Overland Tales

Day 32: Deutschland über Bierhalles

admin — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 23:00:35 +0000

If it’s convenient, listen to this song whilst you read this entry. Cheers!

I was determined to replace my paperweight of a laptop with something more functioning, so I used Munich’s great public transport network to buzz me over the river and to a branch of the German electronics store Media Markt. Unfortunately, with it being a Saturday in December, everyone else in the Greater Munich area had the same idea. The store was absolutely rammed.

Nevertheless, I fought through the crowds, but my heart sank when I finally caught sight of a laptop in a rare gap between Germans, who I suspected had got up especially early to commandeer the best spots by the hardware. My cunning plan to buy a laptop in Germany had a deep flaw running through it. The German keyboard layout was of course different to what I was used to - AZERTY instead of QWERTY - vich vould lead to zome ztrange mistaks ven typing zis chernal und be qvite annoyink ja. I’d have to hold fire on replacing my lapper until I could find one tailored for the UK (complete with such British-specific wonders as the “time for a cup of tea, I reckon” key).

This time was nearer than you might imagine. When I had left home in early November I had vowed to return home to Blighty for Christmas. I had only spent one Christmas away from my family, and that was on my last RTW trip, when I had been far away in Chicago. Only being in Continental Europe this time meant returning home was a doddle, and so after another day in Munich I had planned to drift in a gradual north-westerly direction for a temporary trip back home - overland, of course.

I fought my way out through the masses and out towards the main shopping street of Munich, which was just as packed with Happy German Shoppers. There seemed to be no escape, so I decided to repair to a German beer hall for the early evening.

Visiting a few central beer halls, I found those too were full - one barricaded shut whilst gleeful punters swung back litres of frothy German suds in the warm. Agitated, I headed north up a grand thoroughfare into the university district, where I knew there was another beer hall. The crowds quickly petered out and the streets finally became near deserted.

When I reached the place - a multi-level affair - the festivities were in full swing, and it too looked packed. I grabbed a waiter who luckily found space for me on a table near the door with a group of middle-aged Italians. Thankfully, they were drinking beer, not garlic, and pretty soon so was I, accompanied soon after with the best Wiener Schnitzel I have ever tasted.

The animated Italians proved to be of great entertainment, with one woman not being quite as happy with her food as I was with mine, her sending it back multiple times claiming it “smelt of fish”. After the second time, the staff were visibly pissed off, and after the fourth time so were her friends!
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Day 31: Dub Be Good to Me

admin — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 23:00:34 +0000

The chuckling landlady was still just as full of relentless serotonin as I lumbered down for breakfast, joining the only other guest, a middle-aged German lady of a greasy yellow appearance whom I shall call Frau Wachs. She was also incredibly friendly and probed me politely about my connections with Germany and my future travel plans. Meanwhile Frau Weber - who, it had dawned on me, was the German equivalent of Rustie Lee - chipped in now and again as she busied herself in the kitchen, laughing all the while at random things such as cereal, and beamingly encouraging me to pack a carrier bag of stuff from the huge breakfast spread for my lunch later today, which I gratefully did.

It felt a shame to leave such homeliness, which had been a rarity on the road so far, but nevertheless I had to push on. Frau Weber saw me off with a smile, a chuckle, a packed lunch and a yellowing postcard of Lindau that looked as if it had been in her possession since 1979, and I headed down to the train station.

I boarded a familiar Deutsche Bahn train with just the one change required to arrive three hours later into the vibrant Bavarian capital of Munich. I had last visited eight years ago, and although it was a diversion from the general direction in which I was headed, I couldn’t bear to let the opportunity pass to see it again - and perhaps sample some of its legendary beerhalls.
The hostels clustered around the train station had no space for me, let alone for Ron, and so I headed out of the centre a bit to the YHA, at which I took the second to last bed available. I hadn’t expected the city to be so busy; I guess many were drawn by the Christmas markets. I met a couple of my dormmates who turned out to be Germans, yet who were again generally unresponsive to my polite attempts at conversation. I’d found before that YHAs in Germany tend to attract Germans rather than international travellers, and that they tended to be quiet types - often cycle tourers or hikers - that kept themselves to themselves. Still, with the independent hostels full, I had little choice. Looking on the bright side, at least I was pretty much guaranteed a good night’s sleep at the YHA; everyone would be tucked up nice and early, with the only late drunk stumbling in likely to be me.

