Solothurn
Best Restaurants in Solothurn: Why This Small Swiss Town Eats So Well
If you type “best restaurants in Solothurn” into Google, you are probably standing on a cobblestone street in the old town, phone in hand, slightly overwhelmed. That reaction is completely normal. Solothurn, Switzerland’s baroque “ambassadors’ city” on the Aare river, is famously said to have the highest number of restaurants per square meter of any…
Swimming in the Aare River: The Complete Guide to Switzerland’s Favorite Wild Swim
There’s a moment almost every visitor to Switzerland remembers: standing on a riverside path, watching locals of every age casually jump into a fast flowing, glacier fed river and float away like it’s the most normal thing in the world. That’s Aare swimming. It’s not a spa activity and it’s not a lazy river at…
Stadtfest Solothurn: Inside the Baroque Old Town’s Biggest Party
Once every two years, the quiet cobblestone streets of Solothurn’s old town stop being quiet. Fountains that normally just trickle become gathering points, the Kreuzackerplatz fills with a Ferris wheel, and the Aare river gets a soundtrack of live concerts drifting over the water until two in the morning. This is Stadtfest Solothurn, the city’s…
Events in Solothurn: The Complete Yearly Calendar
Solothurn looks like it should be a quiet town. Baroque facades, eleven church bells, a slow-moving Aare river, the kind of place you picture reading a book on a bench. And for most of the year, that picture holds up. But scattered through the calendar are pockets of time when this small city turns almost…
A Magical Christmas in Switzerland: A First-time Experience with My Chinese Girlfriend
This Christmas in Switzerland felt truly special for many reasons. I was home again, surrounded by my family and the familiar winter atmosphere I grew up with, but this year had an extra layer of meaning. It was my Chinese girlfriend’s first time in Europe, and also her very first Christmas in Switzerland. Seeing everything…