From their regular visits up to Caledonia to showcase their beautiful country and to share Scots-Swiss stories.
Our Alpine amis describe Scotland’s largest city as ‘combining Victorian architecture with modern culture, a vibrant music scene, and a rich football tradition.
And you can end up sleeping in and getting the knock on the door because your party is about to leave.
Meaning you have to grab the quickest of showers, leave it running, and have to face Bertha in reception on your return.
Who greets you with a frozen Guten tag straight from the Eiger.
And lets you know that your shower water seeped through the ceiling onto the breakfast room and muesli eaters below.
Wake up on the water
Loch at that: Your Swiss cruise
In spite of all that, the Swiss have stuck with us and continue to invite us out to the Alps… probably to redeem ourselves.
The Swiss offer us a range of accommodations here from a boutique boat to a night under the stars to an, er, former prison!
The MS Attila Boatel on the lake at Murten/Morat offers a pleasantly luxurious interior and first-class service so that you can spend a carefree and unforgettable time.
And as a sample, on August 9, they offer a 24-hour Music Cruise with Swiss artist Bastian Baker.
The price per double cabin is CHF 1,750 (single occupancy CHF 1,500)
And whether you stay at valley level or climb the slopes or take the Jungfraujoch train up to the peak, we’re all looking up.
In the spacious Aarmühle Penthouse Suite, you can rest your limbs and take in the private panoramic roof terrace overlooking the rooftops.
Experience an unforgettable night under the stars in the cosy bed in the weatherproof, non-air-conditioned pavilion with glass roof.
A cosy warm night is guaranteed even in cool temperatures with vintage bed bottles, as well as a large selection of warming fur blankets.
Sitting pretty: Interlaken
The gazebo offers the additional choice of one of the two bedrooms in the suite, located directly under the terrace.
Two bathrooms are at your disposal, one with a sauna, the other with a large bathtub.
The unforgettable visit is rounded off with breakfast as soon as the sun’s rays have kissed you awake. And all for CHF1099.
Soft cell
Jailhouse rocks: Innenhof Hotel Barabas Luzern
And if you didn’t know it before you soon will when you get out there. All that fresh air makes the Swiss look at the world differently.
Even turning an old prison into the cult hotel that is the Hotel Barabas in Luzern.
The only reminder that these imaginatively furnished rooms, complete with shower and toilet, were once prison cells is found in the floor plans and the bars on the windows.
The Barabas Hotel offers a choice of 60 different prison cells and rooms including shared rooms with bunk bathrooms or single, double, triple and quadruple rooms with private bathrooms.
And you’ll get more than bread and water in your sample overnight package from CHF162.
Now, I’m not sure if a cocktail Swiss flag counts for the competition… well, looking above it clearly doesn’t.
But I will wave mine in honour of my Swiss amis today for Swiss National Day and the significant moment.
When in 1291 the Swiss Federal Charter was signed by the three founding cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden.
As they agreed to ‘stand together against outside judges and aggressors.’
Call of the Alps: Yodel away
All of which is good reason to let out a Yodel-Ay-Hee-Ho and fly a flag this Swiss Day and word up to my old amie from Iterlaken, Brigitte, I have been practising.
As a postscript and whisper it today as it’s the Swiss day so get on board Swiss and fly yourself out there.
But us Scots have the oldest national flag in Europe dating back to the 9th century.
And it’s a national shame that we don’t make more of it than just an exhibition in a dovecot near where we live now, in Athelstaneford, East Lothian.
It passed many by that the turn of 2023 marked half a century since Britain, Ireland and Denmark joined the EEC which prompts the response, fifty years on that EU have it wrong UK.
Not for joining the countries of the continent then and remember that the UK had twice tried unsuccessfully in the Sixties to get in, but for turning their back on Europe in 2016.
Brexit has, of course, impacted the whole of British society and industry, but at its more primal level, it has felt like a direct threat to those of us who work in tourism.
At least it did to my group of mostly English travel professionals in Interlaken in Switzerland.
I’m not suggesting that it should lead to sons not talking to their fathers as it did then.
Although I expect that they would have got over it and gone on to learn to live with each others’ different views.
