Travelling Report I

En route. You know, this whole journey came to be the following way: I got the invitation to the congress in Sanary-sur-mer, looked at the date and decided that I’d take the car and totally exploit the fact it was a cabrio. Make a journey to Southern France in a cabrio in order to work - it sounded like fun. Then my Aged Parent got into the act and declared that as he and I knew only tidbits of Switzerland, he’d come with me and we’d combine this with exploring Switzerland first, leaving a week before the conference in order to have the time. Which is what we’re doing now.

The weather is gorgeous, sun and blue sky, and we’ve already explored the Kantons Graubünden and Wallis. Davos, famous because Thomas Mann made it the place to cough delicately and wax philosphically, was somewhat bland, but St. Moritz was pretty – and eerie. All these places are between seasons now – the Winter season is over, and the Summer season won’t start until the middle or the end of June, so a lot of the shops and hotels are looked. Something of a ghost town. Which was no problem for us, not wanting to shop, just to stroll, and we did, around the lake (which is frozen in winter, so frozen that there are horse races on it) and in the city centre. We stayed at a hotel which supposedly has the largest collection of whiskeys ever (wasted on yours truly who doesn’t drink the stuff), right on the shores of the lake.

The journey there, and the one next day (i.e. yesterday) was an opportunity for wanting to pinch oneself all the time, because the landscape was so ridiculously beautiful and picturesque. As we took quite a lot of passes - Fluela, Albula, Guilia, Furka and Oberalp so far – we were surrounded by snow, genuine snow, on the top and all the intense technicolor green grass below. Lots of little houses made of wooden planks, standing on stones, which reminded me a bit of Louisiana – not the stones, but the fact they didn’t directly connect to the ground but rather had these small columns, only in the Swiss variation these were made of stone. The Furka pass was high enough to let us pass a glacier, not just any ole’ glacier but the one the river Rhone springs from. And we saw some of the earliest stages of the Rhine as well, when we were driving up the Viamala.

Made famous not by Thomas Mann but by John Knittel who wrote, if I may express the heretical opinion, a more trashy and more fun bestseller, Via Mala, about a family who murders their dastardly head – a son-abusing, daughter molesting and drinking villain – deals with it over two volumes and in the end gets away with it. The landscape there is suitably dark and dramatic, all cliffs and the Rhine a small, small thing which managed to cut its way through. It looks fantastic, and the AP took lots of pictures.

We also visited the Matterhorn, or rather, the village next to it, Zermatt, where you have to abandon your car and take the train because no one save some very licenced locals is allowed to use a motor vehicle there. The Matterhorn is of course the mountain Switzerland is most famous for – look at any Toblerone, and you see it – but Zermatt, the village where in the 19th century lots of excentric Brits came to climb it, is somewhat too touristy for my taste (says she who is a tourist). We had originally planned to stay there, but didn’t and moved on to Saas Fee instead, and a lucky decision it was. The panorama here is incredible – Saas Fee is surrounded by thirteen mountains over 4000 meter high, and the view from everywhere in the village really takes your breath away. (Oh, and cars aren’t allowed here, either, but there are parking garages outside the town.) Again, much snow and the intense green, all mixed up.

Carl Zuckmayer, who was one of the most successful German playwrights of his time (his time being the 20s-60s of the 20th century) is buried here in the village cemetary, and as I happen to be fond of several of his plays, Der Hauptmann von Köpenick in particular, I paid my respects. (Non-Germans might know two of the films he wrote the scripts for - Blue Angel by Josef von Sternberg, aka the one that made Marlene Dietrich famous, and Rembrandt with Charles Laughton.) The other thing about Zuckmayer: he was such a Karl May fan he named his daughter Winnetou. (Which is like naming your daughter Cochise, for non-Germans.) I don’t know whether she’s still alive, but the grave was full of flowers and well cared for.

On to the Tessin today!

More Switzerland, or is it Italy?

Today: We drove from snowy mountains to the Lago Maggiore where palm trees stand, oranges bloom (had to get a Goethe quote in there somehow) and it's Italy in all but in name. You even cross a bit of Italy to get here. But it's Switzerland - the Centovalli, dramatic rivers with incredible sone formations and old bridges, with twofold arches - the Valle Verzasca - and Ascona, where we spend the right, has a promenade and yellow and red houses to compete with any Italian city. Our hotel is made to look a bit like an old castle.

Now we had planned to cross another pass to get here, but no, it was blocked, so what you do instead is take the train - the Simplon tunnel, to be precise. Endless (only 20 minutes in fact, but it's a really dark tunnel straight through a mountain on a fast train when you can't get out of your car and you think if that train ever crashes, you'll never see daylight again - so imagine: leaving the snowy mountains with their firtrees and grass, and the wood houses with stone columns and stone roofs (really, many roofs are made of granite stones from the mountains) behind, and arrive in Italian mountains, with leafy treas, and the clear air exchanged for some mist rising from the river below. Later from the lake itself. So it's really like crossng worlds.

The island on the lake we visited today via boat had a lot of rare plants on it, some rich woman's whim who then abandoned the island because her husband for whom she had created it died - among other things, an American agave which supposedly blooms only once in 15 years, and is blooming now. It looks like a gigantic candelier crossed with a lantern pole. Something very elegant and artificial. But it's real.

And again, I have to rave about the river. With its very clear, very cold blueish water - people were warned via signs not to bathe there, because of the dangerous undercurrents, but they did so nonetheless. Lots of people draped on dangerous rocks and dipping into that very cool water. The Aged Parent and self were seriously tempted, I have to admit. But we went for the hotel swimming pool instead.

Due to the wireless here, I could check some stuff. karabair, why doesn't Todd talk to Kara? penknife and artaxastra, congrats! Rob, ditto!

And: a decent Vader and Palpatine ficlet.

Now back to being offline, and admiring nature.