With Ron safely stowed in the bike cage for the night I set out to walk around Munich, unfortunately bringing neither guidebook nor map with me. My recollection of its streets was hazy and all I managed to do was take a frustrating walk in wide circles finding little of interest. Eventually I chanced upon a multiplex cinema, and feeling a sudden urge to watch a film, I grabbed a ticket for The Golden Compass.

Hollywood films in Germany are dubbed rather than subtitled, and this one - Der Goldene Kompass - was no exception. They are, however, dubbed extremely well, if you can imagine such a concept. You tend to switch off from the disparity with the lip-synching after the first few minutes, and soon after you are completely comfortable with the fact that familiar big-name actors such as Daniel Craig are suddenly speaking German. Also, most Hollywood actors have his or her own German voice actor who is hired to act the lines for all films they appear in, so Nicole Kidman sounds the same in German in all her films, and, strangely enough, uncannily like Nicole Kidman would sound were she to speak perfect German. Bizarrely, even Arnold Schwarzenegger has his own German voice actor, although a fair bit of his character is lost in translation. As with most things in Germany, it’s all done trememously well; it has to be, as it’s big business.

The Golden Compass was a real feast for the eyes and imagination, and having not read the Pullman book I wasn’t disappointed by what I saw. I could follow most of what was going on, but I have a feeling some of the subtext regarding the veiled criticism of organised religion passed me by.

The film had been a late showing, so I decided to conserve my liver and head back to base, leaving the putsch of the Munich beer halls for tomorrow.
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Day 30: Border Patrol

admin — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 23:00:48 +0000

On paper, Liechtenstein is utterly beguiling. Apart from its aforementioned surprising world-leading denture industry, I’d also read the thirty-five thousand strong country (just a shade more than my own one-horse hometown) was ruled by a meddling Prince (no, not the singer formerly known as) who lived in a castle high on a hill above the capital. In my mind there was no doubt that he had a huge telescope installed in a tall tower to spy on them. Apparently in recent years the Prince had been attempting to increase his powers over the democratic state. Quite what powers he wishes to wield over such a minnow of a nation, I don’t know - perhaps the right to go straight to the front of the queue in the baker’s?

Reading such fanciful stories had me intrigued, and gave me high hopes for Liechtenstein. I had fully expected - and readied myself for - a vibrantly colourful, over-touristed theme park of a country, full of rosy-cheeked locals pottering about Hansel and Gretel houses all hamming up the country’s unique history for the tourist dollar, another vital pillar of its economy.

How utterly disappointing the reality was. Vaduz was actually a bland strip of Soviet-chic concrete buildings with a featureless pedestrian district as its “centre”. There was no colour, no decoration and absolutely no character to the place aside from its location in a green valley flanked by mountains, but I’d recently cycled through far more attractive examples in Switzerland that weren’t filled by factories churning out chewing tools for the fluoride impaired.

In its defence, it’s an impossible task to hide your industry in a country in which you can see from side to side. And I did visit in low season, which might mean the tourist bells and whistles I had expected were safely packed away in boxes. Yet I’d be reluctant to recommend a visit to Liechtenstein unless you happen to be in the area, or so I mused as I passed by the “castle” up on high - little more than a big house (being renovated by a bigger crane). Carrying on northwards, I cycled up and out of the country’s border - not planning on returning any time soon - and into Austria.

The first town I reached inside Austria was everything I had expected Vaduz to be: cobbled streets weaving round a central clock tower with a colourful dial, wonky houses and a general hubbub of people - in short, character. Passing through, I continued to shadow the Swiss border just inside Austria, close to passing back into Switzerland at one point given the customs signs, cycling through mainly industrial areas and retail parks. The rain paid a visit but didn’t last for long. I finally hit my groove after struggling initially and was very glad to reach the top of a hill to see the Bodensee - aka Lake Constance - stretching out far below. There lay my destination, and the fourth country in which I would cycle in twenty-four hours: Germany.

