For the Christmas holidays, we were off in search of snow. For irony’s sake, it snowed enough in London before we left to threaten our travel plans. ‘Enough’ snow in London was about two inches. This provoked the following headlines in the local paper: “Snow Grips Britain” and “Heavy Snow Causes Chaos in London”. Fair ‘enough’, if it’s not deemed safe, no one should be travelling, but anyone I’ve spoken to here is frankly embarrassed that such little snow can paralyze their city. It is not the rarest of occasions after all, but, to their credit and according to the BBC, this winter has at least had the “longest cold snap for almost 30 years”.
Aside: Tom had one and a half snow days in early January. Both of these were pre-emptive (!) fearing big storms that ultimately looked more like snow sprinklings.
So, these threats had us up all night before our flight checking for delays and cancellations. As it was, we had to be at the airport for 4am, and most flights the day before had been cancelled and even train routes suspended. We passed the time chatting with our families; time differences can be useful sometimes. This all-nighter plan would slowly backfire throughout our first day in Switzerland.
Thankfully, everything was running as scheduled and we arrived early morning in Geneva via easyJet. Yet another budget airline, easyJet was more civil and less aggressive-sales-driven than competitor RyanAir. We immediately boarded a train to Vevey travelling along expansive Lake Geneva. And, we soon had our first views of the Swiss Alps. While there was barely a light dusting of snow on the ground, the white mountains soaring up across the lake offered hope. Clouds drifted in and out of the mountains alternately obscuring and revealing them. It’s amazing how geology can command such reverence.
Towards Vevey, we became immersed in vineyards; vines were in every conceivable space on the gentle slopes of the lake’s north shore. The Swiss Riviera attracted past residents, the Shelleys, Lord Byron, Hemingway and Charlie Chaplin, with its views and its charms, and it’s easy enough to imagine Frankenstein’s monster hiding out somewhere in the vast mountains beyond, disrupting this local calm. We arrived in Vevey and checked in to our hostel. Tom was already looking worse for the wear. We were on Place du Marché directly overlooking the lake and went up for some closer views. There were the strangest trees and the biggest sun; the sun had diffused into this giant glowing sphere behind the clouds... It was after 11am and we were famished, but nothing seemed to be open for lunch. This was confirmed by the hostel clerk – too early. We persisted and managed to find the one restaurant actually open. We got our first taste of expensive Switzerland. Happily, after lunch, we rebalanced the budget with free public transit (for all tourists!) to nearby Montreux.
Chateau de Chillon is an 11th-century castle that fills a small, rocky island in Lake Geneva. It is actually only narrowly separated from the mainland by a natural moat. We were received by a giant Christmas tree in the first courtyard. We then descended into the gothic vaulted dungeon. At this point, our visit was interrupted by Tom realizing he’d lost his wedding ring... Apparently, our hands shrink in the cold and a castle visit is necessarily cold. This was actually the second time this had happened; the first time, his ring was found rolling around on the floor of the bus to Aachen with his students, and we hoped for a similarly happy outcome. In the dimly lit dungeon, we scoured the damp, pitted, rocky floor. We drained our camera battery using the focus light as a flashlight, but to no avail. Tom disappeared and ultimately left our name and sad story at the gatehouse as well as with every shop- and groundskeeper he found outside the castle walls. While he was gone, I braved the crypts alone. We then continued our tour filled with medieval murals, a fireplace large enough to roast a whole beast, the duke’s private chapel, tiny beds for sleeping upright (!), coffered wood ceilings, and the whole culminating in the central keep. We walked along the beach with the setting sun before heading back to the bus stop (intent on the ground lest the ring should appear).
In the town center, a huge Christmas market was in full swing. Little chalet shops lined the streets and filled the park. Tom sampled (and disliked) roasted chestnuts. Quebec was even represented with the Cabane à Sucre Chez ti Jean! Strangely (?!), it flew the Canadian flag and not our own fleur-de-lis. Here, you could purchase Maudite and La Fin du Monde (those beers might give us a bad reputation...) and, for an extortionate €38, you could buy a can of maple syrup. I miss it, but not that much.
