January: a cold start to the year but I love Bern in its winter coat. Even after Christmas is over, the city still looks magical covered in snow.

February: after the pandemic caused a pause, carnival was back as loud as ever. Bern’s may not be as long and rowdy as Basel’s but it’s always fun.

March: once spring had sprung, it was great to be able to start hiking again, albeit at a low level. This was my first visit to the hanging bridge at Sigriswil – 340m long with great views.

April: Fribourg is often overlooked by visitors rushing to or from Lake Geneva, but it has a lovely old town and marvellous cathedral. A day trip showed I should go more often.

May: it’s years since I’ve been to the Rhine Falls but it was worth the wait. Snow melt and spring rains meant that they were in full flow and as impressive as ever.

June: time for one of my favourite excursions from Bern – the train to Wengen, cable car to Männlichen then hike back around via Kleine Scheidegg.

July: a new hike for me up at Hasliberg. From Meiringen, it’s a series of cable cars up to the Alpen Tower then a glorious hike down to Käserstatt. With cows of course.

August: I don’t often get to stay in absolute luxury in Switzerland, but Cosa Travel arranged for a night for me and Gregor at the Bürgenstock Resort above Lake Lucerne. Simply sublime.

September: on days when I was feeling vaguely human, I’d escape to the mountains. The best antidote to chemotherapy is a day of sunshine and fresh air at Mürren.

October: but usually I was confined to Bern, too sick to travel even within Switzerland. Luckily it’s a beautiful city all year round.

November: perhaps my favourite day in the Bern calendar is one Monday in November when the city is taken over by onions. Yes, it’s Zibelemärit and scrummy onion tarts.

December: when chemo finished just as the first snow fell, you couldn’t stop me from finding a winter wonderland – and Kanderstag always fits the bill.

No trips to far-flung Graubünden or Ticino this year but they are already planned for 2024. Not only because I love going there but also because I have started researching my new book. More on that next year but for now, I’ll simply say this:

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

and may 2024 be a better year for all of us.

It’s the sequel I never wanted to think about. No, I’m not talking about Grease 2 or Trump winning again. Sadly it was the return of my cancer. A regular check up and scan in July showed that it was back, seven months after I had been given the all clear. So this summer became the worst version of Groundhog Day imaginable.

With the cancer having spread to my lymphatic system, radiotherapy and surgery were no longer viable options, so it was chemotherapy or bust. More aggressive treatment this time, which gave me rather horrible side-effects. My oncologist had never seen (or heard of) anyone reacting so quickly and so badly. But I got through it. Well, almost.

It was supposed to be 12 weeks of chemo but my body simply couldn’t cope with it. After eight weeks, my oncologist stopped it all and things were looking a bit bleak. If I couldn’t finish the chemo, what did that mean for dealing with the cancer? But all was not lost.

A scan showed that all my tumours had shrunk. The chemo had worked, or at least worked well enough that the cancer has stopped spreading. The first big hurdle reached and conquered. That was last month and my body has had time to recover. I even managed a few day trips: I had no hair but was still able to explore Switzerland.

Now comes the next round. The new treatment will be immunotherapy and it comes with a few known unknowns, not least how I will react to this latest invasion of my body. But the ends justifies the means so onward into the unknown.

This beautiful land of lakes and mountains is a wonderful place to live (and visit) but it isn’t always the cheapest place to be. And while inflation in Switzerland is low compared to other countries (currently 1.7%), it still adds to the prices. So how can you save money here? I have a few tips for you.

Let’s start with food and drink.

• Shop carefully. The supermarkets have special offers every week so buy things you always use when they are discounted, such as tinned tomatoes or müesli. The cellar room that comes with almost every Swiss flat is great for storing non-perishables.
• Shop late. An hour or so before closing is a great time to grab fresh food at half price – the one big advantage of restricted opening hours. Saturdays are a good bet so swing by your local Coop and see what meat, vegetables and cheese are reduced for a quick sale.
• Have lunch. If you want to eat out, then lunch is often cheaper than supper. Many restaurants offer fixed priced menus at lunchtime, especially in spots with lots of offices. Or go to a self-service restaurant like Manor or Migros, which are usually good value.
• Free water. You need never buy water in Switzerland. Just carry an empty bottle and fill up at the fountains that are in every town and city. Or even refill with tap water, which is always safe unless there is a sign saying otherwise.

What about travel tips?