I freewheeled all the way down the hill and straight into a Christmas market in full swing, thinking it rude not to stop for a quick mug of mulled wine and bratwurst sausage. I figured I was still in Austria, but it was a close call. Whilst the people no doubt knew, I doubt whether they felt particularly strongly about it. Land border areas are strange melting pots with a hodge-podge mix of nationalities and dialects; I saw cars with Swiss, Austrian and German licence plates pass by.

Just over the river, this sign confirmed the Weihnachtsmarkt had indeed been on Austrian territory, but that from now on it was Germany all the way.

The last push saw me looping around the north shore of the Bodensee until I hit the island city of Lindau, my chosen place to overnight. Continuing the trend, its hostel was closed, but Tourist Information kindly linked me up with a cheapy room in a local guesthouse.

Biking round there, the beaming, chuckling old landlady, Frau Weber, welcomed me like an old friend. Despite the stereotype of Germans being somewhat more formal than other nations (which certainly rings true, just in certain situations), from my limited experience I hold them to be among the most hospitable people in Europe - especially those in southern Germany.

After a sneaky little kip I slipped out to explore Lindau at nightfall. Its attractive cobbled streets seemed reasonably dead until I stumbled upon what seemed to be the entire population letting their mullets down at their very own Christmas market down by the lake, with music playing and stalls selling all manner of food, drink and knick-knacks. There is something about Germany that makes the festive season feel extra-Chrismassy, a certain je ne sais quoi - or should that be ich weiss nicht? - that underlines it still as a genuine time for celebration rather than the relentless commercial onslaught it seems to have turned into back home.
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Day 29: Liechtenstein’s Monster

admin — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 23:00:57 +0000

With a long ride ahead of me I set off bright and early, picking my way down to the southern shore of Lake Zurich and following the road that hugged it, taking in the houses located with prime position on the sloping northern shore. Soon the buildings started to thin out and I was cycling through valleys of green hills dotted with the odd lonely hut up on high, just above which the green gave way to white, craggy mountain peaks - an absolute treat for the eyes.

The going was flat but my legs just didn’t have it in them today, despite the day or two’s rest since my last big ride. The temperature had also dropped again. The gloves were out and for the first time I felt too cold in my trousers; icy legs don’t make for good cycling progress.

Pushing on, I reached a small town called Wangen with a tiny and authentic Italian family restaurant - exactly what was required. The warming bowl of pasta only revived me so much, however, and I really struggled to reach the goal I had set myself en-route, the rail hub of Ziegelbruecke, 35 miles east of Zurich. Finally making it there, as my reward I stocked up on bottles of Muller milkshake and Lindt chocolate in a supermarket and hopped on a train to cover the rest of the distance to the Swiss border, putting my feet up and appreciating the gorgeous alpine views.

For somewhere that had really only been an afterthought - it was a case of “may as well go there, it’s on the way” - Switzerland had been a surprisingly rewarding place to visit. What had made a lasting impression more than anything else was how quietly content the people had seemed, even in the major cities. I’m guessing that residing in an affluent, clean and efficient land of valleys, lakes and mountains goes a long way to help cultivate such a mindset. The sole disappointment was that due to the poor weather I didn’t get a chance to get up into the mountains myself, although I imagine I will be back in the Alps at some point in the future, probably with a couple of planks strapped to my feet.

I would’ve loved to have biked into my next destination, but I was a spent force, so instead I sought out the the bus which crossed into the mythical little country of Liechtenstein to its tiny capital, Vaduz.

Eyeing up some of the odd-looking locals on the bus, I wondered perhaps whether Liechtenstein - as the world’s largest exporter of dentures - should also consider going into the cosmetic surgery business as well, perhaps starting with some of its residents. They really did look like the type of people who had more than a few spare digits between them. I guess when your capital city has only four thousand people in it and little to no permanent intake of outsiders it’s going to be an uphill struggle for the gene pool.

