Solo trip: Swissmas!

2022 was a busy year for travel! It ended with my 2nd solo trip to Switzerland! It was a much less planned trip than the Germany trip. I just decided it’d be fun to go visit some Christmas markets, and Switzerland feels very similar to Germany so it made it easier for my 2nd solo trip. I stayed in Zurich for most of my trip, but I still couldn’t resist a few train rides, so I spent one day travelling to Lucerne and Interlaken.

I arrived in Zurich late at night on my first day so I just went straight to my hotel.

The next morning, I booked tickets to the Fifa museum. It was the World Cup at the time and it just so happened that Switzerland were playing while I was there! I wasn’t going to keep up with the football during the whole trip, but on this day, Ghana were playing (who I support because my family is from there), and Switzerland were playing in the evening, so I decided to book the Fifa museum on the same day aswell so I could have a whole World Cup themed day.

It’s an all day ticket, you don’t have to pick a specific entry time for it so I went for a walk and found a nice park with a giant lake on the way.

I arrived at the Fifa museum and straight away, you go into the locker rooms to put your coat and bag away, and the lockers are made to look like football lockers. They all have the names of famous players on there aswell.

I’m not a huge football fan, I watch the World Cup and the Euro’s, I watched the women’s World Cup for the first time in 2023 aswell, but I don’t watch anything outside of that. You don’t need to be a football fan to visit the football museum tho. It’s interactive so there’s lots of fun games you can play and you can sit in these booths and listen to all the different World Cup songs from over the years.

For the people who are hardcore football fans, there’s tons of old memorabilia from over the years, including some of the earliest shoes, kits, football’s from winning games and old tickets. It’s a huge place so there’s so much to see, it just covers the history of football all the way through to current day.

They even have a shop at the end where you can design your own football shirt, with whatever team you want and put your name on the back.

After the Fifa museum, it was getting closer to the time Ghana were playing so I set off to find a pub where I could watch it. The Christmas markets were open all around the city, and there’s so many of them, so I stopped for food on the way.

I’d been walking around for a while and I couldn’t find any pubs, I just assumed I’d come across one without really looking but even after checking on google maps, the only pubs I could find where Irish or English themed pubs. I didn’t really want to go to one of those pubs, I tend to avoid English pubs when I’m on holiday, I much prefer going to the local places. However, it was just for the World Cup and I wanted to watch Ghana so I just gave in and went with it.

I got some food and I was settled ready to watch.

By the time the Ghana game had finished, the pub had filled up with Swiss people, getting ready for the Switzerland game. Since I already had a good spot for it, I decided to stay in the pub for both games.

When it was time for the Swiss game, the bar staff handed out these card versions of foam fingers and the place was buzzing. Thankfully, Switzerland won that game so it was really nice to be with all the Swiss fans, who were all so excited.

A few people asked me to join their table, they saw me sitting on my own. I said no at first because I’m quite happy to sit by myself, but after a while I decided I would join them since I was there to watch Switzerland, it made sense to watch it with a bunch of Swiss people! There were some people who’d travelled from other places with them aswell, like Ireland and France.

I asked the Swiss people how come there’s no pubs here, and they said they have more chalets and wine than pubs! It made so much sense but I just hadn’t even thought about that. I never would have imagined my first day in Switzerland would be all about football but it was a really fun day!

The next day, I took the train to Lucerne and Interlaken and then back to Zurich in the evening. Lucerne was one of the nicest places I’d ever been! I fell in love with it as soon as I got off the train. I was only planning on staying for a couple of hours but I decided to stay longer just because I was enjoying it so much. It was just so picturesque.

I had lots of mulled wine while I was in Switzerland.

The next stop was Interlaken. The train journey there was absolutely beautiful. It was really high up in the mountains and it just looked like a Bob Ross painting.

Because it was so high up, it was much much colder in Interlaken. It was already cold in Zurich and Lucerne but this was mountain tops cold.

After walking through the town and doing some shopping, I decided to go and sit inside a small cafe for some wine and crepes.

I got the train back to Zurich that evening on the fanciest train, it was so big it had a restaurant on it!

It was already getting dark by the time I left Interlaken so there were no more mountain views. I managed to get a little nap instead.

Now that I was back in Zurich for the last 3 days, all that was left was to explore as much of the Christmas markets as possible. Zurich is a big city and there’s 4 main markets in different area’s of town. 2 of them are outside, one of them is in an underground and takes up the entire floor and another is in one of the train stations. The train station one had had the biggest Christmas tree and it also had this balcony area where you can see over the entire market.

My favourite market of all though was not one of the main 4, it was it’s own thing called the illuminations, there was a long queue to get in but it’s absolutely worth it. It’s so bright and colourful, it was the most Christmassy thing I’ve ever seen!

I had to get a waffle of course!

Another thing they have in Zurich over Christmas is the singing Christmas tree. They get all these different singers and choirs to sing carols and there’s some more markets there aswell. It’s really nice! You’ll see it in the video.

Finally, I couldn’t leave Switzerland without getting some fondue. It was everything I could of hoped for!

Fifa museum: website

Thanks for reading/watching. I hope you enjoyed it!