The trip that changed everything
Some trips are lovely. A few rearrange how you travel for the rest of your life. For one UnTours family, that trip happened in a tiny village called Reuti. Gary and Chris Rice share their memories.
Reuti sits on the Hasliberg, a sunny mountain terrace high above Meiringen in the Bernese Oberland. Think wooden chalets with flower boxes, cowbells drifting up from the meadows, and a valley view that makes you forget to check your phone. It was their first trip to Europe, with two kids aged 12 and 7, and they’d been curious about one idea in particular: a single apartment for two whole weeks.
Reuti changed everything for me. After that trip I was hooked on the idea of a home base. For the next 28 years, it’s been the foundation of every trip we’ve taken.
Twenty-eight years. That’s a lot of unpacking once.
What stuck with them wasn’t a famous peak or a postcard view. It was what happened when nobody was in a hurry.
I have such fond memories of simple pleasures, like watching the farmers hay the fields from our balcony. All of it happened because we weren’t rushing out to the next big sightseeing item on a checklist.
If you’ve never watched a Swiss farmer cut hay on a slope that looks steep enough to ski, put it on your list. It’s oddly mesmerizing, and it’s the kind of show you only catch when you’re sitting on your own balcony with a second cup of coffee and nowhere to be.
Learning a country one grocery aisle at a time
Here’s a travel secret our UnTourists swear by: the local supermarket is one of the best cultural museums in any country. Admission is free and the exhibits are edible.
“What better way to learn about another culture than walking through the local grocery store? Let’s try creamy yogurt out of a glass jar for breakfast. Let’s buy a really good five-dollar bottle of red wine. (That one was in Spain, not Trader Joe’s!)”
In Switzerland, the best exhibit was the chocolate aisle. Picture a 7-year-old and a 12-year-old in a Meiringen grocery store, faced with an entire wall of Swiss chocolate bars and a very important decision to make. Some memories are made at museums. This one was made between the hazelnut and the milk chocolate.
Having your own kitchen turns shopping into part of the adventure. You read labels you can’t quite translate. You guess. You come home with a cheese you can’t pronounce and discover you love it.
And then there was the ping pong table.
“The kids joined the local kids at an outdoor ping pong table. They didn’t share a language, but they didn’t need one.”
That’s the thing about staying put. When you’re around long enough, the village stops treating you like a visitor. Your kids become the new kids at the table, and by the second week, they’re just part of the game.
When I’m Sixty-Four
Years later, the family went back to Reuti. And this time, the memory that stuck came with a soundtrack nobody saw coming.
I never would have guessed a Beatles song would become a memory from our return trip to Reuti.
It started in a cheese hut up on the alp. A Swiss couple had laid out a homemade spread of goodies, and between bites they explained their summer job: tending the community’s cattle for the season, high above the village, and turning that rich mountain milk into cheese.
Then Urs, their UnGuide, pulled out a ukulele.
We sang a few traditional Swiss folk songs together. Then Urs announced it was his 64th birthday, and out came ‘When I’m Sixty-Four.’
Picture it: a wooden hut, a table full of cheese and bread, a family from across the ocean and a Swiss couple who spend their summers with cows, all singing Paul McCartney together for a man’s birthday. You can’t plan a moment like that. You can only be somewhere long enough, and open enough, for it to find you.
That’s what an UnGuide really is. Yes, Urs knows the train schedules and the best hiking trails. But he’s also the person who brings you into the hut, introduces you to the neighbors and brings his ukulele along.
An insider’s guide to summer on the Hasliberg
Alpine summer runs on an old rhythm. In early summer, the cows head up to the high pastures. In September they come back down, often wearing flower crowns and their biggest bells. If your dates line up with one of these processions, go see it.
While the cows are up top, the cheese huts are open. Many sell alp cheese straight from the kettle. Bring small francs in cash, ask for a wedge and some bread and find a bench with a view.
At the grocery store, Migros famously skips wine and beer, so pick up your balcony bottle at Coop. Most shops close on Sundays, so stock the fridge on Saturday or use the train station shops. And yes, the yogurt really comes in glass jars.
On the trails, the yellow signs give walking times instead of distances, so planning a gentle pre-lunch hike is easy. In Meiringen, locals will tell you the town gave the meringue its name. A bakery visit to fact-check is strongly encouraged.
Twenty-eight years ago, one family unpacked in Reuti and never traveled the same way again. Hay fields, chocolate bars, ping pong and a birthday song in a cheese hut were all part of it. Each one happened because they stayed long enough to let it.
Curious what two weeks on a Swiss balcony could do for your family? Explore our Switzerland UnTours.