Switzerland

Moulsari and I went to Switzerland to visit her family, and it was great. I was a little nervous about imposing on her uncle’s family for as long as we would, but after thirty seconds of walking out of the gate at Zurich airport I was feeling a lot better. I had met her uncle, Ashok, once before, months ago, when he was in the Netherlands for business, and I remembered that I had a great conversation with him about fossil-fuel, renewables, alternate energy sources, etc., so I knew that we would have a good chance of getting along. His wife, Smita, was a surprisingly liberal and vivacious person, who made us both feel right at home. They have two children, Kiran and Shristi, ages 17 and 21, who are sweet, intelligent and beautiful. Their house was gorgeous and spacious, and we got the guest bedroom, which was very generous. After spending the time with Moulsari’s family, I came to the conclusion that it’s totally a way in which I could live my life; they’re successful, spirited, adventurous, well-travelled, and very well educated. Very inspirational people.

While in Switzerland, we did a bunch of cool things. So, in no particular order…

.: Einsiedeln
We drove up to a little town by the name of Einsiedeln, which houses a Benedictine Abbey. The monastery is amazingly huge, beautifully decorated in a full baroque style, and very old. It’s obviously very rich, since it owns a lot of lands around the Zurich-See, and the monastery itself is very well maintained. It also houses the statue of the Black Madonna. While there, a mass was just about to start, and somehow Moulsari and I managed to sneak into the congregation and watched a bit of the mass. (Moulsari and I sneaking into places we weren’t supposed to be seemed to come up more often during this trip. More on that later.) We left not too long into the mass, because I felt a little awkward with all those deeply religious and devout people around me.

The drive up to Einsiedeln was very nice, too. Ashok had decided to take the touristy route to the little village, something he did quite a bit during our several outings. The country-side is amazing, and I constantly got the feeling I was in a Bob Ross painting. Being Dutch and completely unused to hills, let along honest-to-god mountains, I spent most of my time just being amazed, overwhelmed and feeling kind of small and insignificant. One of the things that I noticed straight away is the numerous large crosses and crucifixes on mountains, and shrines in people’s yards. (Speaking of backyards, I should tell you about their National Lawn-Mowing Day!) I was surprised at how deeply Catholic the country still is. I find it a bit ironic that the country that is well-known for their liberal views on, for instance, euthenasia also happens to be one of the most devout.

.: St. Galen
Shristi had to be taken back to St. Gallen, a town about an hour from Pfaffikon, where we were staying. She studies Business there at the university, and she had come down for the weekend. This was actually one of the few days of bad weather we had while in Switzerland. By bad weather, I mean that it rained a little. While there, we visited the Abbey of St. Gallen, which was very large (saw an actual monk!) but not exactly super-exciting. However, their library, the Stiftsbibliothek, oh my god! Not very large, but the collection of books was really old, and the library itself was richly decorated, again in a Baroque style. Sadly, I can’t find any good photos of it, I’m kind of hoping Moulsari made some photos on the sneak, because flash-photography wasn’t allowed. Anyway, after looking at the books and maps they had, some hundreds of years old, I sat down and just enjoyed being there. It is exactly how I imagine these old-world, aristocratic book collectors must have their library set up. Rows and rows of ancient texts and an infinite number of versions of the Bible. It’s not surprising that the UNESCO World Heritage Centre put it on their list as a protected world heirloom.