The sun had long since departed, it was only getting colder and nothing was yet open for dinner. We always find ourselves at odds with the European dining schedule... In the Vieille Ville, we made our way towards the only lit building. This beacon was a lovely, authentic Swiss restaurant; the bar was open, but the chef was only due to arrive at 6.30pm. We warmed up with some hot chocolate during our forty-five minute wait (although, we only got so warm as a restaurant with ‘caveau’ in its name is cold by default). While we waited, I also decided that our bag needed a thorough check and, miracle of miracles, Tom’s ring was at the bottom. Very relieved, he slipped it on for a few moments before deciding that it should be resized before wearing again (since done).
For a Swiss experience, we opted for raclette without being totally sure what it was. Raclette is a kind of cheese; half of a large raclette cheese wheel is heated on an open flame, still in the rind. The melted cheese is then scooped out and served with a bizarre combination of small potatoes, gherkins and pickled onions (the carnivores in us cried: no meat?!). We asked for bread, too. It was all-you-can-eat, but the waitress brought it in small portions at a time. All the same, we ate our weight in cheese. An all-nighter, wine and a heavy meal meant that we weren’t so much falling asleep as going into all-systems'-failure. We managed a stop at the train station for the next day’s tickets before retiring to the hostel. Our Italian dorm mates entered very late reeking of booze and cigarettes, but we were much too tired to wake up for long.
Christmas Eve morning was reserved for Vevey and then all our attention would be set on reaching snow. We were in the French part of Switzerland, or so we thought. When checking out, the desk clerk spoke words we’d never heard before: septante and huitante. This nomenclature is actually more in keeping with other Latin languages’ numbering and those words respectively mean seventy and eighty; they also use nonante for ninety. For anyone not familiar with French, the word we use for seventy literally translates to sixty plus ten, the word for eighty to four twenties and the word for ninety to four twenties plus ten. Slightly convoluted... They do at least eat breakfast at a reasonable hour here and we munched on croissants before our self-guided walking tour. It was very misty and the mountains could barely be seen.
Vevey is the birthplace of milk chocolate (1819) and the headquarters of Nestle. We strolled by cheese vendors in the street and found where Jean Jacques Rousseau once lived with his quotation etched in stone, “Je pris pour cette ville un amour qui m’a suivi dans tous mes voyages”. We walked along the water, by the town hall’s clock tower and finally up to the medieval Church of St-Martin. Here the graves were festively covered in fir boughs. Before heading up into the Alps, we stocked up on gourmet local chocolate to fuel the rest of our holiday.
A cogwheel train took us up the steep ascent to Leysin. We looked out over medieval Aigle Castle set in endless vineyards. Tom was impressed that a train could stop and start on such inclines, although the squeaks and screeches were less than inspiring. The train’s name literally describes how it functions; the tracks have a central toothed rail that interlinks with the train’s cog wheels to propel you up the mountain. As we climbed, there was increasingly more snow and I was excited to see an alpine chamois (like a goat). And the views just kept getting better. We reached our destination and had a very short walk to the Hiking Sheep Aubergerie. Here, we happily had a private room where I looked forward to strewing my stuff all around and talking above a whisper with the lights on at any hour I pleased. The Swiss have a great tradition of not working between noon and two o’clock. This seems to be some sort of siesta sympathy as there is really not the heat to warrant it. Unfortunately, we arrived at 12.30. The innkeeper had left the door open, so we deposited our stuff inside, warmed up and waited for his return. While we waited, we took in the beautiful mountain views and the Rhone Valley totally shrouded in mist. We took photos and Tom threw snowballs at me. We shovelled the walkway and built a snowman. Tom found a nearby depanneur (open!) and scavenged some ramen for lunch. Paul-Henri, our host, arrived before we could eat. We hoped to check-in and then get to the grocery store in case it closed early for the holidays. But Paul-Henri loved to talk and we obliged. We saw one of the hourly shuttle buses go by and just managed to catch the next one.