• Day cards. The travel pass for the whole country is a steal if you’re doing a lot in one day. To save even more, book a Saver Day Pass online or look out for 2-4-1 offers that regularly pop up in Coop or the post office. Some municipalities still offer a set-price day card for residents.
• Supersaver tickets. Trains can be cheaper if you know exactly which one you want to catch. The SBB website has online supersaver tickets with good discounts for travelling on a specific train – but usually only for times outside rush hours, and rarely at weekends.
• Free transport. Some places provide free public transport when you stay overnight (eg Bern, Geneva, Lucerne, Grindelwald) so pick your weekends away wisely. It applies to hotels but also many Airbnbs as it’s part of the tourist tax. In Engadin, it’s a two-night minimum but then you get free mountain transport too.
• Museum entry. Some, eg CERN, are free but most charge an entry fee – though not always. For example, Bern’s museums are free on Saturdays in August, while in Geneva it’s the first Sunday every month, as is the Kunstmuseum in Basel. The Kunsthaus in Zurich is free on Wednesdays.

And tips for residents rather than visitors:

• Loyalty cards. You may not like the shop knowing what you’ve bought, but having a loyalty card does bring benefits. You might get special offer discounts or receive cash back in the form of vouchers. I have ones for Coop, Migros, Pfister, Loeb and Orell Füssli.
• Health insurance. Three ways to save on your monthly premium: switch to the HMO or GP model, which gives up to 25% off; raise your annual deductible to the maximum of CHF 2,500; change insurers every year in November.
• Credit cards. Not every credit card in Switzerland has an annual fee so choose one which is free, such as Migros or Coop. And as long as you pay it off every month, you won’t pay any interest so it’s win-win for you, and not for the bank.
• Free museums. One way to get into over 500 museums absolutely free is to bank with Raiffeisen. If you have their Member-Plus account it comes with a Museum Pass (which normally costs CHF 177 a year). I love mine.

The best way to save is not to spend anything at all, so make the most of Switzerland’s scenery with free activities such as hiking or swimming. Or just enjoying the views.

One month to go before the EuroGames arrives in Bern, and with it many hundreds of athletes and their friends. And I’ll be part of the festivities. Before you ask, I won’t be running or swimming or doing anything involving balls. Instead I will be walking through Bern, and you can come with me.

As part of the whole EuroGames programme, I’ll be guiding three walks through the old town of Bern, showing you the best bits, and maybe some parts didn’t know were there. Whether it’s your first time in our lovely city, or you live here, this guided tour will be a fun way to see Bern.

There are three tour times on offer, although one is already sold out. The two remaining slots are on Thursday 27 July at 16.00 or Saturday 29 July at 11.00. Each tour lasts two hours plus a Q&A session at the end where you can ask about life in Switzerland. Tours start and end at the EuroGames Village in Münsterplatz, and tickets are €15 per person.

Click here for more information, and to book tickets.

And of course, there’s plenty else going on during the Games, not only sports and tours. Parties, club nights, dance workshops, movies and all ending with a BernPride festival on the Saturday afternoon. There will be rainbows aplenty but let’s hope for some sunshine too.

See you next month in Bern!

This is no April fool! You can buy a good book to support a good cause, and best of all, get free shipping. Almost too good to be true, so that’s why it only runs in April, and is only valid for the United States.

For the whole month my publisher in the USA, Helvetiq, is running a special offer for my amazing atlas of Switzerland, Cartographica Helvetica. For every copy sold in the US, $15 will be donated to the Swiss Center of North America. That’s the non-profit Swiss cultural centre in New Glarus, Wisconsin, which I have supported over the years.

All you have to do is buy the English edition of the book via the publisher’s website – make sure you choose to be charged in $ for orders within the USA.

As for shipping, well that’s free for the entire month of April on orders made and shipped within the US for any purchase over $30 – so that includes ordering one copy of Cartographica Helvetica. But of course you can order more than one!

Click here if you’d like to know more about the book, which has already won a prize for creative media, and is available in Switzerland in either French or German.

Remember: the offer only last until 30 April so it’s time to get ordering!

Bern may not seem like a watery city (there’s no lake, for example) but it is surrounded on three sides by the River Aare. And it was the light on and around the river that inspired Jane Fuhrimann to paint her wonderful pictures. But not just the Aare, also the lakes all across Switzerland, which isn’t surprising as they are too beautiful not to be painted.

Before I wax too lyrical, I must confess a vested interest: Jane and I worked together for years at Stauffacher Bookshop in Bern and she is one of my oldest friends in the city. She is still a bookseller, though now only part time so that she has time for her art. With her latest art exhibition opening this week in Bern, I asked Jane about her passion.

