Student traveler: Switzerland itinerary

Swiss Alps as seen from a typical Swiss village

At the end of my first semester of Master studies, in early 2018, I felt like missing mountains so badly. Saarbrücken seemed too flat. So, I arranged my winter vacation to the most gorgeous country I visited in the European land, Switzerland.

I went solo traveling for five days only to see the mountains. If I had to give the journey a theme, it would be "I just wanna recharge my mind with nature".

Five days seemed to be a reasonable duration in terms of budget for me. Yes, Switzerland is expensive! Also, some might think visiting four cities in those five days was too much. But I'm telling you that it's doable.

I got asked several times by friends about how my itinerary and expense were like. I think it will be useful if I share them here:

Date	Route	Transportation	Accomodation
21/3	Saarbrücken - Zürich	Night bus - EUR 27.00	-
22/3	Zürich	-	Hostel (dorm) - CHF 40.80
23/3	Zürich - Luzern	Swiss train - CHF 13.00
	Luzern - Lauterbrunnen	Swiss train - CHF 28.60	Hostel (dorm)
24/3	Lauterbrunnen	-	2 nights: CHF 68.20
25/3	Lauterbrunnen - Bern	Swiss train - CHF 24.00	Hostel (dorm) - CHF 45.00
26/3	Bern - Saarbrücken	ICE+DB train - EUR 32.90	-

CHF 1  ~ EUR 0.95. In my opinion as a student traveler, my total expense on public transportation was okay, but it was rather expensive for the accommodation. I'm not sure how much the average price for a room in other seasons was, but I went during the ski-vacation season. In summer, it could even be more expensive.

Tips on making an itinerary:

(I always wish I could use a TSP solver to take the decision)

1. Pick all places you want to visit, define how many days you want to travel and your budget.

2. Look at the map and try drawing all possible routes, constrained on your travel days.

3. Briefly search for the average accommodation price for each place.

4. Search for possible (public) transportation to move between cities: time and cost. Discard the non-feasible routes.

5. Calculate the cost of the routes (moving and staying), and select only the ones satisfying your travel time and cost budget.

As you can see above, I visited four Swiss cities. The place I would like to visit the most was Lauterbrunnen: a quiet countryside where all you can see is mountains, greens, and cattle :p I was also considering visiting Grindelwald which has similar ambiance as Lauterbrunnen. I had no particular reason, I just picked one of those two because I had limited days.

I visited Zürich because it sounded to me like one of the must-visit cities in Switzerland. I personally think it's pretty. If you have one day available, you can consider doing a day trip to Luzern which is only one hour by train. Luzern is gorgeous. When I arrived there and was welcomed by a huge lake and a sunny day, I felt like I wanted to come back again with my beloved one haha. I did not spend a night there as it was on my way from Zürich to Lauterbrunnen. The last city I visited was Bern, the capital. At first, I was not that interested in it. I put it in my itinerary only because it was on my way back to Germany from Lauterbrunnen. But it turned out to be quite interesting as well.

All cities that I visited were part of the German-speaking area in Switzerland. I was also considering visiting Interlaken because I heard it was gorgeous. But I read reviews on the internet saying that the place is overrated. Considering I had limited time and I had visited Luzern, so I didn't mind skipping Interlaken at that time. My trains going from and to Lauterbrunnen actually passed the city station. Enjoying the view of the surrounding from my train window was already fascinating.

I want to write about my experience when visiting the cities in separate posts. Stay tuned ;)