Whether to Carry Passports all the time
Atul Bhide is planning an 8-day trip within Switzerland and is concerned about whether he needs to carry his passport daily along with the Swiss Travel Pass. He wants to know if carrying a photocopy would be sufficient to avoid the hassle and risk of losing the original document.
- Carry your passport or a photocopy of it while traveling in Switzerland, as it's a legal requirement to have a government-issued ID.
- Some train and bus conductors may ask for your passport along with the Swiss Travel Pass, especially in less common areas, so it's safer to have it on hand.
AI-generated summary-
We will be in Switzerland for 8 days and will not leave Switzerland border and re-enter in between these 8 days.
My question is whether every day we will have to carry the Passports with us? Does Passports are to be shown along with the Swiss Pass every time?
To carry the Passport all the time brings extra botheration and additional Risk. Can we carry the Photo copy of passport in lieu of original?
Please help some one.
Regards
Atul Bhide
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Hello Atul,
Untill now we never had to show our passports along with our Swiss Passes.
All travellers in Switzerland must be able to identify themselves. Follow this link for more information. Especially look at this text:
“There is a legal requirement in Switzerland that a government-issued ID be carried by travellers at all times. Visitors from countries that do not provide an ID card (e.g., U.K. or USA) must carry their passport – or at the very least a copy of their passport”.I hope this helps.
My only comment is that last month my husband and I visited some out of the way (i.e., not in the Rick Steves’ travel guide) villages across Switzerland, and on the train/bus/boat routes, a few conductors were not as familiar with the Swiss Pass and did indeed ask to see our passports. This didn’t happen every time, but it happened about half of the time. This is the first time this happened to us (visited in 2010 and 2011), but we were lucky we had our passports at hand. But your “mileage may vary”!
Thanks Wandermann and KaraBoo both,
The summary is – it is better to carry the passports than to spoil the holiday mood.
Regards
Atul Bhide
always good to know this, was debating the same thing myself, or whether to just take our uk driving licenses with us during daytime travel
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