Seven Days Based in a Swiss Village

If there's one day that sums up why you'd stay in a village instead of a city, it's this one.

Oberembrach is up the hill from Embrach, and you get there by walking through the forest. I'd do this walk every single day if I lived there. In February it was misty and super quiet, dead leaves all over the path, bare trees, and these massive woodpiles stacked everywhere like someone's been getting ready for winter since July. There are wooden hunting stands up on stilts at the edges of the clearings, which was a little eerie in the fog.

Out of the trees it's farms again. A pony standing in a field in a purple winter coat, completely unbothered. A white farmhouse with green shutters and its name, Bergli, painted on the front with a flower. An old rusty car shell parked in front of a barn like someone left it there in 1975 and forgot. And a big white rabbit just sitting in the grass by its hutch.

None of it is a "sight," and that's kind of the point. You won't find this in a guidebook. You find it by walking out of the village and just not turning back. Theres people who live spread out across quiet grass fields, all owning farm animals and saying hello to the free ranging foxes.

It was pretty rainy the morning we went so I would recommend wearing hiking shoes, or ones you don't care about since it can get pretty muddy.

The next day we explored Rorbas, it is the next village over from Embrach and it has a boccia hall which I've never been to before.

It's called the Bocciadromo, a restaurant with its own indoor boccia lanes, a long wooden ceiling and club banners all over the walls. Boccia is basically bowling's Italian cousin, and people around here take it seriously. We played darts. Not boccia. Darts. I regret nothing. Heads up, it's closed Mondays and Tuesdays, so check before you drive over.

In the afternoon we just drove around the lanes near Embrach, stopping at whatever farm had animals out, and that's how we found the lambs. Tiny ones with black faces, wobbling around in the straw and staring right at my camera. Turns out February is lamb season, which nobody told me, and I was not emotionally prepared. I took way too many photos of the same three lambs and I'd do it again.

But what I remember most from those days is the evenings. The house had an old tiled stove with a real fire going, and on a cold February night there is nothing better. There was even a cartoon cow calendar on the wall, because of course there was.

If you're staying with friends out here, offer to pick up groceries or bring something for dinner. Everyone cooks at home, and showing up with good cheese goes a long way.

A village, a fire, a walk and a game of darts down the road. That's the cheap side of Switzerland, and it's my favorite side.

Best day of the trip, and it didn't cost a thing.

Winterthur is a short drive from Embrach, and up in the forest above the city is Wildpark Bruderhaus. No gate, no ticket, open all year. You just walk in and wander between big enclosures in the trees. Give it a couple of hours, and bring layers, because it's cold up there in February.

And I saw a LYNX. My first ever. It was sitting in the grass behind the fence with its ears up, just watching us, and I could not stop staring back. Highlight of the whole trip, no contest. If you're there with someone who isn't an animal person, too bad, they will be by the end.

The rest of the park was really cool since you can walk around and interact with the animals. There was a bison lying flat out in the mud like it had given up on the day. Wild boars digging around in the dirt so make holes they could nap in. A whole group of mouflon, those wild sheep with the curly horns, posing up on the rocks! There are some enclosures you can even walk into and observe close up like the wolves.

Good thing to note is if you plan on going to Winterthur on a Monday be prepared for most of the towns tourist attractions to be closed. Pretty much every museum in Winterthur is closed on Mondays so plan around that.

Working indoors while nature is surrounding you is SO HARD, so I had to take my morning walk which because my routine. I started with a walk out along a forest track, the long straight kind with tall pines on both sides and nothing in front of you but the path. Then the trees open up and you get the whole valley at once, green fields rolling down to the villages, red roofs, low hills behind.

Then the barn. A lot of this trip was just driving around to random farms near Embrach, and this one had a long winter barn full of cows and calves with their heads poking through the rails. The calves are nosy, with huge ears and the softest noses, and they were way more curious about us than we were about them. One of them would not stop licking my sleeve, and I let it, because when else is that going to happen to me?

If you want to see a farm up close, ask first. These are working farms and people's homes, not petting zoos. Nobody minded us looking, but stay outside the pens, don't climb on anything, and don't feed anything you weren't handed.

On the way back we drove past the house with the painted mural across the whole front of it, which I could honestly look at every day. My friends best friend had passed earlier in the year so we had visited the cemetery on the way back to pay our respects.

Then when we got home my chef friend make us some Hernli and it was delectable! Some Swiss dishes just hit different, and besides wurst I'd say Hernli is my second favorite. Who eats pasta with apple sauce?? Me now!

My friend's friend is a chef, which meant a food night pretty much every other night - steak, tacos, thai food and even lasagna! There was always something golden and bubbling coming out of the oven. Eating out in Switzerland adds up fast, so this is how you eat well here: you cook, and you make friends with someone who actually knows what they're doing.

The best one was ravioli. We made it fresh, by hand, every single one, rolled out on the counter, filled and pressed, then laid out on plates to go in the pot. It takes forever and it's completely worth it. I'm never buying the frozen kind again.

My tip: treat the supermarket like your restaurant. Good cheese, good bread, whatever's on offer, and cook it at home with people you like. It's cheaper and honestly more fun than any dinner out. And offer to cook one night yourself - even if your best dish is pasta from a box, it counts.

After dinner it was games. I'd brought my friend a wooden marble game from Marrakech as a present, and it became a whole thing. There's also a dart board in the living room under an Oberembrach street sign, so obviously that got used too.

We had gone to a mega kids toy store and picked up some presents for my friends nieces and nephews. The kid in me couldn't resist Swiss lego's on sale so I decided to buy one. WE built a Lego bonsai tree straight from the box, the red maple one, which was the most relaxing thing I did in Switzerland and I will not be taking questions.

Finally I was to return home, but it somehow all fell apart once I arrived to the airport at 6:30am. I'd booked with a off-brand airline and found out upon getting to the airport that my flight wasn't cancelled, just my seat. The plane existed, but somehow my ticket didn't and arguing was not worth it since customer support wasn't 24hr.

So instead of spending Valentine's Day in Spain and then flying home, I got one more day in Switzerland, and I'm not going to pretend I was upset about it.

Valentine's Day ended up being eating and drinking with my friend's roommate, and the bottle on the table was a local white from Gehring in Freienstein, the next village over. The Zurich countryside makes its own wine and you'll barely see it anywhere else, so if you want a souvenir, that's the one.

I was going to go out in Zurich at night but it was a bit expensive to uber solo and the train was a far walk from my friends place. Instead of going out to the party my friend invited his friends over and we played some games and hung out at home.

The next morning I had a glass of red at ten a.m., in a white turtleneck, next to the dart board, because it was my last morning and rules are for people who haven't just been bumped off a flight.

Then Zurich Airport for real this time, a wander past the duty free perfume, and a window seat out over the snow. No mountains, no trains, no queues. Just a village, and time.