It's good to have the courage to seize the moment and see what happens. This is what I did when I booked flights to Switzerland following a tall and handsome Swiss guy that I hardly knew. Instead of a romance of the life time, I got back home with some great gruyère cheese. Not all the stories end up like some Hollywood films (not that I was expecting that in this case or of my life in general), but you live and learn. Hopefully, the next tall and handsome guy lives in some place a bit more exciting...
To be completely honest with myself and you, it would have been nicer to visit my friends somewhere else in Europe, but I decided to be happy to discover Switzerland a bit. It's funny how the country is beautiful and it has wonderful nature, good bike lanes, town squares filled with cafés and markets full of organic products, but still it doesn't make me say "I just love Switzerland". It's a bit like Belgium (except the opposite in almost any other sense) that it somehow lacks spirit, enthusiasm and passion. It combines good things from France, Italy and Germany and still it's not the sum of these countries, but less.
The Swiss towns are cute however. I enjoyed the beautiful views in the French-speaking Fribourg during the last summer days of the year. Drinking rosé wine at Rue de Lausanne and discovering the small medieval streets in the old town. In Basel, I walked on the banks of the Rhine watching people floating on the river with their picnic stuff packed in water-proof bags (never seen such a thing before). Big groups of people had gathered on the river, probably many of them having got there by swimming (photo below). And the capital, Berne (photo above), had obscure little shops under the long arcades circling around the whole centre and wonderful views from the Rose Garden. Definitely nice places to visit, but maybe not the most memorable towns for tourists.
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