To Switzerland...with Marmite

The route I ended up taking

I had a weekend planned in Switzerland - meeting people I know and some people I didn't know in the small town of Aarburg, in Aargau. I had to be there at a fairly specific time, but had no schedule for returning. So I formulated a bit of a plan: I would take a cheap overnight train from Vienna, in the very east of Austria, to Bregenz, in the state of Vorarlberg, in the very west, pretty much at the border of Switzerland. I would try to hitchhike from there to Aarburg (which on Google Maps was around a 2-hour drive), spend the weekend, then hitchhike back to Vienna, taking as long as necessary.

Just before I'd left, I'd been alerted by my girlfriend, Lisa, to a ongoing promotion by Marmite (the delicious New Zealand kind, not the inferior British kind...also, if you don't know what Marmite is, you can read about it here), whereby people could take photos of themselves overseas with their jar of Marmite, tag it with the hashtag #MarmiteNZ on Instagram, and they would select one person every month, and send them some Marmite. Lisa and I both really like Marmite, and we have a smaller and a larger jar here in Europe but the smaller jar is almost completely empty.

At the Vienna central train
with my Marmite

So, I figured, if I took the Marmite with me, and took a selfie at every place I stopped on my journey, then made them into a collage, and uploaded it to Instagram then I'd be certain to win the competition for the month. I took the smaller, emptier Marmite jar, in case I lost it, or fell into a volcano, or misplaced it in some other fashion. Lisa took the first photo of me, at Wien Hauptbahnhof (Vienna main train station), and I boarded the train, ready for the long journey ahead.

In winter, I had travelled from Zürich to Vienna on an overnight train, and the train had been very empty on the way, I'd had an entire compartment to myself almost the entire trip. Unfortunately, this time, it was surprisingly busy. I had bought my laptop and had hoped to do some work on it, perhaps play some casual games I have on Steam, but it was so crowded in the compartment, I didn't feel like disturbing people that much, especially considering how large and unwieldy my laptop is. So I read a bit of my book (I was reading Canterbury Tales...not the easiest of reads) but mostly just sat quietly, trying to find a comfortable way to sleep upright, without accidentally touching anybody else (pretty much an impossible task) or looking out of the window (which wasn't that interesting in the middle of the night).

A big mushroom! In Bregenz

I arrived in Bregenz at around 8.30am, as scheduled. Lisa had told me about a large mushroom-shaped kiosk which sells milk products, such as milkshakes, and I had decided that it would be the site for my next selfie. It was a bit more difficult to get it than I thought, as I'd forgotten to bring my selfie-stick (something that I was utterly opposed to before being given one by someone on one of my tours, and now I'm a fan) and the lighting was somehow being very difficult. After getting the photo, however, it was definitely time to try to start getting a ride towards Switzerland.

I was following the road-signs for the highway into Switzerland, and on the way, keeping an eye out for cardboard and for a marker. Often-times, I have found cardboard collection bins on the street or behind businesses to be excellent places to get cardboard, and if you're respectful, stay off majorly private property (I mean, the back of a supermarket or petrol station is usually private property, but not really) and clean up any mess you make, I think it's unlikely anybody would make a big deal out of it...certainly, I've never had anyone say anything to me. On the way, I went past a cardboard bin for an entire apartment building, on the street, awaiting collection. It was a matter of a few seconds to find a suitable piece of cardboard and to make sure all the other cardboard was back in the bin, ready for collection.

I continued along the way and spotted a supermarket. In a very Austrian, and specifically, a very alpine Austrian way, they had a barbecue going in the carpark, with sausages, beer and a crappy (or in my opinion, awesome) local duo playing all the favourite Schlager, Austro-pop and Volksmusik hits, all at about 10 in the morning. Moreover, there were already a handful of (mostly older) local people, getting drunk, eating meat and singing along. I went in to the supermarket, bought a decent but cheap permanent marker, sat outside and made my sign, then continued on down the road. Failing to see any spots that I felt were particularly good for hitchhiking, and not feeling the need to stop anywhere anyway, I kept walking to the next small town/village, named Hard. I wasn't in the centre of it, I could've turned off and checked it out, but I kept walking down the side of the highway (there was a bike and pedestrian lane), until there was a junction, with both ways going to Switzerland but at different points, on different highways. I figured that for getting to Switzerland, my best bet was to stand somewhere before the junction, with my sign that said "Switzerland/Schweiz", so I could get people who were driving to Switzerland in either direction.

I found a spot just after a bridge, with plenty of space to pull over, and held out my sign and my thumb. I had my headphones in, listening to music, the weather was absolutely fantastic and I was happy to stand in the sun for however long it took. But a car pulled up within 5 minutes. A young couple from Augsburg, Raphael and Sara, and they were going to Switzerland for a birthday party. They didn't take the main highways, so they could avoid the tolls, so we took a more winding route through rural Switzerland, driving through amazing alpine villages and brightly-coloured little towns and past hilly fields full of cows with bells, like we were in a movie. I almost always prefer travelling on smaller roads and highways for this reason, just seeing more of the landscape and the country.

After driving together for an hour or so, they dropped me off at a very small town called Pfäffikon, which is at the very south-western end of the big lake by Zürich, where Zürich is on the very north-west. I wasn't actually sure how big Aarburg was (because I am terrible with researching where I'm going), but figured that because it's in the state Aargau, with a name like Aarburg, if it wasn't the capital, then it was probably a main town at least. I went to the train station to use the free wifi, and looked on Google Maps, and figured the easiest way to get to Aarburg was through Zürich.

Not the best selfie ever

I made a new sign on the back of my old one, that just said "Aarburg". I had to get to Aarburg around 6.00, so I figured I'd try hitchiking until about 4.30, and if it didn't work, I'd take a train to Aarburg. From the train station, the road signs for a highway to Zürich were pointing to the right, but on Google Maps, it showed the most direct route to Zürich as being to the left. I followed Google's instructions, finding the on-ramp to the highway and finally a road-sign that said "Zürich". I had a great site for hitchhiking, with a large, open carpark for a kind of tavern/pub in front of me, with a bus stop slightly behind me. I took another selfie with my Marmite, put in my headphones and got to waiting again.

In hindsight, and by examining the map a bit more carefully, I think perhaps following the signs for Zürich to the other end of town might have been better - although not as direct a route as on the motorway, it would have been toll-free, so more local cars might have taken it. Not to mention, I would've been travelling next to the lake the entire way, and would undoubtedly have had amazing views the whole time. Also, Aarburg, although historically fairly important, is not particularly big or significant now, and probably not that well-known amongst the Swiss, let alone foreigners. And lastly, after an hour or so with no ride, I added "via Zürich" to my sign, but I realise now that it cluttered the sign and made it harder to read. I realise now that I should have gone about hitchhiking out of Pfäffikon differently, but hindsight is 20/20. If I wasn't on a schedule, I probably would've made a new sign that only said "Zürich" and might have checked out the other route.

But time was pressing, so I caved and took a train, and arrived in Aarburg at almost exactly 6. I spent the weekend, as planned, had a great time and all that, but then came time to say goodbye. Some of the other guys that were there were American students, studying abroad in Freiburg. We were sitting around, having some beers in the afternoon and I was preparing to start hitchhiking back to Vienna, but they invited to come and stay a night at their dorm, which I thought sounded pretty cool...

So, the story will continue in the next post...will I survive? Will I get back to Vienna? If you want, you can subscribe by email on the right side of the page here, or follow me on Instagram or Facebook.