For a Limited Time: Shop (and Sled!) 7 Days a Week!

It’s that time of year again: The time of year when it’s okay to shop on Sunday.

The Frau hopes you make the most of it. Of course, because you might not be used to shopping on Sunday, you may need a warm-up.

That’s where this post becomes helpful. Because you could purchase 99.9 Ways to Travel Switzerland Like a Local and/or Swiss Life: 30 Things I Wish I’d Known and get your Sunday shopping thing started early. This will make any further Swiss Sunday seasonal shopping much more comfortable. You could also find Swiss-inspired gift ideas from One Big Yodel’s Ultimate Swiss Christmas Gift Guide too.

But if you’re the type that thinks it’s not okay to shop on Sunday at all ever, then never fear—there are more things to do this season than shop. How about sledding to the city instead?  

After all, how many places do you know where you can take a toboggan to the top of a mountain and slide into the country’s largest city? Welcome to both the top and bottom of Zurich. It’s an amazing ride between the two.

So here’s your winter tip:

Uetliberg, nicknamed the Top of Zurich, is the starting point for the ultimate in city sledding. The sled run to Triemli is 3.1 kilometers in length and drops 330 meters in altitude. When snow and ice bring sledding enthusiasts to the mountain, there’s a guaranteed laryngitis epidemic.

Since this is Switzerland, the sled path is not only groomed meticulously (no misbehaving snowflakes allowed), but it is also monitored daily. Your sledding pleasure is so important, there is even a sledding hotline to give you trail updates.

Is it icy? Is it slushy? Is it perfect? The Swiss leave nothing to chance, not even a trip to the sled hill (well, mountain). Call the toboggan hotline or download a map of the route from the utokulm.ch website. When sledding in Switzerland, you do not just go where the snow and spirit take you. You must sled with purpose.

You can also sled with something else: a flashlight. In fact, zooming down an icy mountain at night with any combination of battery-powered lighting is encouraged. Be your own little shooting star by wearing a headlamp or, better yet, mount your smart phone on your sled and let it be your guiding light as you slide down to the city.

Obviously dark thrills are not for all. There are trees, fences, posts, pylons, and people, and if that combination is a bit worrying for you on an icy incline, don’t fret. If sledding isn’t your thing, you can still enjoy a scenic 18-minute ride down the mountain on the red S10 train that runs between Triemli and Uetliberg every 30 minutes.

There’s more to do up at Uetliberg than sled. You can sit on a bench and enjoy views of Zurich, the lake, and the Alps. You can hike on countless trails, or you can have hot chocolate at the Uto Kulm Hotel and enjoy the great outdoors from the warmth (and safety) of a restaurant.

For more information on sledding:

Schlittelweg: Uetliberg to Triemli, 3.1 km

Sled hotline: +41 (0) 44 412 14 71

Starting point: From Zurich, take the S10 to Uetliberg, look for the Schlittelweg sign

Wearing a helmet is recommended

uetliberg.ch

Discovering Switzerland in America

Time (a Swiss preoccupation, how appropriate) has taught the The Frau that small slices of Switzerland are readily available for her consumption not far from her American home. 

Take this refrigerator at Esther's European Imports in New Glarus, Wisconsin. It's not often a selection of drinks in an American store excites The Frau, but that is because most American shelves are not stocked with Rivella, Elmer Citro, Pepita, and Sinalco. Merci vielmal for this cornucopia of Swissness, Esther from Thun. She has run this shop for many years.


Next, take this shelf. It looks like something found in Switzerland, but nope, this is a shelf at Alp and Dell in Monroe, Wisconsin. It's the largest Emmi cheese dairy outside of Switzerland (they even have a supply of Swiss brown cows and proper Emmi equipment here). Esther's husband, Tony, runs this place and will take your order in Swiss German if you prefer. And guess what, American friends, his shop delivers. So forget that pizza delivery, it's time for a little Raclette this winter.





Then...The Frau was recently wandering the streets of San Francisco, when she found Switzerland at Pier 17. It's an expanding hub of Swiss diplomatic presence in America and it comes with a proper Swiss clock so you're not late to discover it. Expect nothing less.













Finally, The Frau can't help it–she always gets a little nostalgic when she sees this plane, whatever American airport it happens to be waiting in. But she feels very lucky to have gotten to spend almost a month in Switzerland this year and even more time experiencing the American side of Switzerland. And there's a lot of Switzerland still waiting to be discovered in the United States. 

