I never wrote an official synopsis chronicling my time abroad, but did send a thank you letter to Roger for the invitation which sufficiently sums up my tours after leaving slopes. And it follows:
Hey Roger, thank you for the fun time in Switzerland. It was terrific to see you and Ed and Jamie and great fun to meet the rest of the crew. I just went snowboarding in Colorado yesterday and realized how spoiled I have become. Crowds? Trees? Only one Valley to ski in? What’s this about? Yes, I’ll have to make it back to the Alps. What a good time it was this year. Everyone had a great sense of humor and I don’t think I have laughed so much in a while. I was glad that we were able to stick together during the ski day (aside from my occasional foray into the woods where I’d feast on powerbars and locate hidden escalators that would quickly send me to the bottom ahead of the group), some good conversations were had on the lifts and in the lodges. I was glad that Simon, Ed, and Jamie decided to venture into a bit of ‘off piste’ after the third day and experience the glory of fresh powder. I know you and Charles watched wistfully as the four of us headed off into the snowy depths knowing that if only the both of you didn’t have to carry the backpacks you would have been leaping off cornices and dropping cliffs all week. Next year, I’ll carry one of the packs.
It sounded like the second week was fun, I received the text message that you had gone cross country skiing on one day and enjoyed it. I hope Charles continued to have a great time, I was impressed by the fact that he was the only person not to return from the slopes after 2 hours skiing the night after we went out to the clubs. Well, great, I hope to make it up next year. Hopefully, I’ll already be in Europe. My plan now is to quit my current job in May or June or July depending on how much money I can save and fly to Spain and study the language and then head East from there and will definitely make a stop in the UK. This was largely inspired by how much I enjoyed traveling around Switzerland my second week. Below is a summary of my trip.
My whirlwind tour of the EU’s insurrectional nation was a success. Among the many things I learned in my travels the two most important were that the abbreviation ‘CH’ for the country and its currency comes from “Convencion Helvetica;” the Helvetians having occupied the lands before being conquered by the Romans; the other fact, and only slightly less important, is that Haagan Daaz is not even a word in German; sadly this bit of information reduced my German vocabulary to “Guttentag” and “Volkswagen.”
Well, I suppose I should give some organization to this recount of my sojourn so I’ll begin with where I left you, at the train station in Lausanne. From there I headed down to the lake to admire the stunning view of the Alps across the water. Soon the sun began its descent and the frigid winds nipped at the tips of my fingers so I decided to try and find a place to stay the night. I proceeded confidently in the direction of a hostel mentioned in my guide and found myself lost in a matter of minutes. I eventually found a payphone and called the hostel’s front desk and spoke with a guy who knew just enough English to inform me that “Yes, I can give reservation for tonight.” and not enough English to understand me saying “Yeah, hey great, but I have no idea where you are; what’s the address!?” After another hour of wandering I stumbled upon the building, paid the bill, went to bed, woke up, and took the train to Basel. The train arrived in Basel right on time at 2:53 and I was greeted at 2:53 and 30 seconds by our family friend’s cousin, Regula, who apologized profusely for being late and explained how the traffic was much worse than she had expected…unfortunately some stereotypes were not dispelled during my trip. Regula took me back to her family’s place where I met their son and her husband Robert. They were all extremely nice and we had good conversation. As it turned out, Regula is fluent in English, Spanish, German, Italian, French, Norwegian, and Japanese; good lord I felt like an idiot.
