Switzerland

The final chapter of our European journey

Switzerland was not a separate holiday for us. It was the final stop of our 2016 European journey — a journey that had begun in Rome and taken us through Florence, Pisa, Venice and Milan before we reached Zurich.

We had deliberately kept the trip open-ended. We knew where we were starting and where we eventually needed to fly home from, but we did not have every day planned in advance. As we moved north through Italy, the journey itself became the plan.

By the time we reached Zurich, we had already learnt something important about the way we liked to travel.

Arriving in Zurich

Zurich felt different from the Italian cities we had just travelled through.

There wasn’t a long list of monuments we were determined to tick off. Instead, Zurich became a place to slow down and simply experience the city before returning to Dubai.

We stayed near Zurich station, which turned out to be an excellent choice. After several days of moving between cities, being close to a major transport hub made everything easy. We could walk out, find our way around and use public transport without having to worry about complicated arrangements.

And the public transport itself made an impression on me.

Buses, trams, trains and ferries seemed to fit together seamlessly. It was the sort of system that made moving around feel almost effortless. Everything also appeared remarkably clean and organised.

For someone who enjoys figuring out how a city works, that was part of the attraction.

A different kind of sightseeing

Our time in Zurich wasn’t about rushing from one famous attraction to another.

We walked around, used public transport and simply enjoyed being there. After the movement and sightseeing of Rome, Florence, Pisa and Venice, the slower pace felt welcome.

There was also something satisfying about arriving in a new city and being able to navigate it without needing a car. The buses, trams, trains and ferries gave us the freedom to move around while staying close to the station.

In that sense, Zurich fitted perfectly into what this trip had become.

We had started the journey without a detailed plan. We had learnt to book accommodation and train journeys as we went. We had discovered that we could move between cities without needing to know exactly what the next day would look like.

Zurich was the final proof that this way of travelling worked for us.

The end of the journey

There was a certain symmetry to the trip.

We had entered Europe through Rome and were leaving from Zurich. Between those two points, we had travelled through several cities, changed trains, dealt with accommodation as we went and gradually become more comfortable with uncertainty.

Zurich was therefore more than another destination on the map. It was where the whole experiment came together.

After ten days on the road through Italy and Switzerland, we boarded our Emirates flight from Zurich back to Dubai on 25 August 2016.

There was no grand finale. We simply went home.

But looking back, Zurich remains an important part of that journey because it represented what we had learnt along the way.

We had discovered that we could travel without planning every detail. We could make decisions on the road, use public transport, choose accommodation as we went and still have a wonderful time.

Switzerland wasn’t really another trip added to our travel history.

It was the place where one journey ended — and where we became a little more confident about travelling on our own terms.