Leysin is a small, south-facing village with an exceptional number of sunshine hours. This sunny disposition and the mountain air originally attracted foreigners for healing purposes. The sanatoriums mostly closed in the 1940s with the advent of tuberculosis antibiotics, and the buildings are now used by international schools. It is a quiet and relaxed town. Thankfully, the grocery store was still open and we stocked up on the usual excesses of the holiday season.
Paul-Henri was in the kitchen when we returned. Half-starved, we began to devour a baguette and camembert while our pasta cooked. And, again, we talked for a number of hours with Paul-Henri. Our exchanges with locals are often limited on our travels; they usually don’t go beyond commercial transactions, so this was novel... and nice. We talked about the differences in our French – apparently, the Quebecois mistake was following the French (and not the Swiss) in their numbering system! There is a clear division of church and state and yet the government funds Swiss churches. He was ashamed at the recent vote banning minarets and thought it finally exposed the sham of Switzerland being a neutral nation. And he asked us why we have a Canadian flag on our backpack. We responded, “lest we be mistaken for Americans”. He said this is the answer he always gets. I don’t think this is so much anti-American sentiment as it is the only patriotism most Canadians show.
It was now almost midnight, so we decided to open our few Christmas presents – some red Olympics mittens and scarf from my parents, and a tie, agenda and card game between us. Of course, our big present was the trip itself. Our clothes dried on the radiator – on top and pressed in between the fins; this was at full blast and the room was still cold. We played a few hands of our new game in some festive paper crowns before resting up for our ski trial the next day.
Christmas Day. Even though I’m Canadian, I had never been downhill skiing and I promised Tom I would try. My first hope was to survive and my second was to have fun. Moving to London, we hadn’t bothered to bring any real winter gear, so our outerwear was improvised: we essentially went with the layered approach and put on everything we owned. Then came the rental equipment. The boots were oppressors which I thought would surely feel better in skis than walking around. We took the cable car up to a beginner slope. The boots didn’t feel any better in skis. We spent almost two hours practising. A blizzard had visibility low and my hair in frozen tangles. I hadn’t mastered anything but falling and had less confidence than when we started, and yet somehow thought we shouldn’t leave without going down an actual run.
It was early afternoon when we got on the chairlift for the ‘easy’ run. If it takes twenty minutes on a chairlift, how long does it take to come down on skis? This question came too late. And to further impair my skiing, all my appendages were frozen by the time we got to the top. I promptly fell off the chairlift. Thankfully, the slopes were quiet enough to allow for my slow, torturous, tortuous undertakings. Any need-for-speed whims were quickly quashed with the threat of falling off cliffs. Why do Tom and I always find ourselves cliffside on mountains – surely there are vast slopes somewhere? So, while Tom skied and learned to snowplow backwards (to keep an eye on me), I did something that may have resembled skiing from a great distance and in slow motion. For an added complication, I developed an ankle problem (recurring jogging injury) that made left turns very painful. And then that blizzard got worse. The winds came in icy blasts and added hail to the mix. Tom said he had never skied in such bad conditions. We took shelter behind some rocks hoping it would pass. It raged on, but cleared as we descended. I understood why Leysin’s weather was forecast at three different altitudes.
I decided to take a cue from the toddlers overtaking me (were they born on skis?!) and tried skiing without poles. This was actually much easier. It took the rest of the afternoon to get down that one run and hours of snowplow had my quads screaming. Happily, there were moments when I did not have to imagine the fun of skiing. There was one straightaway not bordering on an abyss where I let myself go fast-er... The run ended in something that looked like an ‘expert’ gradient... The interesting thing about walking downhill (carrying your skis) is that you can better appreciate the stunning views – oh, and you don’t have to call the paramedics at the bottom.
That was my first and last time skiing. I had survived only in the broadest sense of the term: there were no broken bones, but the mountain had utterly defeated me. Truly I am one of those unfortunate Canadians with no innate ability to ski – maybe the time I spent living in the prairies had taken all the ‘alpine’ out of me. I vowed to redeem myself: I would return to the Alps in more clement weather and conquer these mountains on my own two feet; hiking I can do.
