Trip - Oslo-Germany-Switzerland

Wow, what a long day. Just to give you an idea, I walked around the University of Oslo (Norway)and the University of Bern (Switzerland) on the same day.

I explored Oslo for a few hours early in the morning, then went on my last ride down to Torp -- a few hours early this time to make sure I didn't miss the flight again. I got to go through Drammen for the 4th time, and that was very nice -- one of the most beautiful cities I've ever been to. At 3:55 I flew from Oslo to Frankfurt Hahn airport. It was a nice change in weather -- overcast and in the 30's with snow on the ground in Oslo, mid 60's and clear at Hahn.

In typical Ryanair fashion, the "Frankfurt" airport that they fly to is almost 2 hours away from Frankfurt, so I didn't actually go to the city itself, but I saw it from the air. I took a bus (~ 1 hr) to Meinz, then a train from there down to Basel, which is in Switzerland but right on the borders with Germany and France.

I was extremely impressed by the German trains. Very fast, clean, and modern. I also was impressed by the cities in that western part of Germany. Also very clean and modern from what I could see -- though it was nighttime by then so I couldn't see very much.
When I arrived in Basel, I couldn't find a hotel (just a lot of banks!), so I kept on going south and west. I eventually ended up in Bern around midnight. I couldn't find a good hotel there either, but I walked around for a few hours anyway, including around the Univ. of Bern campus. Boy, for a capital city, Bern sure is dead late on a Thursday night! I felt like I was the only one there.

My first impression of Switzerland was that it was halfway between western Germany (clean, modern, friendly) and Italy (dirty, old, unfriendly). It had some characteristics of both. It was a pain to have to get different money again, but I really liked the look of the Swiss Francs. Very colorful bills and shiny well-designed coins.

Around 3am I decided that it wasn't worth getting a hotel just to sleep for 4 hours, so I got on another train toward Geneva and tried to sleep on that. Didn't work, but at least I got farther west into Switzerland. I eventually turned around and went back to Bern. That next day turned out to be one of the most memorable of my entire time in Europe, but that's for the next post.


(click to enlarge)

posted by Matt @ 11:59 PM