Planning a trip to Switzerland

At the end of October, there will be a large international Biostatis conference in Zurich. I got notified about it about a week ago. I checked how much the tickets will cost and decided that I want to go there. A quick call to my best friend and we decided that we will be attending.

I checked a few booking platforms and also a way to get there. It turns out Switzerland is a really expensive country.

I looked for hotels in the area and none of them is under 600 euros. As we will be staying four nights, it isn’t as bad. But still, I think it is more expensive than other trips I’ve planned in the past.

A coworker told me I should check AirBnB, as you can get Studios and Apartments cheap. As I checked, I saw that most of them are really cheaper. And not just a few euros, but sometimes more than 20 or 30 euros per night. I will have to check with Christoph on that idea.

Obviously I was also looking at a transportation method to get there. I checked FlixBus (a bus company working European union-wide). We could drive there for about 200 euros per trip, but there wasn’t a way back via bus. Also, it would be a more than 20-hour ride, so pretty uncomfortable if you ask me.

I checked flights. To and back no problem about 300 euros per trip. So not more expensive than riding the bus. But way faster (only about one and a half hour per flight). This time the arriving and departure times aren’t great. It also bothers me that we would need to be at the airport pretty early and would get to the hotel early.

Probably not a bad thing, but in most hotels you aren’t allowed to get to your room before a fixed time without paying extra.

I opened Google Maps and it turns out, a trip would only be about 850 kilometres. Probably an eight to ten-hour drive. If I think the open-air festival in summer, where we will be driving 1200 kilometres per trip, it looks doable.

And it is relatively cheap. If I calculate 1800 kilometres, we could do the trip with only refuelling twice. Wich would be about 210 euros in total. Also, both of us drove similar distances before.

If we took an AirBnB and would drive I think we might be looking at a total cost of about 1000 euros. For two people and four nights, I find that a pretty good sum. I definitely paid more for less in the past.