Swiss days
The rail thing: Jungfraujoch in Switzerland
At heart, it probably comes as little surprise that my new English friends were so shell shocked and disheartened.
Because, at heart, everybody in our sector is instinctively an internationalist at heart.
My English friends were particularly keen too to pick the brains of our Swiss hosts about life outside the EU.
Scotland, incidentally, which had voted unanimously to stay under the blue, star-framed, flag.
The UK’s decision to leave the EU had the effect too of Britons rushing to re-engage with their Irish roots.
And trying to get Irish passports which Daddy’s Little Girl, a proud export of the Irish education system, is now doing.
Where, of course, it is most obvious is in the queues at airports where you are streamed separately.
And British exceptionalism comes to the fore.
Best of both worlds
Crowning moment: The British passport
The British passport I dare say has come in handy over the years particularly where it comes to the amount left on your document when travelling to certain countries.
And I was relieved to see that that worked in my favour the first time I went out to Barbados.
But I can’t guarantee that it will always be so.
The best solution, other than Britain going back into Europe.
Me returning full time to Ireland or Scotland becoming independent, would seem to be getting two passports.
Which, of course, would reflect my background, half-Scottish, half-Irish.
Getting the second passport would look to be the quickest option.
Cross to bear: Medjugorje
And this time I promise to look after the second one better.
After I took my old British passport with me (the one with my five-year US visa in it) on the bus from Medjugorje, Bosnia & Herzegovina.
To Dubrovnik, only to realise minutes into the journey that my current one was back in my hotel bedroom.
And I had to get off for fear of being stopped at the Croatia border and return to my Medjugorje base. Be warned!
And other countries too, my old stomping ground of Ireland in particular.
The Alp (yes, that is the singular) above Maienfeld is where young Heidi felt truly alive in what is today known as the Heidiland holiday region.
And the hamlet of Maienfeld is where the golden-haired lass lived and where you can visit the ‘Original Heidi House’ – a home with furnishings as they were in Heidi’s time.
Then if you want to delve deeper into the author’s life, there’s also the ‘Johanna Spyri Museum Heididorf’ in Hirzel.
And a gift shop full of Heidi souvenirs.
And Switzerland’s smallest post office with its special Heididorf postmark.
Heidi fans also come from around the world to explore the different Heidi trails and paths.
Now we bring you timely news from Heidiland that some restaurants in the area reopened terraces this week.
Only an hour by train from Zurich you’ll soon be able to turn the clock back 140 years to a time when we could all just roam around the valleys for our fun.
Swiss Air, naturally, is the national airline and one of the best, and most efficient (naturally) airline I’ve flown with. And needless to say the food is as healthy as an Alpine meadow.
They were everywhere even on the balcony of our hotel.
And in pictures on the noticeboard where there were reminders of my own Scary One back home… no, I’m not making it up.
All of which mooanderings around the subject brings me back to what’s happening in Switzerland in advance of our return.
E-bike in the E-Alps
Ring your bell Ermentrude
I’d be safer on these (probably) than the Trotti scooters favoured in woodland and the open road.
You can cross Switzerland in one week from north-east to south-west on la route verte, or the green tour.
And run into some Swiss cows on the mountain paths.
And literally too if you overdo it on your stop-offs to meet the various different winegrowers on the way.
You’ll meet friendly farmers too and some country folk only too happy to show you their strange musical instruments.
The tour is 470km long and starts in the German-speaking city of Schaffhausen, and passes through six Swiss Nature Parks, finally ending up in French Geneva.
A good walk
Are we there yet?
And a hike in the hills is nothing to the Swiss, young and septegenarian young alike, such as yodeller Brigitte who had us eating dust on the way up the peaks.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the Via Francigena was just a weekend stroll to a woman of Brigitte’s phenomenal energies.
As every Bandanino or Bandanette knows from reading these posts over the last couple of years in the year 990 Sigeric, the Archbishop of Rome began the Via Francigena tradition.
Sigeric had returned to England from Rome crossing Switzerland via the Jura and the Alps.
I nibbled into the route from Viterbo in Lazio into the Eternal City, but my 100km feel quite paltry comparative to Sigeric’s labours.
On the Via
I say 100km, but wanderer that I am I went off-piste and swore I saw some snow-capped mountains in the distance.