The helpful girl at Tourist Information informed me the only hostel in the country was closed, which at least I had expected to be the case in Winter, and so she recommended the next best (i.e. cheapest) option, in the form of a guesthouse up at English Bed & Breakfast prices but with even less friendliness. Still, the rooms were nicely wood-panelled in a chalet style and I had my own telly showing the wondrous language-learning aid that is German television.

It’s a little known fact that there is a clause in the German Constitution decreeing that at any given point in time at least one German TV station must be showing dubbed re-runs of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. At least, it seems that way sometimes. I flicked through the 53 channels, 37 of which were showing adverts, and soaked up the German goodness, feeling my comprehension of the language gradually returning.

Vaduz had pretty much shut down by nightfall, which led me to wonder whether it was perhaps twinned with somewhere in Normandy. But I found one place nearby called the Old Castle Inn which was still offering a cheapy day menu of filling Germanic food: a meaty soup for starters, a meat main course with a side dish of meat and a token sprig of green veg (cooked in meat), accompanied by the type of bread you could easily leave a tooth in (perhaps why the local denture industry was doing so well). I got the beady eye from a local at the bar, although he might very well have been looking somewhere else completely, as the poor fellow was boss-eyed. Anyway, he made no effort to form a mob, grab pitchforks and flaming torches and chase me out of the valley, so I felt safe to wander home that night and put my head down in my fourth country this trip.
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Day 28: Zurich Get Richer

admin — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 23:00:28 +0000

I joined the Koreans for breakfast in the common room and we all stared mutely at the TV screen showing the views from the Jungfrauhoch, which were greyer than ever. They had decided to stay on for a few more days - as long as their supply of satsumas held out, I guess - but I didn’t fancy my chances given the forecast. There was to be no winding trip up to Europe’s highest railway station for me, and no sipping espresso whilst gazing across craggy alpine vistas. I had decided to press on eastwards to Zurich.

With Interlaken being something of a dead end surrounded by all those mountains, train was the only sensible option. As it was, it had to double back all the way to Bern, and I gazed at the Thunsee as all my cycling work following its meandering far shore was undone in a matter of minutes.

I hadn’t expected a great deal from Zurich. I had imagined it smelling faintly of money and being full of faceless suits, business hotels and working lunches at which people “touched base”. The weather was still fairly grey as I wheeled Ron out of the station, and it was noticably colder. I was surprised to see quite a charming little city laid out in front of me. A series of bridges lined the river, which was flanked on both sides by lines of sweet old buildings.

I cycled slowly down the river, dodging the trams and taking in the vibe. There was hardly a suit in sight, and the people milling about seemed quietly content, not hassled or bolshy as I had expected from a financial capital. A lot of people here were clearly well off, but they weren’t flashy with it in the slightest. The river gradually opened up into Lake Zurich, a vast expanse of water which didn’t quite have the visual impact of Lake Geneva but was nevertheless pretty and no doubt cleaner than some of the money that passed through the city.

The hostel was a long way out. Luckily that wasn’t an issue for me with Ron as I cycled through pleasant parkland and a cosy residential district to reach it. Once again, ruthless hostel efficiency was the name of the game as my passport was checked and I was assigned a pristine dorm with a pleasant but slightly depressive Swiss chap and a thoroughly decent Mormon guy from America, who had presumably left his wives at home for the week in order to attend to some non-cult-related business in Zurich.

I chipped back into the centre for a wander around the old town, which was a strange, cobbled muddle of shops, cafes and bars. It is probably the only place in the world where I have seen an adult store next door to a toy shop. I paused in a cafe my guidebook had recommended which sold hot chocolate made from nothing less than real chocolate. Whilst it was pretty good stuff, it didn’t really live up to the billing it had been given. Then again, all confectionery has had a faint air of disappointment about it ever since I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a kid; no real-life sweets can ever evoke the same feelings I had when I first read the description of the taste of Willy Wonka chocolate.

