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Any mountain in Switzerland is minimum +1 hour compared to France, when looking for comparable awesomeness as that Chamonix for example, that would mean Zermatt, 3.5h. Or Grindelwald, 2.5h. Why do that to yourself for weekends? Besides there are pretty places much closer in France. France is also much cheaper, food better. Not that many reasons to chose otherwise for short weekend trips. Car is unfortunately a must for family of us, any alternative is world of pain and limitation, even ignoring the prices of trains (just like any other family we know). You need so much equipment for whole family and small kids especially, that using trains means we wouldn't be traveling at all. People we know that don't own the car rent it out every weekend they need and waste tons of time and energy on chasing lower prices. Even with demi-tarif/halb-tax (which makes you waste 200 CHF/USD per head per year for no services), the prices of Swiss trains are properly bad. It still is marginally cheaper to take one's own car even if driving alone, and often much faster. Frequent experience from times before when I was using Swiss trains for commute/traveling around - you end up standing for quite long amount of time during normal times, many people travel everywhere. Not nice if you are ie tired after long hike/skitour. With small kids, just a horrible experience. All this ignoring current covid crisis and the fact that in trains here you are stuck in long narrow tube with 100 other people, few coughing, few sneezing, few not wearing masks on nose, or at all because they hold that can of beer for 2 hours to have an excuse, kids not wearing anything at all etc. |