I’ve always secretly wanted to be on The Amazing Race. However, I would never win because I’m totally directionally challenged! Our weekend in Switzerland was our chance to try our hand at our own “Amazing Race”. We were supposed to meet a friend of mine in the city of Lugano. She has been to Lugano before and was going to show us the sights. However, due to a website problem, she wasn’t able to buy train tickets, and didn’t make it! This left us heading to Switzerland with vague plans, no idea how to get around, and very little language ability. I’m proud to say, we finished our race. And only missed one train!

We had two main plans, to see the mountains and to visit the chocolate factory. The chocolate factory had directions on the website. Check! We can make it there. The mountain was a little more ambiguous. Which mountain? Where do you go to get to the top? How do you get to the top? Normally cable cars run up and down, but they are closed in the winter. We made the great plan of finding tourist information when we arrived. Well, we arrived to find tourist information closed. Oh no! Someone on the street took pity on our consternation and pointed us to the city center. We walked there, and asked for directions at a hotel. The concierge pointed us in the direction of public transportation. We followed his directions which unfortunately led the wrong way, but did lead to another, open, tourist information center. From this, we discovered that a bus was running to the top of Monte Bre, we just had to get to the bus stop. We began walking, but soon ended up wandering once more. Another compassionate pedestrian stopped to help, and graciously walked us to the bus stop after lots of gesturing and remembering the word “stazione” which means “station”. The bus ride to the top was amazing. It was a tiny, twisting, one and a half lane road. The bus driver expertly maneuvered the bus around the hairpin turns and squeezed to the side for cars. The view at the top was magnificent, and we climbed up to a panoramic viewpoint just in time to see the mountains before they covered with fog! 

The next part of our adventure was the chocolate factory. Sarah’s sense of direction got us to our next set of transportation and we made it to the suburb where the chocolate factory is located. Once there, we discovered that the website directions left a little to be desired. We decided not to wander, and stopped right away to ask for directions. The boutique owner walked us outside and pointed across the street to a sign that said, “Chocolate Factory, this way”. Oh, haha! After paying for the tour and finding out most of it is unavailable on the weekend, we ate our money’s worth of free samples and headed back to the station.

Then it was time to head home. Our train into Milan was delayed, which caused us to miss our transfer by mere seconds! Luckily, we had a phone to call the people picking us up, so we found an alternate train home. 

So, how about our Amazing Race team? We made it to our sights, navigated transportation, and communicated when we needed to! By the end we decided that between Sarah’s directional ability, and my ability to decipher foreign languages, we actually might make it on the Amazing Race!