What to do in Switzerland This Fall

Is it too early to be thinking about December holidays? Swiss grocery stores say “no.” In fact, they were thinking about Christmas way back in August. Here’s a display from the Baden Migros grocery back in September.

Until December, though, there are lots of great things to do in Switzerland. Here are a few highlights:

Eat Chocolate and Cinnamon-Roasted Pumpkin Seeds at Jucker Farm

Every fall in Switzerland there’s a pumpkin paradise just waiting to be discovered. It takes place at Jucker Farm, a working farm where towering sculptures made from pumpkins can be enjoyed along with some chocolate and cinnamon-roasted pumpkin seeds and fresh apple cider.  

There are two Jucker Farm locations in Northern Switzerland: Seegräben and Jona. Both are wonderful. At lunchtime, each farm restaurant offers a hot buffet with meats and pasta, a salad buffet, soups, sandwiches, flammkuchen, and desserts like apple strudel. The food is reasonably priced and very good—which makes finding a table difficult.

For more information visit www.juckerfarm.ch

Observe the Largest Turnip Parade in the World

Photos by Brian Opyd

On the scale of parades featuring flames in Switzerland, the Richterswil Räbechilbi (Turnip Lantern Parade) is quite tame. But what it lacks in risk it more than makes up for in its ability to celebrate normally ignored root vegetables.

Think 29,000 kilograms of turnips (all grown locally), 50,000 candles, 1,100 participants, and 20,000 visitors (in a town of 13,000) and you’ll get the idea. When the Swiss combine the words “turnip” and “festival” they mean business. In fact, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the Richterswil Räbechilbi is now the largest turnip parade in the world. 

For more information visit www.vvrs.ch

This year's parade is Saturday, November 11 at 6:30 p.m. in Richterswil.

Hike the Morteratsch Glacier Trail

If The Frau had to choose her favorite hike in Switzerland, it would probably be the Morteratsch Glacier hike—especially if it’s mid-October. There are several reasons for this. 

One is the sheer beauty of orange and yellow larch trees framing the icy snow and the (hopefully) blue sky. The Engadine area is famous for its autumn colors, and not without reason.

Two is the length (approx. 5-6 kilometers, 1 hour 40 minutes total) and ease of the walk (fairly flat, on a mostly wide and graveled path), which allows one to admire the scenery without being distracted by blisters or aching muscles. 

Three is easy access. The hike begins and ends at the Morteratsch train station, whose neighbor is the Hotel Restaurant Morteratsch—a relaxing place for lunch.

For more information www.pontresina.ch

P.S. 96.9 more ideas for un-touristy fun are included in The Frau's second book, 99.9 Ways to Travel Switzerland Like a Local, which was published in May. It makes a great Christmas gift, at least for those of you already buying Lebkuchen at the Migros.

So American. So Swiss.

Yodelers. Sorry for the gigantic Pause.

Uh, will you listen to The Frau? She is SO American now, starting every sentence with “Sorry.”

Sorry. The Frau has been busy.

Oh, busy too? How American of her.

The Frau threw a slightly lighter stone...

Ahh. The Frau hears herself being so American and she can’t stop it anymore. Oh well. Despite being oh-so-American now after almost, yes, three years back in the U.S., The Frau is still up to her Swiss ways too. Earlier earlier this month she was running around Switzerland doing research for a couple of projects, including a piece about a very special festival in Interlaken, which ran in the Financial Times a week ago.

The big news (if you don’t have time to read the FT piece) is that The Frau threw a big boulder at a Swiss festival called Unspunnen. This festival, held only every 12 years in Interlaken, was amazing because it was the first festival that really allowed anyone—yes, even tourists like The Frau—to not only witness Swissness, but to participate in Swissness.

Because here’s the thing—watch something at a festival and you might take a picture. Participate in something at a festival and you’ll tell a story about it instead.

Thus, the boulder throwing. Throwing a gigantic stone is one of three traditional Swiss sports (along with Hornussen and wrestling) so at least now The Frau has a claim to Swiss sporting fame. While she didn’t volunteer to throw the 184-pound boulder (she could have though, you know, Swiss personal responsibility and all) she did throw a 30-pound stone—wearing sandals, no less.

During her trip to Switzerland she also biked the Albula Pass (you must do this next year, Yodelers, if you haven’t—the SlowUp makes it easy by closing the road), hung out in St. Gallen, Appenzell, and Schaffhausen—you know for research purposes, and saw a few friends too.