That evening I settled at the empty hostel bar to work on my route for tomorrow. If all went as planned this would be the last night of my brief traversal of Switzerland. It had been an unexpected joy to cycle through and after a couple of days off the bike I felt ready for a big two-wheeled outing to bid it farewell. Lake Zurich seemed ripe for pedalling along, and although my next country destination was far beyond my range at a good sixty miles distant I cunningly plotted a route beyond the lake that hugged the railway tracks, meaning I could easily switch to the iron rails whenever I felt too knackered to go on.
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Day 27: Hello IT?

admin — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 23:00:58 +0000

Everything seemed to be going swimmingly, so it was about time for something to go wrong, and it did so in a pretty spectacular fashion today. Pulling out my laptop from my bag this morning, the screen fired up with a bright and cheery row of multicoloured parallel lines that really shouldn’t have been there - not even on Windows “Fisher Price” XP. I blinked, dumbfounded, and proceeded to investigate the problem carefully using the standard IT procedure of how we fix things in the trade, a highly complicated process known as “turning it off and on again”.

The lines were still there. Troubling. I proceeded to stage two of the standard investigative process, which those in the business will also be familiar with, involving as it does going to Google and typing a carefully-targeted search query along the lines of “why are Sony VAIOs so completely and utterly shit?”. Of the “About 13,800,000,000 results” returned by big G, I found a couple that seemed to describe the symptoms I was seeing. It seemed as if the connectors to the LCD display had worked loose, likely due to warping of the case. This made sense. My laptop had been chucked around with me pretty much wherever I went in the last two years, and finally it had had enough of the rough treatment I had dealt it and it had booked a one-way trip to the Great Horseshoe Magnet in the Sky.

Slowly and inexorably over the course of the day the horrendously joyful dancing rainbow lines crept closer and closer towards the Windows Start button, leaving in their wake an increasingly dead area of black screen. When the size of useable screen space was about the size of a postage stamp, I backed up my crucial files to a USB drive, said the last read/rites, and my VAIO was gone - forever.

Arse.

This was a problem. I could no longer progress work on the website projects that were helping to pay my way around the world. Working on a public internet computer was out of the question as well. Not only was it pricey in Switzerland at a hair-raising £4 an hour, but also none of the tools I needed were available to me and as a mere pleb of a user I wasn’t allowed to install any of them. Nevertheless, I tried to do some work on the hostel computer, but after wrestling with a mouse that would move about a centimetre on-screen for every couple of kilometres of movement over the desk and clicked only when you didn’t want it to, I managed to accidentally delete one of my websites in its entirety, and gave up the idea of work as a lost cause.

To further add to the frustration, it was raining outside, and the TV screen in the common room which broadcast the latest views from the Jungfrauhoch was as featureless as my laptop screen, the mountains being completely caked in cloud. I had to take my chances with the weather tomorrow, although from the look of the forecast it didn’t look promising that it would change soon.

I commiserated that evening in a Korean restaurant with a hearty bowl of udon noodles accompanied by a plate of gyoza dumplings and started to plan how to deal with the laptop situation. I needed a replacement, so the moment I got near a branch of the German Media Markt electronics store I would let my credit card take the hit. But at least I had learned something from the whole sorry affair: it helps to look after things.

That and never buy a Sony VAIO.
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Day 26: Beside the lake, beneath the trees

admin — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 23:00:06 +0000

With my arsebone fully repaired from the day before yesterday’s forty mile cycle ride I set out to get another thirty under my belt, aiming for the backpacker-friendly location of Interlaken, the gateway to the Swiss alps and the apparently jaw-dropping Jungfrau region of craggy, snowy mountains. Once again I left early, passing a delightfully macabre fountain depicting an ogre eating children and out past the far less delightful bear pits, where a couple of lethargic bears were wandering around a rocky prison. Poor buggers.

The road climbed up high over Bern giving a fabulous view of the old town, and I paused for a while to take in the vista whilst churches all over the city were pealing for Sunday with that distinctive deep Germanic sound - a perfect moment. Whilst Bern was not high on the list of the most vibrant of European capitals, it had a compelling timelessness that I had really taken to.

My journey to Interlaken took me out through Swiss countryside, peppered with cuckoo-clock houses. The fields were surprisingly green in Winter, and soon the mountains of the Jungfrau region bore nearer.

