Visiting Biel Bienne Switzerland
The Tale of A Speedmaster Wristwatch
In 1972, a man from rural Kansas traveled to Geneva Switzerland, and purchased an unusual timepiece. The Speedmaster Mark 3 wristwatch was worn nearly daily for 40+ years and was a prized possession for many-many years. Sadly, the day came when the watch no longer worked due to the many years of heavy use, and the owner himself passed away. However, that was not the end of the story for this particular watch.
Visiting Biel /Bienne Switzerland
As mentioned in a previous post, we planned our time in Switzerland very conservatively and kept the delivery of the watch as our primary purpose for our limited time there. To that end, on our first morning waking up in Europe, we ate a quick breakfast in our hotel (and grabbed a couple of ham croissants in a ziplock that I keep in my purse) and then raced off to the train station to make our way to Biel Bienne.
A fun fact about Biel/Bienne is that due to the heavy influence of both German and French in the country, this town adopted both the German and French names for the town.
Omega Watch Headquarters
My husband was very close with his grandfather and loved him dearly, so when his grandfather's broken watch made its way into his possession, it was once again a treasured item for the man that possessed it, which served as the primary inspiration behind the planning of a trip to where the story began.
The watch had previously been taken to a luxury jeweler and watch seller for an estimate of what may be required to refurbish the timepiece, which is when it was discovered that the watch would have to be sent (by any jeweler/dealer) back to the manufacturer in Switzerland. Knowing that the watch would have to travel to Switzerland no matter what, I took it upon myself to contact the manufacturer myself and inquire as to the process of hand delivering the watch for repair. Fortunately, the Omega watch organization responded quickly and provided me with the appropriate route to take in which this handoff could occur.
The Omega Watch Museum
The museum which is also located at the headquarters is free to tour and interesting even to those that don’t necessarily consider themselves “watch people.”
Two Days in Zurich Switzerland
How We Maximized 50 Hours
There’s a delicate line to be found between “over-scheduled” and “maximized opportunity,” and I’m the queen of erring on the less desirable side of the two. It never fails that when I start planning a trip, I find far too many “once in a life-time” or “not to be missed” opportunities in one too many destinations to squeeze into a single trip, but how do you decide what to skip?!
Planning with Purpose
Whether you intentionally plan trips with a “purpose” or not, everyone does. For some, the purpose is simply to fulfill a vision of sleeping in, discovering what’s in a city as you walk past it, or to simply get a tan. There’s nothing wrong with simple plans like the above, and in fact, it makes it easier to demonstrate the following construct of purpose driven trip planning.
Example. If your goal for a trip is to simply wear sandals and get a tan on the beach, then some things to consider with this goal in mind, might be the following:
What’s the weather like at the time of year that you’re considering a visit to this destination?
How much time do you need to take to accomplish your tan?
If you’re traveling with a partner or friend, are your goals for the trip perfectly in sync, or does one of you desire to take a day to go shopping or take a tour, or both?
The moral of the story, is that trip activities can quickly runaway with you and at the end of it, you might leave without having felt like you got the tan that you wanted.
Our Purpose for Switzerland
Like many, my husband was unable to celebrate a milestone during the COVID-19 Pandemic in the way he would have wished. In this case, his 40th birthday had always been a birthday that we intended to celebrate abroad, but international travel in January of 2021, was not in the cards. However, things had improved by December of 2021 and we decided to take our chances and brave a trip to Europe.
What I’ve seen of Europe has all been amazing which can make it difficult to choose a single destination out of the many diverse locations available. However, I thought that this trip might be better spent focusing on things relevant to my husband, and in this vein, I thought it the perfect opportunity for a mini pilgrimage. A few years prior, he had inherited a wristwatch from his grandfather after his passing. The watch no longer worked, but was a luxury timepiece which his grandfather had himself purchased in Switzerland in the early 1970’s. Ding, ding, ding… light-bulb moment!
