Where To Stay

Regional and local lists of hotels and pensions are available from the tourist office. You can also get assistance from local tourist offices, usually located in airports, main railway stations and town squares.

Transportation

Arriving & Departing: Zurich's Kloten Airport and Geneva's Cointrin Airport, the main gateways from the U.S., are fully integrated with the rail network. Trains run every 10 to 20 minutes to downtown stations (about a 10-minute ride in both cases) and to many towns and resorts at hourly intervals.

Getting Around: The rail network is an engineering marvel of efficiency and punctuality. Special treats are the Glacier Express, offering passengers stunning scenery between St. Moritz and Zermatt; and the William Tell Express, combining a Lake Lucerne cruise with rail passage through the St. Gotthard tunnel.

For information on Swiss rail passes, see the chart on page 36. If you plan to remain in one area of Switzerland, the Swiss Card may be what you need. Available in second class for $128 or first class for $166, it provides a round-trip ticket between the airport and your destination, as well as 50-percent discounts on your travel within the country for one month.

Holidays

New Year’s Day, Good Friday (Mar. 28), Easter Sunday and Monday (Mar. 30 and 31), Ascension Day (May 8), Whitsunday and Whitmonday (May 18 and 19), National Day (Aug. 1), Christmas and Dec. 26. Note: Jan. 2, May 1 (Labor Day) and May 29 (Corpus Christi), among others, are observed in many parts of the country.

Money Matters

Most banks in Switzerland are open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The Swiss franc is divided into 100 centimes. $1 = 1.32 CHF as of Dec. 2, 1996.

Free Literature

Call or write:

Switzerland Tourism
608 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10020
Tel: (212) 757-5944
Fax: (212) 262-6116

Visit our web page at: http://www.switzerlandtourism.com