The pedalling was going well as I hit the Thunsee, a vast lake lined by mountains which evoked memories of New Zealand, albeit not as beautiful as that little lamb-chopped land on the opposite side of the planet.

After more than two weeks of cycling I really felt I was making some progress. I was growing muscles on my muscles, and as a result the going felt a whole lot easier as I zipped through tunnels hewn through the rock of the surrounding mountains and popped out on the far side of the lake to the outskirts of Interlaken.

The place was well blessed with hostels. Of the three I had earmarked, two of them were apparently popular with US and Australian travellers respectively. Whilst both nationalities are great to meet as individuals, the thought of a whole hostel of them had me hankering for the apparently quieter third option, and so I made a beeline for that.

The German (not Swiss, I noted) lady at reception seemed quite taken aback when I started speaking in English-accented German, and within seconds she was firmly correcting me on my incorrect use of noun genders in the way that only Germans can do. Pfff! But the hostel was great, with lots of free stuff, and it was the first place in a while that had really felt like home.

Whilst cycling around town I’d noticed quite a lot of Korean script - it’s the stuff that looks like Japanese or Chinese characters, but unlike those has circles in it - and so was not surprised to find my room full of Korean chaps; apparently Interlaken is a popular stop on a European tour for Koreans. Like the Japanese guy yesterday, they were a bit reticent about using English, but rather than ignore me, one of them smilingly approached me to offer me a satsuma instead. Bless! A little bit later, an older chap from America ambled in, who was taking a whirlwind Round the World trip through New Zealand, Nepal and Europe - with his son, no less.

So far Switzerland had proven to be pricey when it came to my favourite hobby: eating. Self catering seemed to be the way, but pasta’n’sauce tends to grate, so that evening I did a reccie of the restaurants. There were a few Korean places which looked good, but in the end I plumped for cheap place down a back alley that advertised itself as an Indian restaurant.

Peering through the window, it appeared to be someone’s house, and initially I hesitated and considered relocating for some Korean fare before a violent gurgle in my stomach forced me through the door. The inhabitants, a husband and wife team, sat me down in their living room and handed me a laminated Word Art menu, and once more I considered leaving on principle. But the options looked good, and soon I was sorted out with a fantastic plate of two spicy Tamil-style curries with chappati and daal and a Swiss beer to complement. I ate alongside the owners, who were transfixed to a fabulous low budget Tamil film which had everything: bad acting, bad music and bad mass fight scenes which sadly I only saw in fast motion as the chap seemed intent on fast-forwarding them. I wondered perhaps whether he was somehow related to the girl I had met in the Salisbury hostel who had so enjoyed constantly flicking channels for three hours.

The time I had spent walking through England from my front door to Salisbury seemed so distant now. I felt I had come so far in a month; the biking was working out perfectly, and after many quiet nights the travellers were finally starting to come out of the woodwork. And yet, being only halfway through Switzerland, there was so much more to come.
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Day 25: Bern, baby, Bern

admin — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 23:00:10 +0000

I awoke with more complaints than a British Gas call centre, which immediately decided that my trip to the little German-speaking Swiss capital of Bern would be by train rather than by bike. I bagged an expensive but pretty looking train ticket - a rather fetching blue with white mountain peaks on it - and put my feet up for duration of the journey.

It felt quite alien to go from a French-speaking city with French signs to a German-speaking city with German signs with both locations being in the same country. Such a huge divide throws up questions such as how on earth the Swiss manage to cultivate a national identity. Whilst we have a faintly similar situation with diverse languages in the United Kingdom - perhaps best demonstrated by the prominent numbers of Welsh speakers just over the Severn Bridge - it’s by no means as pronounced as that in Switzerland, where roughly 64% speak German, 20% French and 7% Italian, with the remainder being made up of languages such as Romansch.

It felt comforting to be surrounded by German once more. I had studied German at school and chose it as an option at university, which allowed me to spend a year of my degree course at a German university. In the eight years that had passed since then I had gradually forgotten most of the German I had learned, and so I was eager to get back into using it on this trip.