.: Zurich
Mouls and I spent a day wandering around Zurich, where we went to the Landesmuseum, saw the Grossmunster Church, the Fraumunster Church, and a different day we went into Old Town, where we saw the most amazing furniture shop ever!! First, the Grossmunster wasn’t so impressive. It was very bare, very simple, and very Reformed. Large parts of the Fraumunster were blocked off from visitation, but their glass-in-lead windows were very impressive. It was a really nice, sunny day, and I actually managed to get a bit of a tan. We spent some time sitting at Bellevue square, at the Limat river, watching divers do amazing tricks as they dove off a ten meter high dive-tower set up in the river. We went to the Landesmuseum, which was very cool. As we came in, we wandered around a little bit, uninspired by the collection we found, and a certain point we were unable to go any further due to construction. Instead of walking all the way back we decided to take the elevator, which was right there, kind of hidden and easily overlooked. We rode up to the second floor and entered a special exhibition about Switzerland and its diplomatic relationships with other countries. It was a really nicely laid out exhibition with a strange, inverted, cone-shaped tent set in the dead center. Inside there was a large dining table, set for perhaps 20 people. From above an image was projected onto the table depicting food and drinks and such. So it seemed like the plates were full, the glasses filled, etc. For the longest time I couldn’t figure what this was about, until I had the freak-out of the year when I suddenly saw an arm move to a glass and pick it up. Aparently, what it was meant to be is a live, diplomatic dinner. Mouls, when she found it, was utterly facinated, and it was hard to tear her away from the projected lobster and white wine. Crazy girl. :)

We saw the rest of the exhibition and moved on to another section. When we were out of the exhibition, Mouls decided she wanted to go back and see the table again, at which point she got asked for her admission slip. When she showed it, they told her that she couldn’t go in because you had to pay extra for the exhibition! Again with the sneaking. (In case you’re wondering, we were not energetic enough to go all the way back to the elevator and sneak in that way again.) We continued to explore the museum and came across a really cool armory, with halberds, swords, muskets and pistols, as well as different forms of medieval and early renaissance barding. By the time we were done walking this massive museum, my ankle was sore and I had to sit down. We decided to sit down in the park behind the museum, again on the water. While I was enjoying some skittles, Moulsari was scoping the map to see where we could go next. During this nice, calm, little interlude, some swans decided to bother us, trying to steal my skittles! (Angry swans was also a recurring theme this trip, as I’ll explain later.)

Coolest furniture store ever; Mouls insisted on seeing every little shop and hole-in-the-wall, everywhere, all the time, which started to bother me a little bit after a while. At a certain point I decided to stay outside and enjoy the weather a bit while Mouls went to explore another store. It took her a while, and right when I was wondering if someone had kidnapped her, I got an SMS telling me that I should really come and look inside. I was reluctant, but I’m glad I did. The story was multiple stories, which you wouldn’t expect from the outside, and was divided, roughly, in two parts; the front and the back. Sounds corny, but it’s important. The back of the story was entirely gutted, and had no floors. What it did have were large, steel walkways instead of floors, interconnected with steel staircases. The walkways were rosters, so you could look down to floor below, and the floor below that, etc. The very bottom was a pool of water, so it felt almost like you were in mid-air. It was really, really cool, and more than a little unsettling as you look down, past a bunch of floors, into a pool of water. How anyone can look at furniture under these conditions is beyond me. You have to be one jaded motherfucker not to be impressed by the store rather than its furniture. Hopefully, Mouls has some photos so I can show you, I’m sure I’m not doing the store any justice with my explanation. :)

.: National Lawn-Mowing Day
Oh, another thing; Zurich is really clean and organised. Everything looks well-made, nothing is broken, there’s no real garbage, and it’s all very nice. This is something that goes for all of Switzerland, actually. Everything looks so very…nice. All the grass, in the entire country, is freshly cut, and on the last saturday we were there we found out why! It was National Lawn-mowing Day! Everywhere we drove, whole groups of people were cutting the grass. And I’m not talking about a neighbourhood patch of grass, or their backyard; I’m talking about hills and mountains! Grass cutting, grass collecting, people with scythes and rakes, lawn-mowers everywhere! Weird weird weird. But, I did my part and mowed the lawn around the house. (No joke.)

