[Removed user]

29 June 2019 at 20:46:26 #822554

Hello-

I’m planning to visit Geneva for a week in August from the US and was thinking about staying at a hotel in St Genis-Pouilly just across the border in France.

The rates are much lower and St Genis is just a few miles from CERN which is one of the places I want to visit. I understand it only takes about 20 minutes to get to the center of Geneva from CERN on the tram.

Does this seem practical? Is crossing the border twice a day likely to be a problem? Is there a regular bus service from St Genis to CERN?

Thanks in advance.

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[rockoyster]

29 June 2019 at 21:33:17 #916466

Hello hamiltonianand Welcome to MySwissAlps,

That’s about a 45 minute journey each way. You won’t notice the border crossing.

Use the timetable on the SBB website (bit.ly/2HH1U7B) or the highly-recommended SBB Mobile app (bit.ly/2ICIUHi) to plan your travel, find fares* and buy tickets if required. If you are not familiar with using the timetable it will pay to first read the instructions on this page – http://www.myswissalps.com/ti metable. *SBB website shows half-fare prices by default, mobile app allows you to nominate full or half-fare and is also smart enough to offer you the Saver Day Pass (http://www.myswissalps.com/sa verdaypass) if that offers the best fare.

[Slowpoke]

29 June 2019 at 23:11:01 #916467

We did it once when we had a team meeting with a lot of people=a lot of CHF. Our office/lab was in Merin.. a suburb of Geneva near the airport. To save money, We stayed in Ferney Voltaire.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Ferney-Voltaire

It worked OK. It added minor inconvenience if we wish to be tourists in Geneva.

Your plan is certainly do-able.

Slowpoke

[Removed user]

30 June 2019 at 5:18:23 #916468

Thanks for the fast responses. Very helpful.

[Removed user]

30 June 2019 at 23:46:13 #916469

One of the classic ways to save money on any Swiss holiday is to stay across the border in another country. It works particularly well around Geneva, Basel and in Ticino. St Genis has a regular bus route 68.

My relatives live in France so I have been crossing the border just about daily for much of the last 50 years. It is zero problem. The CERN facility itself expanded into France from its original base many years ago (and the LHC goes under French territory for much of its circle). Many workers commute daily to UN, WHO etc from France. This has expended massiively since I was a youngster such that many rural French villages I knew have become expanded so much that they now warrant regular bus services across the border.

The Geneva area has always been like this, with lots of cross border public transport (Geneva was part of France under Napolean…) and at its maximum in the 1920s the Geneva tramway network had four or five routes crossing into France.

Cross border intergral transport has surged back to prominence in the last 20 years so much so that at the end of 2019 a huge intergrated Franco-Swiss railway project called CEVA will open: http://www.ceva.ch

The popular French places to stay around Geneva with direct bus routes into Geneva are Annemasse, Ferney Voltaire, St Genis, St Julien en Genevois

[Removed user]

1 July 2019 at 5:53:14 #916470

Many thanks, this website is a tremendously useful source of information.