Switzerland on a budget

Switzerland is expensive, and most advice about it is wishful. What follows is ordered by how much it actually saves.

1. Get the transport arithmetic right

The single largest variable in a Swiss trip. The wrong pass costs more than paying as you go, and the right one saves hundreds.

Write down the journeys you intend to make, price them at full fare on sbb.ch, then compare against a Half Fare Card plus those fares halved, a Swiss Travel Pass, and a regional pass for the area you are spending most time in.

The answer is often the Half Fare Card plus a couple of Saver Day Passes bought weeks in advance. See tickets and passes.

Supersaver tickets on specific departures can be a fraction of the standard fare. They are only valid on that train.

2. Eat from supermarkets

The difference between a restaurant meal and a supermarket one here is larger than anywhere in Europe.

Coop and Migros do hot counters, salads, sandwiches and full meals to take away, at perhaps a fifth of restaurant prices. The branches inside main railway stations are open late and on Sundays, when almost everything else is closed.

This is not a compromise Swiss people would look down on; it is what they do at lunchtime.

3. Lunch instead of dinner

Restaurants that are painful in the evening serve a fixed lunch — Mittagsmenü, plat du jour — at a fraction of the price, often with soup or salad included. If you want one proper restaurant meal a day, have it at noon.

4. Sleep outside the resort

A room in the valley below a resort, or in a village one stop down the line, routinely costs half what the same room costs in the resort itself. The trains run early enough that it costs you nothing but the fare.

Half-price hotel schemes exist for the off-season and are genuinely half price. Mountain huts and dormitories — Massenlager — cost a fraction of a hotel and are perfectly respectable. Youth hostels here are clean, central and used by families.

5. Drink the tap water

Free, excellent, and available from around 1,200 public fountains in Zurich alone and from similar networks in every town. Unless a fountain is marked kein Trinkwasser, it is drinking water. Carry a bottle and refill it.

Bottled water in a restaurant costs what a beer costs.

6. The free sights are the good ones

A surprising share of the best of Switzerland costs nothing:

• The lakes and the swimming — most Badis are free or nearly
• The old towns — Bern, Lucerne, Chur, Stein am Rhein
• Walking — 65,000 km of marked paths, all free; see hiking
• The mountain passes — no tolls
• Uetliberg — a city ticket for the whole Alpine panorama
• Many churches, several university museums, and the ramparts at Schaffhausen and Fribourg

7. Choose the cheap mountain

This is where budgets die. A ticket to the Jungfraujoch costs several times what Schynige Platte, Männlichen, First or Harder Kulm cost, and those give you the same peaks from a similar angle.

If you want one expensive mountain, make it Gornergrat. For the rest, see which mountain to go up.

8. Shop across the border

In Basel and Geneva, Germany and France are a tram ride away and prices are dramatically lower. Locals do this weekly.

Watch the customs allowance on the way back — 300 francs a head, and it is enforced.

What not to economise on

• Travelling without a ticket. The surcharge is many times the fare, inspectors are frequent, and being a visitor is not a defence.
• Mountain weather. A cheap ticket up a clouded mountain is money burnt; wait for the clear day.
• Travel insurance covering mountain rescue. Rescue is not free.
• Winter tyres or the car-carrying train in bad weather; see driving.

What it comes to

Two people travelling by rail, eating one restaurant meal a day and staying in modest hotels should reckon on something like double what the same trip costs in France or Austria. Nothing on this page changes that — it changes how much of it goes on things you will remember.