.: Rapperswil
There was a day where we wanted to go to Lucerne, but we were kind of lazy, and didn’t really appreciate the arm and leg we’d have to pay the public transportation system to get there, so just as we thought the day was going to turn into an uneventful one, I got the idea to ask Smita what we could do in the area. She suggested we walk down to Rapperswil. She could drop us off at a really nice spot, from which the walk would be really enjoyable. Zo gezegd, zo gedaan. We walked down this park towards the edge of the lake, at which point you could walk down this really long, wooden bridge, over the water, all the way to Rapperswil. It was about a 25 minute walk, which was really enjoyable. The water was really still and clear, and we could make out the fish swimming around us. It’s interesting to see how different the water is in Switzerland. It feels clearer, cleaner and fresher. I guess it’s the mountain glacier thing, you know.

Rapperswil was very cool as well. Very quaint, very beautiful. And it had a castle! The castle was very cool, thought not as elaborate. There was a restaurant in the castle, and a Polish museum. The only way we could check out the inside of the castle was if we went into the museum, so we did. Lacking any and all context and frame of reference, we looked at all the pretty things while really marvelling at the castle. The collection was a private one, and in that it was pretty impressive, other than that I felt no real connection to the material on display. Afterwards we went to explore the grounds around the castle, beautiful gardens, big ancient walls, and deer! I got a phonecall from home that put me in an even better mood and Mouls and I went exploring. Our exploring ended pretty quickly as we found the church connected to the castle, and we snuck in, only to catch the last bit of an organ rehearsel. The church was beautiful and well-maintained, and with the exception of the organ player – who couldn’t be seen, only heard – and two others, we were the only ones in there. It always instill me with a sense of calm when I’m in a church, though if I stay for too long, I get antsy.

We decided to go and get some lunch and found all places refusing to serve us as it was 14:30 and lunch was over. Some would serve us drinks, but some even went so far as to lock up and walk off just as we walked up. We found a really nice terrace of an Italian restaurant in the harbour and had pizza and icecream. After that we walked along the water and found a bunch of people feeding ducks…and swans! There was a little boy throwing bread at the birds, but he was getting a little careless, and wasn’t throwing far enough, so all the birds swarmed in around him. Including one of the swans (who, incidentally, had two young close by) who was hissing at the other birds, chasing them off, and opening his wings to make himself big. It surprised me how much swans remind me of dragons; with their long necks and huge wings. Anyway, the kid didn’t get that a hissing swan is nothing to mess with, and at one point the swan even made a pass for the remainder of the bread he was holding. Still clueless, and kind of neglected by his parents it was only a matter of time before the boy got pecked by the swan, and so he did. Viciously the swan pecked at his forehead. The kid probably wasn’t the brains of the operation, because I don’t care how old you are, you don’t just stand there, ignorant of the danger when a swan taller than youcomes up to you and hisses at you. :)

.: India’s Independence Day Celebration
One of the first days we were there it was the celebration of India’s sixty years of independence, and Kiran was supposed to perform at a festival in Zurich organised by a Swiss/Indian intercultural organisation run by Indian expats. There were a bunch of performances, and Kiran was by far one of the best. I liked all of them, with the exception of one woman who was doing a traditional dance that just took too long. Later we heard from Kiran that she wasn’t supposed to do a second dance, but that she was a little weird. I especially liked the Punjabi Bhangra dancers. They’re so full of life and lust. It was really cool. There were some obligatory speeches which were interesting. Most of them focussed on the economic growth of India, and how far India had come since its independence…it was almost like a sales pitch. There was a representative of the city of Zurich who also spoke, and he also focussed on the economic side of things, but urged that the benefits of the economic boom would be distributed equally among the people, and that the poorest would also benefit. I was very happy that at least someone would address that situation, even though it was a shame he wasn’t Indian.

Next to the performances there was also a bazaar where you could get henna-tattoo’s, Bollywood DVD’s, food and get your eyebrows “threaded,” which was creepy, but very cool. Afterwards there was a Bollywood disco, but by that time I had been dealing with a multi-day headache and I wasn’t really in the mood for dancing. I was content just watching the people dance. Ashok did teach me the art of Bollywood dancing, the three basic moves; 1) screwing in the lightbulb, 2) petting the dog, 3) extinguishing the cigarette. Perhaps the next time I have an opportunity to dance to Indian music I might try it out. Dhoom Machele is now permanently logged in my head. Even today. Though I did manage to not sing it out loud anymore. :)

Apparently the food wasn’t so good, so we decided upon döner just down the street.

