SwissMinns

Thursday, October 19th through Monday, October 23rd 2017 Mark had to attend some meetings just outside of Paris, so we decided to make a weekend trip. My first time to Paris...Mark well he is the world traveler so he has been there before. We got up early Thursday morning and walked to the Tram which took us to the train station. We took one train to Basel, had to change trains there for one to Paris. Once we got the Paris we walked to the subway station and took a train to Cergy, France. Then we walked to our hotel where we would stay the next 4 nights. Of course going home we did this in reverse. It was about 6-7 hours in total, with some lay over time in between connections. Mark worked Thursday and Friday in Cergy. While he was at work I walked around a park/river area. Saturday we took a the subway back into Paris. About 45 minutes. We spent about 12 hours there on Saturday. First stop: Arc de Triomphe . Napoleon had this commissioned to commemorate his victory at th

We thought we should tell you a little about Bern and Switzerland. Bern is a Canton of Switzerland, or State. There are 26 Cantons in Switzerland. Bern is also the Capitol of Switzerland. In Bern the official languages are German and French. About 70%  of Switzerland speaks a Swiss-German, 20% French and 20% Italian. You can go from one end of Switzerland to the other in about 5 hours. More then half of the country is made up of mountains. A third of the population live in 5 large cities; Zurich, Geneva, Basel, Bern and Lusanne. People here work about 40 hours a week, there is no minimum wage, there appears to be no tipping for services. Everyone here has to have health insurance and pay premiums. Every employed pregnant woman is entitled to a 14 week paid maternity leave, of 80% of their income or wages. Switzerland is one of the most expensive countries to live in. 3M gave an estimate of about 70% increase in cost. Hmm...Gas is about $6 gallon. Bananas over $2/lb. Eggs over $3/doz.