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Published: December 12th 2007
The Jet d'Eau
That's Jet of Water in English. Yep. Okay, short blog this time. Six days in Switzerland and it was mostly a holiday. It's funny, the longer we've been away, the more breaks we seem to need from the proper travelling. Having this little break in the most heavily armed neutral mountain republic in the world has been really rather pleasant. Well, aside from the fact that I spent a large amount of time, mostly in the evenings, writing a presentation for a job interview with the Department of Labour. I might tell you later if I got the job, I might not.
So Geneva. Well, actually, I have to talk a little bit about the train up from Milan. We were well happy to be away from Milan in the end and the train up was really rather lovely. We sat and stared out the window for most of the way, admired Lake Garda and Lake Como in the sunshine and were stunned when we came through the mountains and found Brig under about six inches of snow! Switzerland is really rather stunning the first time you see it. The landscapes are amazing. We rolled on through Montreux
Jen and Usha
and a whopping great pot of hot, melty cheese! (famous for it's jazz and Freddy Mercury), Vevey (home of Nestle!) and Lausanne (home to umpteen cosmetic types!) before cruising into Geneva station. We met a lovely bloke on the train who was very friendly and asked if we knew where we were going and what we were doing - it was really nice. A really good first impression of Switzerland.
Al's Top Travel Tip for the budget traveller visiting Geneva - the Geneva City Hostel is about the best one we've stayed in anywhere. It's on a par price wise with the rest of Europe but has some of the best facilities ever - good wifi, good showers, good kitchens, three-bed dorms and a bomb shelter in the basement. Oh, supplementary top tip - don't travel in Central Europe on a Sunday. It's dead. Everything is shut. We had to eat at McDandor's because there wasn't even a supermarket open in Geneva on a Sunday. Amazing.
However, there was one small advantage - we did have a very good exploration of the lakefront looking for lunch and got to have a good gaze at the Jet d'Eau, one of the more pointless things you could have in
The Legless Chair
and the Palais de Nations. a town. It's actually very impressive and we were lucky to see it as it's often off at this time of year. The day was rather made though when Jen managed to get in touch with Usha, one of her old friends from the International School in Geneva who met us in town and took us to a little place on the lake that you'd never find if you didn't know where to look and we had cheese fondue. I tell you what, the Swiss know how to make a meal that will improve your state of being in cold weather. What's not to love about bread, melted hot cheese and beer? There will be fondues at home when we get back I tell you what! It was really cool to meet Usha and finally put a face to the name I have heard rather often.
The following morning we walked up the hill to Les Nations Unites and saw the original home of the League of Nations, as well as people protesting the work of Sophie's Ark - admittedly, the charity does appear to be stealing African children, so fair call. We wandered past the gardens and up
St Pierre's Cathedral
and Mt Saleve in the misty clouds. a little further to the Museum of the Red Cross and Red Breakfast Pastry. (Okay, that joke may or may not be funny. To the non-French speakers Musee de la Croix Rouge et la Croissant Rouge. Get it? Croissant Rouge! Red Breakfast Pastry!) It was billed in the Lonely Planet as a catalogue of man's inhumanity to man and I found it to be quite the opposite. It was more of a story, tracing the history of the organisations founding, it's work on the Geneva Conventions, it's sterling efforts during, between and after the two World Wars and what it's trying to do now. It contains some telling admissions of failure, particularly regarding the Holocaust. (the organisation notes that it didn't want to push the Reich on the Concentration Camps in case it lost the rights it had gained to access the PoW camps) I can heartily recommend it as a destination in if you're ever in town. We spent the afternoon wandering around the old town looking for pants for Jen and at the birth of Calvinism. Geneva is the place where a couple of fairly influential Protestants did their thing - both Calvin and Knox preached at St
Lake Thun
Remind you of anywhere? Pierre's Cathedral in Geneva for a number of years and they did so in a truly stunning cathedral too. It might be Protestant and decorated in the way that they so often are, but it has a stunning organ and a really beautiful Lady Chapel.
The next morning we rode the train to Interlaken. The ride down is pretty unexciting until you get to the first lake. Lake Thun (that's pronounced Tun, as in a Scots person saying tonne!) is one of those really spectacular stereotypical Swiss scenes with lakes and mountains. We cruised into Interlaken late in the afternoon and spent most of the trip admiring the stunning mountain scenery, the beautiful lakes and wondering just how painfully cold it was going to be outside. For us, Interlaken was going to be time to take a bit of a breather, for me to finish this presentation and to just take in the sheer beauty of the mountain heart of Switzerland. Before you ask, no we didn't go up Jungfrau. It's 160 Swiss Francs a go and the weather around the mountains was frankly rubbish the entire time we were there. It was okay in our valley but up
The Funiculare
which we would have gone up but it closed a few weeks earlier! towards Grindelwald (I knew you wondered where JK Rowling got the name....!) the cloud came down and stayed down. The view from the train station webcam was just white so there wasn't really a lot of point. We contented ourselves with quiet wandering around the town, along the river, down to the lakes and just looking at the mountains.
The train out of Interlaken was something of a surprise as we headed towards Zurich via Luzern. The lakes and the alpine scenery are simply breathtaking and having the snowcapped mountains in the background the entire time was really rather lovely. I guess there was no other point in our going there than to look at the scenery and be in the heart of stereotypical Switzerland. So I'll just stick a whole lot of photos of it up here and you can all appreciate it for yourselves.