I ambled into the old part of Bern towards the hostel I had picked and was immediately charmed by its appearance. The pristinely-preserved buildings dated back to the 15th century, their non-bombed completeness clearly a fringe benefit of Switzerland remaining politically neutral ever since its inception. Such a policy, however, doesn’t do much for your international reputation for compassion; it has been recently been revealed that Switzerland turned back tens of thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Nazi Germany for fear of inviting invasion. They seem to be making up for past wrongs, however. Geneva in particular was surprisingly multicultural, demonstrating that the immigration policy has been somewhat relaxed since then.

The hostel was perfectly located slap bang in the centre of the old town, and the owner kindly let me stow Ron in his office rather than leave him sullenly chained to the railings. I was assigned a room occupied by a shy, mute Japanese chap who embarrassedly shrugged off my attempts at polite conversation, and so I immediately chipped out again to explore some more.

The buildings of the old town had been tastefully housed with shops and restaurants, with one of them being the nearest thing to a pilgrimage for me as I could get, as it was the house where Albert Einstein had lived at the turn of the century and where he had written his landmark theory of Special Relativity whilst working at a patent office. Christmas was also getting into gear, with decorations lining the streets and Christmas markets in several of the squares. I fixed myself up with a mulled wine and a fried sausage liberally spread with mustard and took in the festivities.

That evening I did a circuit of the town to pick a drinking spot, and found a fairly quiet bar to prop up and scribble, next to an utterly ratarsed scarf-wearing Swiss football fan who was soon breathing 100% proof Swiss German at me.

“Du bisssssss linkshen”, he slurred.
“Wie bitte?” was all I could manage back. Apparently I was something, but I couldn’t work out what.
“Du bisssssss linkshen”, he repeated, striking the arm my pen was holding. Realisation dawned that he was pointing out I was left-handed - linkshändig in proper German. I explained in German that I was English, and that I spoke some German but that I couldn’t understand Swiss German for the life of me. It’s practically a whole other language, with radically different pronunciation and a pleasant singing style of speaking in stark contrast to the harshness of the German of Berlin. Nevertheless, he continued to speak in Pissed Swiss German at both of me, and so defeated I made my excuses and left him to celebrate his team’s victory into the night.
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Day 24: Lausanne and Chips

admin — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 23:00:57 +0000

Approximately three-quarters of Switzerland is mountainous, so at first it might not seem the most appropriate country in the world to tackle on a pushbike. Mountains do, however, tend to go hand-in-hand with rather more traversable valleys and lakes, and it was the latter that interested me most in terms of cycling, as last time I had checked, water didn’t generally slope upwards.

I set my sights on the next major Swiss city eastwards, the French-speaking Lausanne, which lay further along the shore of Lake Geneva, a hefty forty miles away. I set off nice and early along the road out of Geneva on what was a cold but fresh and sunny day, with a row of waterfront houses separating me from the shore occasionally offering tantalising glimpses of the sparkling blue body of water.

The first fifteen miles of the ride went by effortlessly in my dedicated cycle lane, and I celebrated my progress by turning down a side street towards the shore to rest on a lakeside bench, eat my curry sarnies and rehydrate. The water was incredibly clear as it lapped gently by my feet. I watched a chap wander down to his moored boat and play with it for a bit. He seemed awfully content. I could see why.

Back on the bike, an unexpected and most unwelcome couple of climbs had me labouring, and my stops became increasingly frequent. As a respite from the busy road and its gradients, I peeled off to follow a national cycle route signposted Lausanne. Initially, this hugged the lake, but pretty soon took me literally around the houses, passing through numerous residential districts and then across farmland. Any other time I would have appreciated the little tour of provincial Switzerland, but with my TwatNav telling me there were still ten miles to go to my goal and with me wheezing like an asthmatic Darth Vader I just wanted to get there as quickly as possible, with a view to sleeping for several days.

As I approached Lausanne I hit the metaphorical Wall, a mental and physical boundary which had me leave the saddle to push Ron by the handlebars through the city’s outskirts, through the park with its Roman remains and finally into what I thought was the centre. Alas, no. In a cruel case of city planning which will make me forever hate Lausanne and each and every one of its occupants, the centre was not around by the lake but up a long hill at a ridiculous gradient. I crawled up it at a grandmother’s pace, my leg muscles taking it in turns to seize and complain, and finally reached my chosen hostel not far from the train station.

