flexibility

let me just set something straight, i don’t normally travel completely plan-less. normally i have a good month or two of research before i go somewhere, so even if i don’t have a reservation (although i do make them when i know for 100% certain i want to hit a particular spot) i have a good sense of what i’d like to do and what my options are.

this isn’t the case with this trip. for those that don’t know, i’ve been a bit busy at work for the past couple months, and this isn’t so much a vacation i’m on as a forced escape from work. i don’t want to burn out, so i needed to get away, simple as that. in the limited planning i had done Switzerland was not much more than a good location from which to get to france and italy, not a destination i had planned to explore thoroughly in and of itself.

so, imagine my surprise that i find myself visiting nothing but Switzerland for this trip. the reasons were simple, the route to Italy was through Switzerland, giving this country enough time to impress upon me that ‘hey, wait a second, what’s all this then?’. it’s an astoundingly beautiful country. also, the Canadian dollar is almost the same as a swiss franc in value, so it’s easier to gauge expenses (bloody expensive) while the euro is more than $1.60! one quick purchase later and i had an all Switzerland rail pass and no idea what to do with it.

this, of course, is all a lead up to explain how, at 1pm today, i ended up in Gimmelwald (wow, beautiful) at the mountain hostel, where, if you’ll peruse their website, you’ll see that they don’t open until the 18th of April. ahem

Petra, the owner, was around when i arrived and graciously offered me the run of the hostel, even to stay the night in the empty hostel should i wish. it was gorgeous, and until about 5pm it was my plan to do so. after hiking up to Müren, enjoying a late lunch and a cappucino i returned to the hostel ready to get some domestic chores done, shower/shave, wash clothes, catch up on my blogging/photo processing & organizing, etc. having showered, and started my laundry i then discovered that the internet was down. faced with a long boring night in an empty hostel on a coldd mountain (it’s warm during the day, but even down in luzern it was sweater weather at night) i’ve decided to leave while i still could, semi-damp clothes be damned.

now i’m on the train, after catching the second last gondola/bus/train combo out of gimmelwald, heading back to interlaken in search of a hostel. if all goes according to plan, i’ll be posting this while drinking a beer and eating dinner. *fingers crossed*

p.s. found a wonderful hostel in interlaken – the happy inn lodge.Only one room left, a single room all to myself (perfect for drying all the clothes that was still damp), will stay another night in the dorm. joining a group going to the highest trainstation in europe tomorrow (over 3000meters!), many pics to follow.

a mountain, conquered

over 3km’s above sea-level, and the cellular phone reception is better than in my apartment.

today i went to visit titlis, a popular skiing mountain in the luzern area. there’s a train directly to the town, engelberg, where you then take a series of ski lifts and/or gondolas to the peak. the train from luzern to engelberg takes just about an hour, and it takes perhaps another 30 – 45 minutes to make it all the way to the peak. the whole thing is very surreal to me.

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interesting strangers

for vasta, people i’ve met

it usually take a few days to go from ‘normal’ to ‘travel’ mode, thankfully i managed to fast track my entry into traveler mode thanks to my roommates in the hostel, a couple interesting people who helped keep me awake and fighting off the jet-lag.

Marc, from Spain.

Marc came into the room right as i was wondering how exactly i would stay awake for the next hour or two (it was around 9pm) in order to put my sleep schedule back in order. within five minutes of his arrival he was sitting next to me, giving me a detailed account of his whirlwind tour of Switzerland, complete with hundreds of photos to accompany the story.

Marc’s a young guy, living just outside of Barcelona where he’s going to university. he’s catalan, and when he started to explain to me what it meant to be catalonian vs. spanish, i was able to simply say “ah, like Quebec, i understand”.

i was way too tired to remember the details of his trip, but i know he went to Zürich, luzern and interlaken (places that i now intend to visit, in part thanks to his enthusiastic descriptions), but the one detail i do remember was his particular talent at posed photographs. i don’t think i’m exaggerating when i say he took at least a hundred self portraits with his little camera and tripod – i call it the “Marc Style Photo”

my attempt at a "Marc Style" photo

Marc, having helped me stay awake for at least an hour, left the room to take some night shots of Geneva, while I gave up and prepared to go to sleep regardless of the consequences of sleeping too early.

Kristine, a Canadian living in Germany who missed her flight to the UK

thankfully, distraction arrived again, this time in the form of Kristine a fellow Canadian (from Oakville) who had missed her flight due to a delayed train. she’s in the UK by now, visiting her boyfriend, but she lives in Frieburg, Germany while she’s doing her masters degree in materials science (studying solar cells, how cool is that?).

she was super friendly and nice, despite the crappy circumstance of missing her flight, and within 5 minutes of learning that i had just arrived in Geneva from Toronto she was trying to convince me to go visit her in Frieburg, offering me a space on her couch (apparently Frieburg is a very beautiful medieval town, worth a stop if you’re in the area).

she told me about living in Europe, and the strange combination of homesickness and attachment to Europe that develops when living here. on the one hand you miss your friends and family, the unique Canadian’ness of Canada. on the other, the thought of all the huge, unnecessary cars, the lack of decent regional transit (seriously, why can’t we have trains like in Europe?) and the lack of town squares and decent little cafe’s everywhere counts against Canada in a big way.

unfortunately in a bout of stupid i accidently deleted the photos i had taken of Marc and Kristine, i’m FB friends with Marc now, so i’ll try to get him to send me the photo he took of us and update the post
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zurich

when i was home, thinking about how i’d like to spend the 10 or so days i had available to me, i used a combination of googlemaps and various flight booking sites to pick somewhere that was both interesting to me and not too expensive to get to. that’s how i ended up in Geneva, it seemed the most geographically close to a few areas of interest, France and Italy. Switzerland was really just a side bonus, i’d heard it was nice but never had a burning desire to visit, it certainly wasn’t in my top-ten to visit spots. imagine my surprise then as i purchased an eight day all Switzerland rail pass today.

it turns out that switzerland is absolutely gorgeous in the spring, or at least i have lucked out and hit a particularly beautiful patch of weather. 20C and sunny, warm enough to walk around in a short sleeved shirt, but cool enough that you’re never hot. so, in the interest of simplifying my life, and knowing in advance just how much i’ll be spending on transportation (it’s pretty damned expensive here), i’ve decided to stick to switzerland.

ok enough blather about my plans… going back to basics, i’ll leave you with a mini review of my dinner.

restaurant santa lucia – Zürich (all amounts in swiss francs)
1 bottle san pelligrino water – 5.20
pizza prosciutto alla spalla – 20.00

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