Chuckle... And so to Zurich, perhaps the most interesting train trip we've taken so far. We travelled east from Interlaken along the shores of the Brienzensee (that's the other lake that Interlaken is between) towards Meiringen where we swapped engines and had the uinque pleasure of travelling up the side of the
Interlaken Cathedral
and the Japanese Garden...... mountain on a rack railway to Brunig-Hasliberg, a random little town at the top of the pass between Interlaken and Luzern. The view was simply stunning, both of the valley we left and the one we went into. Brunig-Hasliberg was covered in snow, the snow we'd been hoping for and never managed to get. I suspect we have been a couple of days behind the snow this entire trip. Bit of a downer that, but hey, we worked out that by the time I got around to writing this (in France) that we've really only had a half a dozen days of bad weather and only two really where we simply couldn't stand to be out in the weather. Luzern railway station was a practical lesson in the exactitude of Swissbahn. We had six minutes to change trains for Zurich and our train from Interlaken arrived exactly when they said it would, exactly where they said it would and the train to Zurich was exactly where they said it would be and it left at 11:30 on the dot, just like they said it would. I'm not sure if I mentioned this earlier but when we came into Brig from
Der Brienzenspee
Like Lake Thun perhaps...? Milan and the Swiss took over the train they apologised since it was running four minutes late. Four minutes people. I doubt anyone even noticed....but that's Swissbahn for you.
Anna came down and met us at the Hauptbahnhof in Zurich and I can tell you there is something really wonderful about seeing people you know when you're travelling like this. It was great seeing Rachel and Nick in Turkey as well and we're looking forward to seeing Paula and Alex in Barcelona when we get there. We rode the tram up the hill and dumped our stuff at Anna's (really quite swanky) Uni flat and headed out. We got some lunch and wandered about the old town just generally catching up. You don't really need to know all about that. Jen and Anna cooked dinner that night and I think Jen was pretty chuffed to be back in a decent kitchen with actual decent utensils, spices and all those other things that good cooks love! We had the pleasure of meeting Bill as well, Anna's boyfriend. Lovely bloke if I do say so myself.
The following day we slacked off in the morning before heading out into the
Zuerich!
Complete with typical Swiss Winter weather. city to just kind of look around. We caught the train back into town and wandered the length of the Bahnhofstrasse apparently the most expensive and valuable street in the world. Word is that the vaults under this road have a veritable Dragon's hoard of cash, gold, art and all manner of other things in them. Sorry I can't confirm that for you in any more detail...
It was another day of churches in Zurich, since there isn't a whole heck of a lot else to do to be quite honest. We found St Peterskirche by accident, although it's hard to miss as it has the largest clock face in Europe, at a whopping 8.7 metres in diameter. It's not terribly exciting, but just down the road are the two main churches of the city - the Fraumunster and the Grossmunster. The Fraumunster is one of the most austere Protestant Churches I've ever been in except for one little thing - the stained glass windows were the work of none other than Marc Chagall and they are simply stunning. They are definitely reminiscent of Chagall's painting - the swathes of simple colour - and I was quite disappointed we
weren't allowed photos.
The twin-towered Grossmunster across the river has Charlemagne sitting on the south tower glowering down at Zurich from the church he founded in the heyday of his Frankish kingdom. It was also where, in the 16th century one Huldrych Zwingli began preaching his Protestant doctrine. It's quite a stunning church that also has an amazing organ (these seem to be alarmingly gorgeous for these usually quite dull buildings!) and the views from the tower are worth the trip. By all accounts on a clear day you can see the Alps. The day wasn't quite up to that, but it was still pretty spectacular. Not as hairy as one tower Jen climbed in Sibiu in Romania (with Chingy and Zoe, Lisa and I stayed firmly grounded!) and definitely worth the trip. The real statue of Charlemagne is concealed in the basement as it was rapidly deteriorating on the outside and it was quite impressive close up, despite the decay. It's hard to get excited about Protestant churches when compared to their Catholic counterparts to the south and west, but I think they're still worth the trip, even just for a few Chagall windows.
We wiled away
Fraumunster
The Chagall Windows are at the front. They don't look half as interesting from the outside. the afternoon wandering around Zurich having had a most excellent lunch at a spot called Titbits by Hiltl - a vegetarian buffet type thing where they weigh your food and price it (it sounds odd, but it's pretty common in central Europe!) and the food was outstanding. Expensive, yes, but thoroughly good. Dinner at home again so we could have proper Tex-mex a la Jennifer (our last attempt in Florence was something of a failure) and Bill made cornbread to go with it. Brilliant. I will have to learn to make cornbread - it's really good with chilli. The next morning Anna and Bill took us out for breakfast in the “real” Zurich. Well, it's about as real as anywhere in Switzerland gets I suppose, but we had a great brunch before heading off to the train station to head for Germany....
So that was Switzerland. I've kept this pretty brief because I know I can get pretty long winded at times and I know the Italy one was long and the Germany one will be long and the France one will be long too, so enjoy it while it lasts. Your last short blog will come from Portugal
Grossmunster
With Charlemagne on the closer tower. and you should get that a nudge before Christmas if you're all good. Then it'll be reports from Spain and we'll be home. Scary eh?
Anyway, keep an eye out, the Germany one shouldn't be far behind this one. I'm trying to catch up, honest!!!
Talk soon,
Al and Jen.
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