‘I have always painted and sketched but never shown my work before now. Since childhood, I’ve been interested in colour and design. Then last year I spent a month in Cornwall doing an upholstery course and the colours of the sea and landscape there inspired me to pick up a paintbrush again when I got home. I took photos of the light near the river and at the lakes last summer, then began a series of paintings based on these.’

‘I love colour and the way colours relate to each other as well as light. Both of these are important in my work.’ I agree Jane, but for me, it’s not just the colours that are captivating but the style of painting, known as pointillism. An exhibition in Lausanne last summer provided more inspiration, this time from Archille Laugé and his use of pointillism to capture the light.

But it is time consuming to paint a large canvas with hundreds of tiny dots. Each one of Jane’s paintings in this style is the product of hours of concentration, and love. However, as the landscape above shows, not all of her art is pointillist. On a technical note, she uses acrylics on canvas and almost all of her work is framed using a floating frame.

You can see Jane’s paintings at a special exhibition in Bern. From 11 March to 29 April, Stauffacher is showcasing her work in the bookshop, and all the paintings will be on sale. Or you can check out her Instagram page for more pics and info.

Most authors have a day job to survive. Unless they are J K Rowling or John Grisham (or have a very understanding other half), they can’t live from writing alone. A 2022 survey of UK authors showed that professional authors were earning only £7000 a year, a drop of 43% in 15 years. And a mere 19% of authors earn all their income from writing. So most have a second job.

I used to have one that was related to my books, at least. I would give talks and workshops about Switzerland, all over the country and abroad. They were for companies like Google and ABB, tourist boards and expat groups, schools and festivals, or whoever asked – and was willing to pay (every author has stories of being expected to work for free). Sadly, the pandemic stopped all such events and they have yet to recover.

Now I have a different second job. Not so different in that it involves writing and travelling, but very different in that covers the whole world. I am the content creator for a great travel agency in Zurich called Cosa Travel. They have been designing tailor-made trips for over 40 years so it’s been wonderful to become part of such an experienced team.

But it all started with Swiss Watching. Because of that book, I ended up working for Cosa on their Swiss itineraries and content, as well as becoming one of their guides in and around Bern. That led to a bigger role rewriting their whole website for a brand relaunch last month, with everything from the company pages to travel articles being revamped and rewritten. It was a mammoth task but the end results are fantastic.

Even better is that I get to travel for work again, not just in Switzerland. With Cosa, I have stayed in a rainforest ecolodge and an iconic landmark hotel. I’ve had a private guided tour of Fez, gone sloth-spotting in Costa Rica (see above) and will soon be on a train to Prague and Vienna. And I have travelled the world without leaving home, researching and writing about Fiji and Botswana, Bhutan and Rio.

Second jobs can get in the way of writing. It can be a vicious circle of time versus money. You have to work to earn the money that enables you to write but by working you don’t have enough time to write. I am lucky that my second job deals with two of the things I love most (and sometimes even all three if chocolate is involved), and leaves me time to write for myself.

Speaking of which, I am about to start researching my new Swiss book. More on that another time, but it does involve a lot of travelling in Switzerland.

Glad tidings of comfort and joy? Yes, with bells on! Not exactly a miracle, just Swiss science and healthcare doing their thing. I had another round of tests and… the tumours have gone. The treatment worked.

Six months of hospitals and procedures, of pain and nausea, of feeling like it wasn’t all worth it. But it was. The ends justified the means. I still have a way to go until I’m better as I reacted so badly to the therapies. And I have to have regular check-ups for quite a while.

But I can celebrate Christmas knowing the worst is over. It’s been a truly awful year so I’ll be glad when it’s behind me and can start 2023 with a clean bill of health. I hope the same goes for all of you too.

So happy Christmas to everyone. Next year can only be better but for now let’s enjoy the end of this one. Wherever you are, whoever you’re with, I hope you have a wonderful time.

See you all in 2023.

Four months ago I’d only had limited contact with the Swiss health service: paying my obligatory insurance, having occasional check-ups and suffering the odd minor hiccup. Four months ago I was diagnosed with cancer.

After weeks of intimate almost daily contact with healthcare professionals, I have a very clear picture of what the Swiss health service is really like. And it comes down to five basic traits:

Efficiency: this being Switzerland, you might expect the system to run like clockwork, especially as it’s essentially private health care. And it did, most of the time. When it was good, it was amazing, such as radiotherapy appointments timed to the minute and planned weeks ahead. But then there were the times when I was left waiting for days without any contact from anyone. Even in a well-run system, you still have to push for action sometimes.