Since experiencing the international feel of Geneva, my strict policy of only using the local language had relaxed a little. I started to check-in in French, but quickly lapsed into English. The girl on reception was having none of it - though by the friendly grin on her face in a playful rather than offended way - and kept on speaking in French about complicated things such as door codes and lockers. I nodded sagely, headed to my room, and then asked the Parisian chap that had just checked in previously to tell me what the hell she had been on about.

After a few hours of kip I found that my legs thankfully still worked, although sitting on hard chairs was still a definite no-no. I wandered out up past the station and staggered up the shopping district, which was another insane gradient of a street. Must have been great to sledge down when the snow came, I thought.

Lausanne felt like a more genuine city than Geneva, but that was mainly due to its authentically unattractive and haphazard city planning. With neither a great deal going on, nor any decent English language films showing at the pictures, I decided on an early night to repair my broken body ahead of my journey tomorrow into German-speaking territory - for the first time on this trip.
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Day 23: Conventional Geneva

admin — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 23:00:33 +0000

I try my best to extract the good from any unfortunate situations I end up in. In this case, the sole upshot I could think of from sharing a small, unventilated room with a garlic-breathing pensioner with a penchant for sleep-pissing into sinks was that at least no vampires had visited us during the night.

Mario’s presence had helped me come to the decision to move on from Paris. Despite feeling comfortably at home, and having barely scratched the surface of what the city had to offer, I couldn’t stand the thought of sharing a room with him for another night, and so early that morning I quietly packed up my stuff, remembering not to use the sink, and took off.

I biked southwards from the hostel to the Gare du Lyon along the route that had become rather familiar to me and grabbed a ticket out of France, and was soon on a TGV that was shabbier than expected, but which didn’t half shift. Within only a few hours Ron and I were winding through the lovely backdrop of the French Alps and approaching the Swiss border en route to Geneva.

It was fair to say I wasn’t sad to see the back of France. I had spoken only French and still the reception I had received was chillier than a polar bear’s knackers. I might as well have gone around in a pair of Union Jack shorts shouting “DO YOU SPEAKY THE ENGLISH?” slowly and deliberately at people for all the difference my olive branch efforts to improve Anglo-French relations had made. Naturally, a lot of this had to do with the locations I travelled to and the demographic of locals I met, being primarily coffin dodgers running budget hotels in small-town Normandy. Perhaps I was wrong to expect such people working in the hospitality industry to be, er, hospitable.

Thank Zeus for Paris then - what a charming surprise that was, and everything a capital city should be. Despite France not being too high up on my list of countries to revisit (to be specific, it’s second from bottom, just above the United States) I don’t doubt that I will wind up in Paris again some time in the future.

Emerging from Geneva train station, I set out for the hostel I’d earmarked. At first glance Geneva seemed much like France, but without the dogshit. Still, I imagine if you somehow managed to stumble upon a dog turd on the street that a road sweeper had overlooked, it would be as polished, gleaming and cookie-cutter perfect as the rest of the city.

The further I walked, the more differences I noticed: yellow lines on the roads, multi-language signs and snatches of French, German and English conversation amongst others gave the city an international feel, and helped prevent the city from feeling like just another part of France with different money.

The hostel was spotless and clinically efficient. I had a whole dorm to myself again, and so made myself at home before chipping out for a stroll towards Lake Geneva (Lac Leman to those of the French persuasion), and over to the old part of town, which was so quaintly perfect and clean it felt artificial. It was the only place on Earth I had seen half-timbered houses whose leaning angles looked as if they had been pre-calculated for optimum visual impact. The cobbled streets paved with Nazi gold lined with invitingly warm-looking houses made for a lovely wander at dusk, and the shopping street with trams trundling past was enjoyably bustling, but there seemed to be a certain hollowness about the city that I couldn’t quite place my finger on. I hoped this was going to be the exception rather than the norm in Switzerland.

It felt bloody good to be out of France though.
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