This is particularly the case for budget-conscious younger travelers. Here are ten hostels across Europe that either receive particularly high user-review grades or are notorious enough in one or another way to be noteworthy.
St. Christopher's at the Winston, Amsterdam, ...Ecotourism's next evolution: Rent a cow in Switzerland
Sep 10th, 2010 at 10:30AM: Need to get away from it all? How about a month or season on a picturesque Swiss farm? Thanks to to enterprising Swiss farmers, professionals can now contribute to the local economy and "participate physically in the life of a medium-size mountain farm and to acquire at a preferential price genuine goods produced on the estate."
Sure... but what does that mean? According to bmi Voyager, the ...Daily Pampering: Luxury ski chalets for the ultimate winter retreat
Aug 27th, 2010 at 4:00PM: Have a few hundred thousand dollars to spare and want to do something special this winter? You're in luck! The Abercrombie & Kent group just added 18 new luxury ski chalets to its already grandiose offerings and starting this December, they're available for you.
Enjoy the very best in private ski accommodations in the French and Swiss Alps, including your own personal chefs, housekeeping ...
