Switzerland is a country I had constantly avoided during my travels around Europe. It lies in the middle of the continent, protected by mountains. Neutral and boring, I thought. I was surprised when I finally bit the bullet and put it on my bucket list as Country #70 to be visited according to my “one country for every year of my life” plan. I wasn’t disappointed.
Zurich
Everything runs like Swiss clocks. Swiss Rail is excellent and comprehensively covers the country – you do not need any other ticket to ride. Even when the rail tracks were washed away in the mountains and we had to be transferred to a waiting bus, we arrived eight minutes ahead of schedule. We did not pay extra for any of their forms of integrated transport (bus, train—broad gage, inter-urban gage, or narrow mountain gage—tram, ferry, and gondola) or museum entry tickets as they were all covered on the 15-day Swiss Travel Pass – a highly recommended piece of paper. And don’t lose it, for ticket inspectors come by regularly and fine you heavily for breaking the law, which we did on our first ride from the airport to the hotel in Zurich – we got into the First-Class car instead of the Second; we blushed and grovelled until the kindly inspector said, “Okay, this time, but not again!”
Like most major Swiss cities that sprawl around a lake head or mouth, Zurich claws the narrow north end of Lake Zurich. Churches with onion-shaped Byzantine cupolas dominate the skyline. Formerly Catholic, this real estate was “acquired” by the Protestants during the Reformation and only a few properties were returned. Therefore, the iconography is heavy in the returned Catholic ones and spartan in the retained acquisitions. Many of the cities have maintained their “old city” area. Cobblestone streets, covered bridges, squares with water fountains, and merchant buildings are well preserved in the old quarter, dating back to the 13th century when the Swiss confederacy was first incorporated. The Zurich Landesmuseum provided us with a guided tour through the history of the country, and I learned that the Swiss are not merely famous for their chocolate, clocks, and cheese, they also exported mercenaries to the colonial nations surrounding them (including my ancestor, Abraham, who first came out of Europe – the museum displayed an exhibit of his regiment, the De Meuron, that was hired by the Dutch in Sri Lanka; the regiment shifted allegiance to the British for higher pay and ended up in Canada fighting the War of 1812 – unfortunately my ancestor demobilized in Sri Lanka, leaving me to make the long trek to the New World 200 years later).
This is a clean country – even the lake water is crystal clear – with small towns and villages nestled in valleys beside lakes and rivers, or falling down mountains in terraces, to factories hugging the railway tracks. The grass does not grow wild—there is plenty of grazing livestock acting as lawnmowers – and the rain falls in manageable bursts, making the use of umbrellas practical. The only disrupter of the dour order is the graffiti that is everywhere and which I have now relegated to a global acrobatic art form for maniacs, for one must be insanely athletic to hang off bridges and tall buildings at unnatural angles to create such insurrectionist masterpieces. Michaelangelo, move over!
The day trip to Chur, Switzerland’s oldest town, was helped by bright sunshine and summer-like warmth. It helped lift our mood because as we climbed Chur’s car-free streets, all we saw were churches of ascending hierarchical importance, with graveyards to match and which told interesting stories on their gravestones.
There is a right-wing atmosphere in Zurich (and in most of the German-speaking parts of the country), where there are only workers, no beggars, where the cost of living makes it affordable only for the rich (do not look at the food prices, it will spoil your appetite – console yourself that wine prices are cheaper than in Toronto restaurants), and where women only got the right to vote in 1971. And if you think we have a non-ending English-French dispute in our country, the Swiss have been running a German-French-Italian spat for a longer time, with constant threats of secession being thrown around. The bureaucratic costs to hold this tiny country of 26 cantons and 9 million people together are huge, but everything still works – like clockwork, as I said. And everyone speaks good English.
Liechtenstein
I got a bonus Country #71 to add to my bucket list when we took a short bus ride, crossed a small unguarded bridge, and landed in Liechtenstein – a landlocked and airlocked country (it does not even have an international airport), a former principality of the Holy Roman Empire that no-one wanted, not even Napoleon, and is now protected by Switzerland. The food prices here were higher than at “Big Brother’s.” You can walk around this country in half a day. Even the portalets are spanking clean and have flushes – I tried one in desperation when our walk to the restaurant kept getting further and further away and my bladder was threatening to explode; we were heading out into open farmland from the few city blocks that make up the urban part of this country because my wife had gotten her Google Maps into reverse gear!
Lucerne
I felt grand staying at the Hotel Grand National on the Lucerne waterfront with snow-capped mountains in the distance. Boat cruises took off constantly from both shores of the U-shaped mouth of Lake Lucerne in the foreground. Our journey was approaching the fabled Alps, the playground of the rich and famous, and Lucerne with its old town that seemed larger than the newer one was a gateway. The old city climbs steeply up to a remaining rampart wall – well worth the climb through narrow streets full of shops for those “firm of knee.” The Franciscans built their cathedral here in the 15th century, which was expropriated by the Reformists. The Jesuits hit back in the 16th century and built another Catholic church, and both sit in proximity today serving the same God but two different organizations. In the local museum, I stumbled upon an exhibit warning young people of the dangers of “Fake News” – this phenomenon seems to have gone global.
If Interlaken, which came later, was rustic, Lucerne was chic.
Interlaken
After a two-hour train ride that revealed waterfall, meadow, lake, village, church spire, tunnel, and repeat, we arrived in this city, a strip of land between two huge lakes, hence its name. It serves as a base camp for the Alps which soar in the background, and the city sprawls on either side of the main drag that stretches between its two train stations, east and west. The drag runs parallel to the Aare River which connects the two lakes. The elderly Swiss lady on the train bound for Interlaken complained to us that “Things were not the way they used to be. Too crowded now with refugees fleeing the Ukrainian war.”
The tourist population here is mainly comprised of Japanese (they are all over Switzerland) and Indians (due to the famed Indian movie director Yash Chopra featuring Interlaken in his Bollywood films – there is even a statue of him in the Casino grounds). Other luminaries with their names engraved on hotel walls include Goethe, Mendelsohn, and Byron. We discovered a Museum of Tourism in the old town (actually, two old towns that fought with each other until they saw the light, made peace, amalgamated, and started to develop tourism with events such as Unspunnenfest that runs every 12 years and dates back to the 13th century) that details with pictures and miniature models how alpine tourism was developed in the area – worth the visit. As we walked the main drag, now having additional choices of sushi and biriyani for dinner, dozens of paragliders were jumping off the nearby mountain, sailing over the trees and buildings, and landing in Hohematte Park opposite the Victoria Grand Hotel & Spa. I bought my first “real” Swiss chocolate in Interlaken.
Before leaving Interlaken, we visited the Beata-Hoelen caves, a short hike from the city along paths that displayed warnings: “Beware falling rocks. Walk fast, don’t loiter.” The one-kilometre stretch of caves on a mountain overlooking one of the lakes retraces a subterranean watercourse containing 24 grottos, each of a unique natural design forged by water flow—another worthwhile visit. Make sure to visit the museum at ground level BEFORE visiting the caves, for the hiking trail back to Interlaken is on the mountain beside the cave entrance. I didn’t follow my advice and had to climb the mountain twice, and my knees declared war on me.
(to be continued…)
