German
Switzerland: watches, jazz and suitcases
June 2025
Planet SWATCH and OMEGA Museum
A friend told us about his visit to the Planet Swatch Museum in Biel. So we visited the exhibition and were amazed by the more than five thousand different Swatch watches.
The Omega Museum in the same building was also very interesting. Traditional old pocket watches, OMEGA moon landing, submarine watches. I realized that I am also a bit of an “antique”, as the watch model of one of my earlier Chrono Quartz watches is already on display in the museum.
Monastery Einsiedeln
In Einsiedeln, we were impressed by the magnificent townscape with its well-preserved houses.
Probably the largest monastery complex in Switzerland, Einsiedeln Monastery was built in the 18th century as a baroque building with four inner courtyards. The famous Black Madonna from the 15th century can be found in the black marble Chapel of Grace.
The monastery complex also includes a monastery school, a winery for the monastery wine and stables for the monastery's own horses. The whole monastery is very impressive.
Trigger Big Band
After a delicious dinner with friends at the Quellenhof restaurant in Rapperswil, we attended the 97th Trigger Big Band Factory Concert at the old factory. The jazz concert was impressive. Under the direction of long-time band leader Martin Winiger and with the composer and solo trombonist Andreas Tschopp, the big band gave a great performance.
Asia Treff
Over Whitsun, we visited the Asia Treffen in Flach, which has been running for 47 years. 26 motorhomes with their travelers as well as some day visitors met for a social get-together, of course also to exchange travel experiences.
At one point, we sat in a group with six other travel couples who we had met independently of each other on different continents around the world. There was a lot to talk about. We felt very comfortable in this travel community.
Return flight from Switzerland to Uruguay
For our return flight with Iberia via Madrid to Montevideo, we checked in our 3 pieces of luggage and 2 pieces of cabin luggage in Zurich. These bags were checked straight through to Montevideo.
Unfortunately, the flight from Zurich was delayed by an hour. As a result, we only just managed to catch our connecting flight in Madrid to Montevideo, but unfortunately our luggage did not travel with us. We realized this at 08:00 on Friday morning while waiting in vain at the baggage collection carousel in Montevideo.
We then stood at the baggage reclaim counter for 2 hours with many other people to sort out the formalities for the delivery of our luggage the following day to Nueva Helvecia, 150 km away. We were promised delivery by the national Uruguayan transport company DAC.
Rolf, the owner of the Hotel Suizo, was waiting reliably at the entrance to the airport to chauffeur us to our parked Sprinter.
As it was the weekend, we could expect our suitcases to be delivered on Monday at the earliest. This was the case. We were informed by the DAC office that our 5 suitcases were ready for collection in the town. Five suitcases were there. Unfortunately, one suitcase that was on the flight from Bern airport was not ours.
After several difficult phone calls with an IBERIA AI-telephone assistant, they searched for our suitcase with the correct baggage number. We had a worrying feeling. To our great delight, the proper suitcase was delivered to us 2 days later.
All's well that ends well.
