Switzerland #1

Obviously I’ve had quite a gap in posts, but with the definitely extra time this Christmas break, I’ll see what I can do to update for the past few months. My plan is to work backwards and take advantage of the saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

I reached out to Anselm Lohmann, an old classmate of mine from the American Boychoir School who I haven’t seen since 2014. He and his family live in Geneva, and when he offered to host me for Christmas and show me around Switzerland, I jumped at the offer.

I flew up from Budapest on the 20th. The whole airport process took a fraction of the time as it would have in the US. Although I had no bags to check and could go straight through security (which took 5 minutes tops) with my pre-printed out ticket, I WAS surprised that NO ONE requested to look at my passport, at all.

In Geneva the staff for our entrance into the airport (we walked across the tarmac from the plane) was nowhere in sight. Perhaps they had just forgotten about this whole flight, but the whole plane of people had to wait behind the closed glass doors for 20 minutes before word got through to some security people, and one to another staff member who ended up just opening a side door and letting everyone through.

I met Anselm, and spent the night at his family’s apartment. I realized that I had assumed several things about the weather in Geneva because I was surprised by the relatively warm temperature and the rainy weather. It was relatively similar to the winter weather at home around Seattle.

The next day we took a train to a small, non-touristy village in the mountains called Grandvillard, by Gruyères (like the cheese), and hiked up to a high point, starting on a small road, and eventually continuing up over a fence at the dead end of a steep path. We had lunch up on a watering trough for the cattle which are herded up in these mountains during the summer, and got a quite good view as the clouds cleared completely out. The stars (or rather, sun, clouds, and snow/rain) aligned, and we even got a rainbow added to the already beautiful scene.

We headed back on the road going down a different way from where we’d had lunch, and ended back at our origin point after 1.5 hours or so (we had a bit of an adventure and detour trying to find a bridge over the river, which included some bushwacking). We both agreed that this all was much better than any museum visit: exploring around on the ground really gives a nice, direct taste of a country.