10 Tourist Mistakes to Avoid in Switzerland 🇨🇭 | A Local's Insider Guide!

Welcome to Switzerland. Here are the 10 tourist mistakes to avoid when traveling to Switzerland. Hi my name is Greg, I'm a Swiss local. So the first mistake is actually and it's really dear to my heart because a lot of people are scared to mess up their trip okay and this is a bit a shame because you spend a lot of money to come here okay and then obviously you want to make it perfect but by making it super perfect and by having prepared everything down to the last detail you completely forget to enjoy. This is why you want to travel, this is why you want to come to Switzerland. A lot of people come for nature, they come for the views. This you can only do if you are a certain little bit relaxed and I'm going to help you with this because you are here at the right channel. This is Switzerland Insider and I'm going to give you some local tips, tips I use when I travel. So the next tourist mistake is actually kind of obvious okay so you are in the little bit the preparation of your Switzerland trip and all of a sudden you stumble upon the Swiss travel pass or any train pass in Switzerland okay and here actually lies a lot of potential to make mistakes a either in timing or b in money either spending too much money or not saving enough money. In Switzerland you're not obliged to buy the Swiss travel pass, you're not obliged to buy any train pass okay you can purchase normal tickets and actually in quite a lot of cases it makes a lot of sense and when I tell you there's this Swiss half fare card it does actually exactly what it says it cuts the fare in half so you have to pay for it a certain amount and then you can purchase tickets for half price you can have mountain cable cars for half price as well. These are kind of things we're going to go at length in this channel and I'm going to help you obviously pick the best product. Another mistake a lot of travelers do is they want to stay in the hot spots which is absolutely fantastic and if you're up that alley you should definitely do that but there are certain travelers who wish to stay a little bit more outside but do not know where okay who wish to stay a little bit more authentic but do not know where okay you have for example the city of Interlaken which is absolutely I love this city okay I love the vibe of the city with the tourists a lot of people in Switzerland a lot of Swiss locals disagree with me for me it's a place that is really happy and I like spending time there but when you think about it it's not very authentic okay a lot of the houses are concrete they're newly newer built but then when you for example want to stay in Interlaken but not stay in Interlaken there's two so-called suburbs for example in Interlaken one is called Matzen one is called Untersen they're adjacent to Interlaken there you can have cheaper hotels I want to stay a little bit more out even of Interlaken and have great access to Interlaken you can stay in Iseltwald okay Postpass, Kappelstabs, there is Oberried am Rheinsdorfer a beautiful Swiss village they have wonderful holiday apartments we're talking here literally a couple of minutes by train Brienz a couple of minutes more by train you can stay in places like this one this is an actual holiday apartment you can book in Brienz this is fantastic the next mistake actually goes hand in hand with the one before and this is about you staying at hotspots and you only visit hotspots okay and this is absolutely great okay and I think you should okay there's a lot of people like oh you don't go visit Jungfraujoch it's all this touristy this is Disney World in Switzerland blah blah blah so be it okay but then let's technically say you travel to New York you sort of have to eat a hamburger okay you have to buy this I love New York t-shirt you have to buy the Empire State Building for example okay or the one World Trade Center you would have to visit those kind of places if you don't and you come back and you talk to people that just go like are you nuts a little bit that you didn't go there and so the same it is for Switzerland okay you sort of have to visit Jungfraujoch or maybe Tidlitz and if you haven't seen the Matterhorn then what the hell are you even doing here why the hell did you even come here what I suggest you do is you visit certain hotspots you pick them so you can say I have done it because I think it's kind of important okay but there are a lot of actually things that are marketed to you as hotspots and actually cool points that you should do but in my eyes as a local it's sort of like yeah this is marketing more than it is actually really nice okay but then again you've come to the right channel together we will go to Ticino okay we will go to Graubünden it's both beautiful places with magnificent villages even in when you're near Zermatt they're authentic small villages no one actually visits for you here to discover so just to enforce my argument this point where I am right now actually is just that okay I could be standing down there by Chapel Bridge taking picture of my pilots which actually make really cool pictures I'll link it in the description it's called THCberg okay I will put the coordinates on on Google Maps you see the travel gods they say approve Greg this is a great tip for this I will send some sun for you and then you stay here and you want to stay actually a little bit because it's super nice okay so this comes up to the next point not spending enough time a for your entire Switzerland trip or b for each activity okay a lot of trips I see a lot of tourists they come here a lot of travelers and it's sort of their itinerary is like a machine gun for example when you come on a day like this okay you have clouds and then you have sunshine in between it's a little bit scattered here and then when you let's say go onto a mountaintop right now it could be you're in a cloud and all of a sudden a whole world opens up and then it closes down again and so on it's actually really beautiful so you can be one with nature which is what I really encourage when you come to Switzerland is is that you want to experience because basically this is what you come for okay you come for mountaintops you come for ship rides you come for train journeys to look out nature and landscapes so make the most of it and and maybe have some buffer time at the end to enjoy a little bit more and obviously another one seasonality okay in Switzerland we have got four seasons in the summer months everything is open okay the sun is shining everything is open for long in the evening as well then we've