I couldn’t have been happier to give those boots back. Their great discomfort is apparently normal and just a part of skiing that hadn’t been mentioned to me earlier. I also tried to remove the layer of snow that had accumulated from multiple spills. We grabbed the shuttle bus, chapped faced, and headed back. The driver stopped by a roadside ‘cauldron’ and we were all offered mulled wine. That doesn’t happen every day... At the inn, I had a hot chocolate to chase down some ibuprofen.
This was our first Christmas away from our families and we tried to reproduce the elements that meant Christmas for us. We prepared some kind of poultry that looked like a mini-turkey (it may have been Cornish hen, but the label was in German). We then retired to the lounge where Tom played carols on the piano.
Boxing Day was our recovery day. We slept in and then slowly made our way into town. We looked around for a photo-op with a Swiss flag to showcase our Canadian mittens (we were told this was the ‘thing’ to do). All surfaces were very icy and we did some unintentional sliding downhill – I tried to protect the camera and Tom tried to protect me and amazingly no one fell or was damaged. We went for some purposeful sliding at the toboggan park. Bobsled-like runs had been created for snowtubes. A tube ‘lift’ pulled you up the hill; it was nice and leisurely and nothing like skiing. So, we sat cross-legged and didn’t move even when it seemed that we were about to flip over, because the runs were precision-engineered. The turns were great and you really got to ride high up into them. Tom picked the highest run that started in a little tower above the other runs! We closed out the day with some skating. Even though it had been a while, we were not as lame as the other adult tourists who were bent over the skating supports designed for children (like mini hockey nets minus the netting).
On our last day in Switzerland, we made our way back down the mountain and along Lake Geneva to Lausanne. It is known for its shopping, but, given that it was Sunday, everything was closed and eerily quiet. In the empty, cobbled streets, we discovered the 13th-century St-François church and the gothic Cathédrale Notre-Dame, a medieval pilgrimage site. We walked down the Escaliers du Marché to the old city and town hall with its towering Christmas tree. Our final stop before heading home was Geneva.
Geneva is the international headquarters of the UN, the WHO and the Red Cross, and we started out in their direction. A peaceful Palestinian demonstration was going on outside the UN. We waited forever to get a photo of the flag-lined entrance to the art deco campus; a tourist repeatedly asked passersby to take his photo, apparently unsatisfied with the result, and we, of course, did not want him in our photo. We walked through the UN gardens and the sombre sculptures of the Red Cross: stone figures sheathed from head to toe. We then walked along the lake back into town. Tom was fascinated by the height of the Jet d’Eau at our first hint of it far off behind buildings. Across the lake, the Old Town had a character and charm I associate with Amsterdam. The Jet d’Eau was now in full view. This is a 140m high ‘fountain’ and, needless to say, the world’s tallest. While we had Lausanne to ourselves, Geneva was full of people, and still nothing was open. We did find the one open, crowded café offering warmth and over-priced beverages, and excluding good service. We continued on to Cathédrale St-Pierre where John Calvin preached during the Protestant Reformation. It started to rain in the courtyards of the Hotel de Ville. We made last stops in Parc des Bastions with its giant chessboards and Île Rousseau with a statue of the philosopher. Then it was back to the train and Geneva Airport.
After the usual bus and train trek from Stansted Airport, it was after midnight by the time we got home. Night owls that we are, we watched a movie before settling in for a long winter’s nap.
New Year’s Eve Postscript:
We closed out 2009 with friends at the Burlesque Ball at Bush Hall in Hammersmith. It was a “night of vintage music” – early rock and swing – and vaudeville-style strip tease. This kind of party is inherently fancy dress. Tom dressed in a black shirt and trousers accented with a silver tie, white fedora, white suspenders and extra long, white lounge lizard shoes. I wore a lacy red top, a short frilly skirt, fish net stockings and some high heels of Tom’s choosing. A night of dancing in heels ultimately meant that Tom had to give me a piggyback-ride home from the train station (my being unable to walk anymore)!
