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Friday, February 03, 2012

An Alternative to Constance

In a blog post I made last year, I mentioned that many Swiss head to the German border town of Constance (Konstanz) in order to do some cheap grocery shopping. Well, a closer alternative has been found, fellow grocery refugees! Waldshut, an other German border town, is 20 mins closer to Zurich than Constance and features 3 huge supermarkets. All of which are open until 10pm during the week. Crucially, this means you can get to Waldshut and back in the evening without paying a single Rappen if you have a Gleis7 travel card.


A vast bounty of treasure awaits those who make the journey over the border!


It's certainly worth making the occasional trip, particularly as German alcohol and meat can be around three times cheaper than their Swiss counterparts! Keep hold of your receipts and fill in the relevant Custom forms and I believe you can even claim back the tax paid. However unlike Constance, Waldshut isn't a terribly nice place to visit. Cheap grocery shopping for the Swiss appears to be the sole purpose of the small town, to which it may well owe it's existence. Or so it seems.


Outside the main train station in Zurich.


In the meantime, Siberian weather has achieved a tight grip of the majority of Europe. Zurich is no exception, temperatures have been as low as -15 and the snow looks set to stay. If things carry on like this for a while, it might be possible to go and ice skate on the Katzenseen in Affoltern.


Bergholz forest in Affoltern.


The temperatures are much worse in Eastern Europe though. Great, that's exactly where I'm heading next week and the week after!

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