» Eichoff Braugold in Lugano, Switzerland Barking Dog Brewery

Eichoff Braugold in Lugano, Switzerland

After a few days in Cinque Terre, my wife and I hopped on a train (well, multiple trains – it was kind of a mess again) and headed Northwest up to Lugano, Switzerland to spend a day there on our way back to Zurich. This was “the beginning of the end” of our amazing trip, and the weather treated it as such. We had enjoyed beautiful blue skies every single day in Italy except for the day we left when it poured rain. Fitting. The rain even managed to follow us throughout the 300 kilometers journey up to Lugano.

Lugano is a large city located in an extremely beautiful region of Switzerland. Very near the popular Lake Como, Lugano is known as “the Italian region of Switzerland” as it is very near the country’s border with Italy. The language and signage appeared to confirm this, as an official universal language wasn’t quite evident. Do I try in vain to speak German or Italian? It depends on who you talk to.

As I’ve stated previously, Switzerland is EXPENSIVE! A very beautiful country, true. But they know this and consequently charge you extra for it. After arriving in town, we walked around quite a while, passing up many restaurants where we could have easily dropped 100 Euro ($115) on a dinner for two as well as a McDonalds before finding this limited menu lunch place that also does happy hour called Time Out. They had a few beers on tap and were so happy to have us there that they offered free appetizers. FREE FOOD! In SWITZERLAND! It kind of blew my mind.

They had two beers on tap, MGD (yay) and Switzerland’s own… Eichoff Braugold. Well, I should say “formerly Switzerland’s own” as Eichoff was purchased by Heineken in 2008 but was the largest independent brewery in Switzerland prior to that. It was a typical lager. Not much to say about it really. So little that I didn’t bother taking notes.

I’ve included some pics of Lugano below. It was really cool to be in a city situated on the edge of a huge lake with tall mountains plummeting into the water. The inclement weather we were having produced clouds that hid the tops of the mountains, but even that was pretty awesome to see.