Switzerland

Thinking that this year I wouldn't be going to a foreign country, me and my best friend decided to do the shortest trip I have done so far, which is that we went on a weekend through Switzerland's three largest cities.

We first landed at Geneva on friday morning in order to catch up with a public tour for visiting CERN; the largest particle physics laboratory in the world, where their biggest project the Large Hadron Collider impacts particles on each other for millions of times in order to do fundamental research on them.

To think that humanity has had the capacity, the co-operation and the know how in order to build up this nuclear research after World War II, it fills me up with hope for humanity's future among current worldwide issues such as terrorism, poverty, politics and economics.

After that fascinating experience where a legit physics professor explained to us many details about CERN and LHC, making our heads twist, we took the train to the capital Bern in order to meet a Swiss guy my friend already knew from the past.

Sightseeing Bern for a little bit, we went to another Swiss guy in order to eat raclette fondue with bacon and vegetables, which was nice. Alongside alcohol, we talked about all kinds of stuff until late in the night while visiting a local bar.

The next day, after exploring Bern some more and discovering the Einsteinhaus and Zytglogge, we went with the train towards Zürich, and from there we almost instantaneously went towards the small town Kloten. Because we both did not really want to do another citytrip, and because Zürich did not have much to offer for tourists other than museums.

The Swiss friend lives in Kloten, and we were able to couchsurf here, but not before we went to see two ice hockey matches elsewhere, because the Swiss happened to be a referee in his spare time, it was quite cool (pun intended) to experience ice hockey for the first time personally!

We ate some very good bratwurst, and then it was time to go sleep early, because our flight towards Amsterdam was happening in the morning already. Luckily the airport was 5 minutes away from public traffic.

This trip was most of all intended to visit CERN, but I enjoyed the company of the Swiss guys and doing some sightseeing here and there as well. It's just that Switzerland is so damn expensive, that it wouldn't be my first recommendation to visit, even for people from The Netherlands.