It was in last December that I was looking for tickets to Dehradun for a vacation in March. But my dates on google showed up for flight prices for next day and the price turned out to be around 18k per person single trip. Just a thought in my mind, why not plan an international trip if the domestic flights were that expensive. With no second thought I looked up for Bangalore - Zurich flight and guess what the single trip flight ticket showed up 25k with London transit. That didn't work out though as we had to get a London - transit visa too to take this flight, but still an international trip to Swiss a dream destination for most, was how seeded. For next few days I went on looking for more possibilities and options, and neither did hubby or kiddo took me seriously, saying, "Ye tho Dehradun se seedha Swiss chaligayi"(she went from Dehradun to directly Swiss).
I started browsing on different packages online travel agents were offering, but none covered the off beat destinations I was looking for and definitely not with in my budget to go for a customized trip covering them all. So we had to plan a trip on our own. More and more I started looking for vlogs, my dream destination seemed coming closer. My fashionista kiddo showed no interest in Swiss and wanted me to add Paris along, to travel to the fashion capital of the world. So by mid of Jan all three of us were convinced we were for sure planning for a Euro trip, which initially was started with Swiss. This trip was much needed for my daughter who had spent last 2 years preparing for her 10th exams which she was about to give in Feb. So when we told everybody later, it was gift for kiddo's 10th exams, they asked us how come you are gifting here ever before her results and we said, its for the efforts that she had put in, whatever the results could be.
We downloaded the visa application and started gathering our documents. Heard of saying Schengen visa documentation is no less than a 300 pages text book, that's perfectly true. Long list of documents and high rejection rates makes Schengen visa still a task for many. So next was the set of vlogs to check out how to get our visa approved. The big catch with Schengen visa is, you need to have a confirmed flight ticket and hotel bookings to apply for the visa. So you put a whole chunk of money on the flight, even without being sure, whether you will be able to travel or not. We had some hopes that we could manage to clear our visa with the proper documentation and so didn't go for a refundable ticket which costed around 10% more. Also took a longer transit flight to save bit. This longer transit, ended up in adding another country(Germany) to our trip. Best thing about taking Lufthansa airline with Frankfurt transit is you have entered Schengen region with a visa and are free to get out of the airport after immigration and explore Frankfurt . However, since your first entry to Schengen is Frankfurt, your entry to Swiss and France then after becomes domestic travels with no immigration/passport stamping, that was a disappointment though. Yet another country that got added just before we submitted our visa application was Liechtenstein. A half day trip from Zurich and you get to explore another country.
Here is the brief itinerary, will have a separate blog for Schengen visa documentation in coming blog post.
