Travelling to Switzerland

On Sunday the 12th of September I woke up at 4:20am. Well, actually, that was the time I was supposed to wake up… in reality I woke up every hour or so, worrying I’d sleep in and stressing about my trip and then stayed awake from about 3:30am due to the people next door having a very loud conversation on their doorstep.

I walked up to the bus stop, accompanied by my parents, towing my extremely large and heavy suitcase behind me and waited a few minutes for the bus. The bus was nice and quiet and the roads were very empty at 5 in the morning. I soon arrived at Edinburgh airport and went straight to the bag drop where I had to show my Covid certificate and passenger locator form along with my passport and boarding pass. I successfully checked in my luggage, my suitcase weighing in at 22.7kg (just 0.3kg off the weight limit), and headed upstairs to security with only a small rucksack. I said goodbye to my parents and headed through the barriers to join the queue for security.

Security was relatively fast and easy. The machine beeped as I went through, as it usually does, but after a quick pat-down I was cleared to go. By 5:50 I was through to the departure lounge. My gate was due to be announced in 40 minutes time. I had a Costa gift card that needed using and I hadn’t had any breakfast yet so I headed over and bought myself an iced mocha and a toastie. It wasn’t the best breakfast in the world but it gave me something to do while I waited. The airport was fairly quiet and there was plenty of free seating. I filled up my water bottle from the water fountain and soon after that my gate was announced.

I headed off to gate 3 and joined the queue which had already formed by the exit. It was only 10 minutes or so after this that we began boarding. Boarding passes were scanned again, they ensured our Covid documents had been checked and that we were wearing the right kind of mask and then it was through to the outside where I waited to enter the plane by the back door. My seat was 21C, an aisle seat fairly near the centre of the plane. My row was full but there were plenty of empty seats on the plane so after take-off I moved forward a couple of rows so that I had a bit more space and could see out of the window. It was a cloudy morning in Edinburgh but, by the time we were somewhere over England, the sky had cleared and I was able to see the land far below.

Up to this point in the journey I had been feeling only anxiety but, when I looked out of the window to catch my last glimpses of the UK as we began crossing the English Channel, I started to get excited. I was really going to Switzerland! We flew right over Paris and a couple of hours later I could see the mountains! It seemed like no time at all before we were touching down in Geneva on a gloriously sunny morning, 20 minutes ahead of schedule at 10:20am Swiss time. Even from the landing strip there was a fantastic view of the Swiss mountains which I had never seen before, having only ever flown into Geneva in the winter.

We were loaded off the plane onto buses to be taken to the airport where I waited in the customs queue for about half an hour. At this point I was expecting to have to pull out lots of documentation to prove my right to enter Switzerland, Covid certificates, etc. but, when I did eventually get to the front of the line, the customs officer only glanced at my passport before waving me through. Next it was on to luggage collection and when I got there my bag was already on the belt. A friend of mine came to the airport to pick me up and I found her immediately at the arrivals gate. I bought some food from the airport supermarket and then we were out, headed down the motorway for Lausanne!

All in all, a remarkably easy journey that I spent far too long worrying about. If anything it was better than a normal flight since there were less planes going and less people around generally. I was very happy to have made it safely to Switzerland and excited to see what the next few months would bring!