I contacted the manufacturing headquarters of the watch brand (located in Switzerland) and asked if we would be allowed to physically deliver the watch back to them for repair, rather than simply taking it to a local jeweler/dealer and having them ship it to Switzerland on our behalf. Fortunately, they said yes, and that they would ship it back to us when the work was completed.
With the central activity of our trip established, the rest of our adventure could unfold much more easily now knowing what we needed to work around. Ultimately, we decided to limit our time in Switzerland, and to focus solely on the delivery of the watch to the factory, then we would border hop to Austria in time for New Years Eve in Salzburg. The way this worked out was thus:
Depart USA December 28th
Arrive in Zurich Switzerland (approximately 9 AM) December 29th
Take a 2 hour - Old Town Zurich, cultural walking tour, starting at 2 PM December 29th
Depart via train to Biel/Bien Switzerland, 10 AM December 30th (location of the manufacture)
Deliver the watch to the factory
Return via train to Zurich, 3 PM December 30th
Depart via train to Salzburg Austria 11 AM, December 31st
If you do the math, we spent VERY little time in Zurich, but it was long enough to make the following observations:
Zurich is beautiful - Super clean, beautiful buildings, lots of greenery despite being very urban and cosmopolitan… hell, even the people are pretty!
Zurich is extremely expensive! I expected it to be high, but my expectation of high cost was wrong by about half. Our first evening there, we ate dinner at a vegetarian salad-bar and drank hot tea with our self-served meals, and it cost roughly $75 for the two of us. You’ve been warned.
It’s hard for me to know what the impact of COVID-19 may have had on the operational hours of the retail industry at the time we were there, but everything that wasn’t a restaurant or bar, would close by 6 pm, which made for an extremely harrowing experience trying to purchase a box of Swiss chocolates for my mother in-law before we left. Had I known that the hours would have been so limited, I would have arranged my shopping time differently in our schedule.
In summary, I probably wouldn’t go back to Zurich outside of just using the airport, it was just too expensive for me to enjoy. However, knowing what the prices in areas outside of the city are like, and knowing how beautiful the country is, I would 100% go see more of Switzerland.
My experience traveling to Europe during a pandemic
International travel during a pandemic
A return to travel
The last couple of years have been stressful and for us, travel bugs, being stuck at home was a special kind of hell. Fortunately, with cases declining and countries starting to encourage tourism, travel planning can now resume, but with more than a few hiccups to be expected.
Travel Requirements - December 2021
We decided to follow through with our first international trip since the start of the pandemic, in late December of 2021, by traveling first to Switzerland and then to Austria to celebrate the New Year.
With travel regulations changing almost daily, please be aware that these requirements will likely have changed by the writing of this post.
Documentation Requirements for our journey:
Full-Vaccination (meaning at least two doses of an EU recognized vaccine)
VeriFly App (various similar apps exist, be sure to check with our airline for their preferred app) - Travel guidelines as required by the airlines and must be completed before arrival at the airport
GreenPass App - Entry requirements for Switzerland must be completed before exiting the country of origin (in our case, the USA)
Covid Cert App - Very similar to the GreenPass app but is the application of choice to apply for clearance via the EU government.
The Process
The trickiest part of this entire application process is paying attention to the time requirements associated with the submissions. Foundational to the entry into Switzerland or the EU is having a negative COVID test taken within the time frame assigned by their entry requirements (I can't stress this enough). With this in mind, elapsed the time between taking either a PCR or a rapid antigen test and the time you receive the results does impact your ability to request permission via the above applications.
Our experience
We were scheduled to depart from Kansas City on December 28th at 7:30 AM, assuming that getting our negative COVID test results would be a non-issue even after Christmas. We had not anticipated the surge of testing that would be done and result in significant testing backlogs across the whole country.
Like everyone else (apparently), we went out first thing on the morning after Christmas and underwent PCR tests that would meet the 72-hour qualification window for our Swiss entry applications (whereas rapid antigen tests could only be 24 hours old at the time of arrival at our destination). We followed up our morning tests with another set of PCR tests at a different pharmacy chain later on that same day (both chains suggested an average 24-hour turnaround time for results).