Formality: everyone is very formal all the time. It’s always last names and Sie, not first names and du. ‘Schmidt is my name’ is how nurses or doctors would first greet me (even if they had trouble with my last name – I was usually Bay-ves not Bewes). I soon changed that. After two operations, I knew the theatre team as Cedric, Jürgen and Sofia. After two days in hospital, it was first names all around for me. So much more relaxing and welcoming.

Money: perhaps the most fascinating part of being ill in Switzerland is that every part of your expensive treatment is itemised. Need an MRI? That’ll be 608 francs. Ten-minute phone call your consultant? That’s 56 francs. Painkillers, they’re 8 francs for 20 tablets. Calling an ambulance is painful at 614 francs. The good news was that it’s covered by my insurance (minus my deductible of 500 francs and co-pay of 700 francs). No debts or risk of bankruptcy.

Technology: Bern isn’t a big city but it has great hospitals with top-notch machines, and qualified staff to run them. I was never in any doubt that I was getting the best possible treatment, be that hi-tech PET-CT scans or my daily dose of radiation. And the low-tech wasn’t bad either, from good food to comfortable beds. I even once had a room with a view.

Reality: no one spoke in euphemisms and if anything it was sometimes too direct. ‘This isn’t a death sentence’ was how I was told the tumour was malignant. ‘You have to get better or you’ll spoil my statistics’ was another gem, and I wasn’t entirely sure if he was joking or not (the Swiss are very serious about their statistics). But better direct than not.

Now it’s back to being patient. After weeks of radiotherapy and chemotherapy, I must wait for my body to recover before the next round of scans and tests in December. Then I’ll know if the treatments have worked but until then, I know I’m in good Swiss hands.

I love staying in hotels, which is just as well given my job. But for every wonderful night in a great place, there’s one spoilt by rules or mismanagement, or both. I’m not talking about service (let’s not go there this time), I’m talking about problems with the hotel itself. Problems that should not happen and could be fixed. Here are my all-time favourites:

Taxes: why do hotels pretend that the rate doesn’t include tax? It’s lying, as we have no choice but to pay the whole amount. In Switzerland, the worst culprit is the tourist tax (or Kurtax or city tax). That’s per person per night but never included in the rate. Just be honest!

Minibars: someone, somewhere must be able to invent a minibar fridge that doesn’t hum loudly all night then shudder at irregular intervals. I recently stayed in a mega-expensive hotel and the minibar was so loud I unplugged it (as I often do in hotel rooms).

Windows: I hate rooms with windows that don’t open, so that I’m hermetically sealed in, with maybe one air vent for relief. I blame the architect, as even many modern high-rise hotels have windows that can open safely. Much worse: a room with no windows at all, and, yes, they exist.

Wifi: amazingly there are still hotels that charge for wifi, or make it free only in reception. In the USA, it’s often hidden in a ‘resort fee’, even when there is no resort to speak of. Almost as irritating is wifi that’s so patchy, you can’t access your emails let alone have a Zoom call.

Showers: if you need a degree in physics to use the shower, then it’s the wrong one for a hotel – especially for those of us who wear glasses so can’t see the controls once in the shower! Not forgetting when there’s a millimetre’s difference between ice cold and burning hot water.

Sheets: I’m not expecting 300 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets (though they’re great when you get them) but I do expect the sheet to be long enough to tuck in at both ends. Why use sheets that end at the upper edge of the mattress? They never survive the night like that.

Plugs: there are almost never enough or they’re in the wrong places. So often I’m scrambling behind the desk to find a second socket because I have more the one thing to plug in. Thank goodness modern rooms usually now have USB sockets for charging mobile phones.

Lights: speaking of things electrical, lights are also often in the wrong place, or not bright enough for reading. But my pet hate is controls that are too complicated. I recently stayed in a London hotel where the bedside light controls were straight out of Star Trek.

Check in: a few weeks ago I arrived at hotel around twelve minutes before the stated time and was made to wait until exactly 4pm before I could check in. I’m sure the room was ready but rules are rules, even when the check-in time is so late it’s almost inconvenient.

That’s my list but I’m sure there are others you can add. Post-pandemic and with competition from Airbnb, hotels need to up their game if they are to survive and thrive. I hope they do because a good hotel makes all the difference to travelling. It’s not even a matter of price, it’s all about putting the customer first and attention to detail.