It’s still hard for her to come home to America after Switzerland, at least the America that’s going on these days. But someone has to try to make it a better place, and The Frau continues to try, this year by taking a leadership role with her local citizen’s council.

And in the meantime, there’s book number three to finish, all about American life after Switzerland—in other words—American Life: 30 Things I Wish I’d Known. And boy are there a lot of things The Frau wishes she had known about her own country. Way more than 30, but now the fun part begins of choosing exactly which 30 to highlight. Stay tuned.

And if you haven’t check out book number two: 99.9 Ways to Travel Switzerland Like a Local—it’s filled with un-touristy ideas for the upcoming fall and winter. And it's in black and white now too. 

Badenfahrt, Switzerland's Biggest Party: August 18-27

Baden, located 27 kilometers west of Zurich, is usually a quiet spa town. But every ten years, it hosts a ten-day festival that draws a million visitors. In terms of comparative population size, imagine 475 million people descending on New York City for an event. (A number greater than the entire population of the United States.)

Why is the Badenfahrt festival so popular? The name, meaning, “Baden goes,” comes from the Middle Ages when the spas at Baden were a popular escape for dignitaries. During the Reformation, many Protestant Zurichers found themselves fleeing to Baden for the kind of elusive fun that only Catholics could have back then. But the real party began in 1847, when Switzerland’s first train route opened. The “Spanischbrötli-Bahn,” which went from Zurich to Baden, made it easy for Protestant Zurichers to come to “crazy” Catholic Baden to eat sweet pastries (like Spanischbrötli, for which the train was named), sing, and let loose at the thermal spas.

Swiss people tend to relax most when given an organized reason to do so. The first Badenfahrt festival in 1923 proved this to be true. Today the festival features parades, fireworks, carnival rides, several entertainment stages, and that oh-so-Swiss trust that allows a million people into an unfenced festival area knowing that they’ll all buy the festival pass anyway. Besides, how can you rope off an entire city?

The Badenfahrt festival features hundreds of creatively themed food structures representing everything that Swiss industriousness is capable of. Forget a simple food tent; at Badenfahrt, the Swiss prove that the Greeks aren’t the only ones to build Greek temples. The Swiss build them too, along with sand beaches, the Eiffel Tower, and Japanese Gardens. Give the Swiss some scaffolding, and they’ll give you the Taj Mahal—even if its only purpose is to serve sausage for ten days.

Aside from Zurich’s Street Parade, Badenfahrt is the festival to witness the Swiss as you never have before—shrieking at 3 a.m., throwing beer bottles into the street, and dancing to rap music. To experience Badenfahrt is to experience the Swiss at their most fun-loving and free. Until of course, the clock strikes midnight on the tenth day of the festival and street sweepers arrive on the twelfth ring to start cleaning up the mess, making the entire experience feel like a figment of your imagination.

Tips:

The big, once-every-ten-years festival takes place in Baden from August 18-27, 2017.

baden.ch

badenfahrt.ch

Spanischbrötli pastries, a specialty from Baden that dates back to at least 1780, are a featured food at the festival, but you can try the sweet buttery combination of hazelnut and carrot almost anytime at the Moser’s bakery in Baden.

Moser’s Backparadies

Schlossbergplatz 2

5400 Baden

+41 (0)56 222 42 55

backparadies.ch

For more information:

Read The Frau’s article in The Independent about Badenfahrt.

Listen to the swissinfo.ch podcast featuring The Frau discussing all things Baden.

Read 99.9 Ways to Travel Switzerland Like a Local for 98.9 more tips like this one. 

The Frau's latest book is now available in Black & White. It's Swiss quality at an American price.

Don't Miss the August 1 Brunch

The Frau has only has one regret regarding the traditional August 1 farm brunch: That she didn’t discover it sooner. August 1 is Swiss National Day and there is no better way to celebrate it than by having brunch on a farm. Think endless Birchermüsli, Zopf, fresh breads, smoked meats, butter, cheese, eggs, honey, homemade jams, and Incarom coffee served over the sounds of a few loud moos and you’ll get the idea. Over the last twenty years, the August 1 brunch has become such a big deal that there’s now an entire website devoted to it, and Migros, one of the largest grocery store chains in Switzerland, publishes “Brunch Magazine.”

Swiss National Day Brunch

Support for local farms in Switzerland is nothing new. The Swiss have long preferred to buy local products over imported ones and will gladly pay extra for the pleasure of helping their countrymen. The popularity of the brunches is just an extension of the passion the Swiss have for eating locally.

