Switzerland                   Schaffhausen              29 December 2024


   Today I visited Switzerland for the first time, specifically the city
   of Schaffhausen, which is the capital of the canton of the same name.
   My friends and I came here to admire the beauty of Rheinfall, the
   largest plain waterfall in Europe.  We reached Schaffhausen by train
   from Stuttgart with a change in Singen, from where an S-Bahn runs
   directly to Schaffhausen, crossing the German-Swiss border.  When
   crossing the border, passengers are helpfully reminded of this fact
   and asked to prepare their tickets for possible inspection.
   Naturally, no one checked the tickets, as is typically the case here.

   Rheinfall proved to be a truly picturesque location.  Being there,
   especially towards the end of the year, I couldn't help but reflect
   on how dramatically my life has changed over the past couple of
   years.  Not long ago, I was hiding from the police in a remote
   Russian village, and now I'm travelling across Europe, which had
   always seemed like something unattainable and almost fairy-tale-like
   to me.  Like photographs on postcards that friends sent me from
   abroad.  Like beautiful places that sometimes seemed so incredible
   that, living in Russia, one couldn't help but doubt their existence.

   On the way back, I noticed that trains to Zürich are displayed on the
   board as "Zürich HB", which is synonymous with "Zürich Hbf", though
   in Switzerland they abbreviate Hauptbahnhof slightly differently.
   Remembering Berlin, we came up with a joke about "Zürichbleiben
   bitte" (which literally translates to "please stay in Zürich"),
   derived from the phrase "Zurückbleiben bitte" ("please stand back")
   that they announce on U-Bahn trains in Berlin before closing the
   doors.  It resonated well, and we had a hearty laugh with friends.

   I returned home on an IC train instead of the usual RE, as RE trains
   don't run from Konstanz, where our original Stuttgart train was
   headed - only IC trains do.  Therefore, one can ride such an IC train
   with a regular Deutschlandticket, which is exactly what we did.  The
   journey took us through a snow-covered forest, which I had observed
   in the morning when we were first heading to Switzerland.  Stuttgart
   greeted us with thick fog that had enveloped the city during our
   absence.  It was a wonderful train journey, and I'll definitely
   return to Switzerland in summer.





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