By the following day, December 27th, we still had not received results from either of our tests the previous day, and we were beginning to sweat. We had to provide negative test results within a narrow window of time to finish our applications for entry into Switzerland, and we were rapidly running out of it.
We decided to take yet another set of PCR tests but in another city, thinking that they would maybe be using a different testing lab to process results. However, by the late afternoon of December 27th, we still had zero results back from any of our tests, which forced us to take our least ideal test option and get rapid antigen tests.
The reason this was not ideal, is that rapid antigen results taken on the 27th would only be good enough to get us from our home airport to that of our connecting airport before their 24-hour viability would be reached, meaning that they would not qualify as valid results for our Swiss entrance applications.
With this new plan looking like our best option, we decided to use rapid test results to get us onto our first flight from Kansas City, and then get another rapid test inside our connecting airport, thereby giving us a fresh 24-hour window of result validity time to complete our Swiss entry applications. We would then cross our fingers that they would be received and approval issued during the remaining portion of our layover so that we would know before takeoff if we would be allowed to enter Switzerland when we landed.
Fortunately, my husband received his results from the very first PCR test (taken on the morning of December 26th), at around 11 pm on December 27th. This result allowed him to both submit, and receive, his Swiss entry approval as designed (before departure). I, however, was still very much stuck with the previously mentioned "less than ideal" scenario, but at least we would now only have to pay for one rapid test at the clinic inside our connecting airport ($160 per test!).
With the mission of getting my second test and entry application completed, we hit the ground running as soon as we arrived at our connecting airport the next day. We ran (luggage in tow) to the testing center, got me tested, and began my entry application with my new test results 30 minutes later.
For the next two hours, I worked to stave off a panic attack while waiting to receive the results of my entry application while we waited at our gate, which fortunately came with time to spare, but with the addition of a few new gray hairs.
Travel between countries
Since Switzerland is not part of the EU, this means that we had to jump through another entry hoop for traveling from Switzerland to our next destination, Austria. Fortunately, most of Europe all uses a digital vaccination passport system which made the barrier of entry MUCH easier since we could use the digitally issued approval from Switzerland to apply for our digital application to the EU. It only took a few minutes to complete this process.
Showing proof of vaccination
At the time of our trip, you were required to be double-masked and show proof of vaccination to do just about anything other than standing outside, and in some cases, you still had to show proof to be at some outdoor venues. Fortunately, the EU and Swiss apps both issue you a QR code that is accepted for this purpose and utilizes the vaccination information you provided during your initial application for entry. Alternatively, in most instances in which we had to provide proof, our paper vaccination cards issued by the CDC, also worked without any problem. To be clear, we were using double-sided copies of our original cards that we had laminated.
The journey home
In our final COVID-related hoop, we needed to receive negative tests no more than 24 hours before returning to the US. Considering how difficult it had been to accomplish this task on our outbound journey, we were very stressed about navigating it from a foreign country. Fortunately, this task was made much easier for our return due to the test results being timed to our departure, rather than when we would arrive at the border.
Additionally, Austria had a much more robust testing network in place and our hotel concierge simply directed us to one of the MANY walk-in testing centers located around Vienna. We needed only to show our passports and received free, rapid tests, followed by results within fifteen minutes.
Lessons learned
Have a supply of rapid antigen tests at home which are recognized by governing bodies, so that we don’t run into issues like this again.
Per the above, be sure to regularly check the expiration dates for these tests to ensure that the results will be accepted at the time you need to use them. The “use by” date will be printed on the box.
In Summary
I’m sure the burning question in your mind, is “was it worth it?” I can honestly say without a moment's hesitation that it was! As with anything else in life, fear of the unknown and situations you have never experienced before can be very stressful, but we both grew from this experience and earned some “travel cred” in the process.
An unexpected bonus of traveling during a pandemic is that there were significantly fewer tourists that we had to compete with at all of our destinations, which made our time extra special while there. Five stars would repeat this trip.