There’s more to a farm brunch than food, however. Many farms offer opportunities for children to feed goats or rabbits, some have organized art projects during the brunch—make a purse out of a paper plate, anyone? Others offer entertainment such as line dancing, mini alphorn concerts, or farm tours. The goal is to bring people from the city and countryside together, which is a mission that countries like the United States would be smart to consider too.

Though August 1 has only been celebrated as Swiss National Day since 1891, the country was founded 600 years earlier on August 1, 1291 when the three cantons of central Switzerland—Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden—took an oath in the Rütli meadow on the banks of Lake Lucerne to establish the country. But the people of Switzerland have only been able to celebrate their national holiday work-free since 1993.

The Swiss make up for all that lost partying time with a huge spread of food followed by an evening of fireworks. To show your Swiss spirit and epitomise Swiss brunch fashion, be sure to wear the semi-required edelweiss shirt. And for your personal collection, you can also stock up on Swiss flags, Swiss candles, Swiss lanterns, and anything else you can think of that’s Swiss—hardboiled eggs decorated like a Swiss flag, anyone?

To find a brunch near you, (and there most likely will be one, since up to 350 farms across the country now participate) you can search for a brunch by canton or by zip code on brunch.ch. Once you decide on a brunch location, be sure to reserve your spot ahead of time. Over 150,000 people make reservations for brunches across Switzerland, so you do not just brunch on August 1 when and if the spirit moves you. This is Switzerland, so farm brunches are highly organized—just like the country in which they take place.

For more information:

What: Brunch on a Farm

When: August 1, Swiss National Day

Time: Approximately 9:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m.

Price: Approximately 25 SF to 40 SF

Where to book: brunch.ch (German, French, and Italian only)

And yes: There is a brunch hotline…check the website for all your brunch news and needs.

P.S. You can enjoy 98.9 more ideas like this in The Frau’s new Swiss travel book, 99.9 Ways to Travel Switzerland Like a Local.

Learn to Play the Alphorn on Horn Mountain

Yodelers, it’s that time of year again—time for alphorn camp, that is. 

So stop putting off learning the Swiss national instrument and start spending your first weekend in July attending Fritz Frautschi’s short beginner’s alphorn class in the most appropriately named alphorn-learning location in Switzerland—the Horn Mountain.

Not far from Gstaad, the Hornberg is your stage, the cows are your audience, and the Hotel Restaurant Hornfluh is your après-horn, serving you that well-earned drink after a hard day of practice.

Fritz Frautschi founded the Swiss Alphorn School over twenty years ago and offers courses in the Bernese Oberland. He credits the popularity of his alphorn classes with people’s desire to get back to nature. Unfortunately, learning to blow one of the world’s largest wind instruments isn’t so natural. The alphorn is 3.5 meters long and has no finger holes, tubes, or valves, so all note variations are controlled by the speed and force of your lip vibrations on the mouthpiece. According to one student, the more you kiss your spouse, the easier blowing the alphorn becomes.

It’s much easier to learn the alphorn if you’ve previously played an instrument like the tuba or trumpet. But regardless of your musical experience, Frautschi prioritizes teaching you how to make a lovely sound—which is great, because a beginner playing the alphorn often produces a sound that resembles a dying cow. 

Speaking of cows, the alphorn attracts them. Play a few notes (good or bad) and cattle come calling. The alphorn is how the farmers bring their herds home and how you, the non-farmer, can entice an unintentional but very committed audience. Tourists may flock to you as well. And if The Frau’s experience counts for anything, you don’t have to be a master player to get a following.

As well as attracting cows and tourists, the alphorn also inspires Swiss conversation. The instrument’s history may have a lot to do with this; besides bringing the cows home, the alphorn was also used to communicate with fellow herdsmen across many valleys.

The Frau once called the alphorn “Switzerland’s secret social networking tool” because all the normal cultural formalities that apply in Switzerland are set aside if you carry an alphorn. Fellow alphorn players, strangers or not, are always on first-name terms with each other. So if you’ve always wanted to get to know a particular Swiss person better, now you know what to do.

Come home from alphorn camp and play the Swiss national instrument on a city street, and you will have discovered the key to Swiss culture (and perhaps a nice source of income).

For more information:

Weekend Alphorn Course on Horn Mountain: June 30-July 2, 2017.

Price per person: CHF 450

P.S. You can enjoy 98.9 more ideas like this in The Frau’s new Swiss travel book, 99.9 Ways to Travel Switzerland Like a Local.