got the shoulder seasons okay which are usually in November and there is one in sort of like March April May-ish kind of thing another one where a lot of actually cable cars are in revision okay a lot of cable cars are closed there are hotels which are closed sometimes for months maybe you check that as well if you travel during those times obviously it's going to be cheaper okay but the weather cannot be so nice and not many things can be open okay for example one example is actually good one is Pilatus right here okay in summer a lot of travelers and you are going to as well because now you know they take a ship down there all the way to Alknapp to the other side of Pilatus and then they take a cogwheel train up all the way to the top and then a gondola or cable car down and some gondolas to a sort of suburb Krienz this is called the golden round trip okay it's fantastic experience but you can only do this in summer if you come in winter you can only do the cable car gondola bit okay there's no boat ride going to Alknappstadt there is no cogwheel train going up seasonality is a big thing in Switzerland but obviously when you come for the first time I suggest you come in summer maybe early summer a little bit June absolutely really great time to come here or my favorite time sort of September when the summer holidays have passed but obviously you cannot choose it sometimes then you come during the summer holidays but if you have the chance to come in the shoulder seasons it's really nice to wind down to relax a little bit it's it's a little bit dead can be in some cases sometimes but some people actually really like it next up another one which I am guilty of still I used to be guilty of a lot okay and this is eating in supermarkets only or a lot or most of the time because it's just convenient and it's convenient for two reasons and I tell you why I still do it today sometimes although I made a video which I'll link in the description of ways how you can eat in Switzerland on a budget okay sort of at the price of supermarket food or a little bit more without it being supermarket food because any supermarkets they have a convenience section okay and there they have sandwiches and fruit salads and so on and so forth but actually for me personally the value for money for these products is not 100% great because sometimes they're really actually priced at bakery prices but in some cases actually you will have to and this happens most of the times when you travel Switzerland like a local like in inside the regions which are not heavily promoted by the tourism board which are not heavily visited as well the whole thing is a little bit scattered and scarce another mistake is you pack too much and you pack the wrong things and you pack the wrong way and everything okay so whenever you prepare yourself for your trip to Switzerland here all the weather is unpredictable as you see now we started the video it was cloudy it was kind of chilly because it's the end of May now the sun is sort of like pumps in a little bit is heating up and it's getting hot okay so but technically it could also be like really cold again okay we've got forecast the next couple days 10 degrees so how do the Swiss do it okay we dress in layers okay and then you think but I want to go to Titlis and I want to go to Jungfraujoch and people told me up there there is snow and that is true there is snow and it's quite cold there you would think oh I need a winter jacket but in fact you spend some time inside there as well you go up in a heated train okay maybe uh yeah you bring bring some warm clothes but you don't have to go like full arctic expedition mode and just in case in some mountain villages there's a lot of sports stores where you can rent one so another thing about packing is actually the way you pack when you come to Switzerland okay I see a lot of people carrying or dragging their suitcase around here and I don't know if I should feel more story for the people or for the suitcase because you have to see Switzerland is going up it's going down sometimes you have cobblestone street in the train sometimes it's not too much space let's say you change accommodation every one or two days then I suggest you bring something lighter maybe you bring a backpack or you bring a backpack and a carry-on or something like that it's just easier for you to move another mistake we're talking about money right now okay and we're not talking about the prices but we're talking about how to pay in Switzerland a lot of people actually prefer to still pay in cash okay and a lot of actually smaller establishments the more outside you go actually only accept cash because mainly of the credit card fees we have a thing that came up which is called twins which is sort of like a mobile payment service which is actually a bit harder to use when you're a foreigner because for it to be used you need a swiss sim card and you need a swiss issued credit card in order to set it up if you don't do that you cannot use it when it comes to credit cards I would suggest you take a visa or a mastercard because amex is also it's doable in many cases but not all the time also my suggestion and always what I do either I take out a roll of 50 swiss francs in one franc coins okay you can do that at a bank for example or at the airport when you arrive okay because I sometimes you need to pay for parking like this sometimes you need to pay for a toilet like this and I think this is the best way you can do it or what I would do I would like just break notes into coins as well but always have some coins as well not only notes because sometimes you are in cases where you cannot change the notes into coins so just make sure you have maybe 10 or 20 swiss francs around in coins at the last point is insurance okay in switzerland we have got great facilities great hospitals okay we've got great ambulances we've got the air ambulance with very new very nice helicopters and this costs a lot okay the hotels they cost a lot as well so my suggestion for you is you take out a travel insurance in case you miss out on your trip you cannot go so that is cared for because maybe you want to book in non-refundable non-cancellable hotels maybe your flight is in at the cheap rate it's non-cancellable and maybe in this case it makes sense for you to take out the travel insurance instead of booking everything refundable I hope you enjoyed these 10 tourist mistakes to avoid in switzerland you know a little bit more now I would love to have you around on this channel see you soon around in switzerland thank you for watching bis bald und tschüss