.: Holloch
One of the last days (actually, the National Lawn-Mowing Day) I got to decide where we’d go. Ashok had given us a Alpine Summer magazine with touristy things to do in Switzerland during the summer, and I had found out that one of the oldest forests in Europe was not too far from Pfaffikon, near a little town called Muotathal in the canton of Schwyz. There resides the biggest cave-system in Europe (the fourth largest in the world) where you could get a tour through the caves. We had the option of doing a three-and-a-half hour tour, or 90 minute tour. I wanted to do the longer one, but Ashok and Moulsari protested a bit, so we decided to do the 90 minute one, and go hiking as well.

The hike was pretty cool, and I came to the conclusion that I have a pretty good stamina for that sort of thing. We were at about 2000 meters, where the air gets a little thinner and going gets a little rougher. We walked about halfway up a mountain, encountered a friendly goat, whom we named Chalo Bakri and saw a really cool waterfall and mountain stream. I drank some of the water, which was really clear and fresh. Another thing I noticed is that hiking isn’t as easy as it seems if you’re stray off the path. Also, paragliding through a valley looks like a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to doing it with my company in a few weeks. After our hike we quickly ate some carbs and got ready for the cave-tour.

While waiting in the hut from which we’d start, I was looking at photos and 3d models of the cave, and it all looked really spectacular. 192 kilometers of discovered tunnels, and probably quite a bit more that they haven’t explored yet. The photos were a little unsettling, because the entrance, which is set into the side of a crevice wall, was shown with water bursting out, gushing like a geyser, all frothing white water and everything. The tour-guide, who didn’t speak any English, but agreed to speak in High German (which I actually understood quite a bit; Duits, Matig) explained that the water rises in the spring, and makes the cave-system inaccessible as melt-water comes pouring down the mountain and floods the entire tunnel-system. He also told us that water-levels needed to be checked regularly, seeing as how water can rise very quickly, at a rate of about 20 centimeters per minute. But we had nothing to fear, he said, because the last people who had died in the tunnels was in 1954 because they got stuck as the water was rising.

Armed with carbonite lanterns we started walking up the crevice wall along a winding staircase. The view there was amazing; the crevice was really deep and completely covered with moss, so everything was tinged in green. The trees on top of the crevice were humongous and their roots were burrowing deep into the rock. It reminded me of the Lord of the Rings films, it had that kind of epic awesomeness to it. I was so incredibly overwhelmed that I didn’t really notice that we had arrived at the entrance to the cave. Once I realised, I recognised it from the photos I had seen in the hut, but instead of all the water boiling out of it, it was dry (ish). I realised that the crevice was probably one of the starts of the river in the valley. We went into the cave and it turned really dark, really quickly. Footing was tricky because everything was uneven and slippery, but we venture about an hour or so into the cave while the tour guide occassionally stopped to explain about certain things.

We saw a worm with no natural pigmentation in its skin, who, if you’d carry it to the top, would die within minutes due to the UV exposure. We went through a small entrance, where the suction of wind was so high that our carbonite lamps extinguished, hats flew off, and you got the feeling you would be dragged along. The rock formations are just amazing, and you can really feel the pressure of all that rock above you, it’s cool, very cool, but I only realised how scared I was when I came out, I really felt elated when I walked out of there. What’s also amazing, is that no matter what time of day or year it is, it’s always six degrees in the cave (getting warming the deeper you go.)

Overal, this was an amazing trip, and I really enjoyed myself. I didn’t get to swim, which is a shame, since all the water seemed ripe for a dive, and we didn’t get to see Lucerne, but we did some awesome and memorable stuff, and the people we stayed with were fantastic. I got to watch my first really cool Bollywood film, Rang de Basanti, got hooked on my first Bollywood song, got to go hiking, spelunking, and enjoy the amazing landscape and history of Switzerland. Probably the most beautiful country I’ve ever visited.