Due to the language barrier I wasn’t able to do a great deal of interacting with the locals rather I spent much of my time observing and thus most of my time in Basel was spent at various art galleries and museums. While Switzerland had a seemingly limitless quantity of Picasso’s, Giacometti’s, Chagall’s, and of course their local patron Klee, the most impressive was a collection of work by an artist named Jean Tingueley who seems to have made it his hobby to bring as many of Doctor Seuss’s inventions to life as possible. His “machine art?” was truly incredible; an amalgam of electrically powered, brilliantly colored cogs and belts and fans and garden gnomes and ladders and power drills that spun, undulated, swooped, bent, and sprang all while making a tremendous racket to no functional purpose; I thought that I had stumbled onto the set of a Tim Burton film. See image below for an example of his work:
After my stop at the museums, I went for a walk along the Rhine and eventually back to my host family’s. That night I was treated to a delicious meal of raqulette (I’m trying to spell this like a piece of sports equipment and I don’t think that’s right) which involved each individual melting cheese with onions, curry, paprika, and/or olives over potatoes. The next day I headed off to Zurich. The motivation for this travel decision was partially in hopes that I might catch a bit of the renown Fasnacht festival that was supposed to begin some time that week, but largely because I associate the city with James Bond. So in hopes of confounding some nefarious mastermind or perhaps of reaping some of the more libidinous benefits of being an international man of mystery I headed East. Zurich is joked about being derived from two German words “Zu” and “Reich” meaning “Too Rich”, which makes more sense than its actual derivation which has something to with a nearby Roman ruin. This was the most expensive place I had been in Switzerland; so much for the vodka martinis, I was barely able to afford the local lager. I spent most of the first evening out at the bars with some people I met at the hostel and turned in at a relatively sane hour. The next morning I woke up and rented a bike and rode along Lake Zurich for a while. I then decided to catch the bus up to the zoo. One thing that was col was the electric eel exhibit. They had some eels in a tank and above it an digital screen displaying their present voltage. Generally they fluctuated at around 80-100 volts but after pounding on the glass I was able to rev them up to like 150. No, I wouldn't harm animals, not even eels, however I will have electric eels power my pirate ship on lake titicaca when the winds are bad; they'll also power my house and I'll have an eel powered car. Pretty much, I guess I just see the world headed in the general direction of eel power. Another interesting spectacle was the baby duck exhibit (or that's what I thought it was). Just a lone lost duckling behind a glass wall wandering aimlessly around in this constructed desert landscape. Then suddenly out of nowhere, BAM, this brown flash from the top corner swoops down and slaughters his little ball of fuzz and proceeds to eat it while clutching it in its razor talons. The 6 year old kid next to me previously enamored by the cute little animal had a stricken look of horror on his face. I hope he turned out alright.
Following the zoo I headed into, what I thought were, some botanical gardens nearby; as it turned out I was in a graveyard. In the hope that I might find a back entrance to this place so I could go to the actual botanical gardens, I continued on through and so happened on James Joyce’s grave?! If it weren’t for the several strategically located signs leading me toward his final resting place I probably would have walked right on by, which is probably what he would have wanted. But as it was, with all the commercial buildup, I felt the need to commemorate the moment and so I told him that his books were hard and took a photo. I found my way out and had a nice walk in the woods and eventually headed back to the hostel and then out to the bars again with some people from the hostel. While out, I tried Absinthe for the first and last time. There probably would never have been a first time if somebody had told me that to make Absinthe all you need is ethanol and anise, but as it was I had to suffer through the breathtaking conflagration of my mouth, throat, and stomach, and had the taste of licorice taint every drink for the rest of the evening. We stayed out late and eventually headed back to the hostel for more drinking. At some point I went to bed and woke up with a horrendous hangover. I then headed off to the train station and in my stupor came literally two inches from being run over by a local tram. I don’t know if it was the blast of air to my face or the realization that an object was entering my peripheral vision at a phenomenal speed that made me jerk my head back and sent adrenaline coursing through my body, but either way, that instinctual reaction is the sole reason my head is still securely fastened to my torso. Suddenly sober, I quickly made my way to the station and headed back to Lausanne where I wanted to see a museum that was closed during my earlier stay: Le Musee de l’Art Brut. I have been told that the translation is ‘Museum of Ugly Art.’ And I suppose that would make sense. At the entrance, a sign explained that the work herein was selected because it exhibited a total lack of any artistic training or concordance with trends of any time. It was interesting because each exhibit had a bio of the artist. Mostly the work was done by schizophrenics or other crazy people, but occasionally there were totally normal people included. This struck me as pretty funny because I was trying to figure out how they gathered the art for this museum and whether it was a complement to you and your work if it was in there. Maybe they have scouts that go and say to the artist "hey we’ve been looking at your work and we’d really like to put it on show in our museum" I suppose this would be a real ego booster until you showed up at the museum with your family to brag about your artwork and realize that your display is right between the pedophile’s work and the guy who earned a living scavenging bones from the abattoirs and carving them into combs and needles before he eventually went crazy and started scribbling doodles on toilet paper. Or maybe some of these artists volunteer their work, which is just as weird because then you’d have to say to yourself, "you know, even though I devote almost all my day to this artwork I really have no idea what I’m doing and think my work would fit in perfectly here."
From Lausanne I caught my final train back to Geneva, spent the night in a hostel and headed back to The States the following day. The only thing worth noting on the flight back was an amusing interaction I had with some Brits on the ride back who were headed out to Vail for the week with their wives and kids who were sitting a few rows ahead. They were concerned about the drive to Vail they would have to make that evening because they were so jet lagged, so I thought I’d offer them the Ambien (a prescription sleeping pill) that worked well for me when I flew in to Switzerland. As I was saying this to them I realized I sounded like some kind of weirdo drug dealer and so I told them this and they laughed and then I informed them that this was simply what Bush had meant by privatizing health care. Then we all laughed again; unfortunately this time my laughter was entirely sardonic as I thought, what is my country doing and what the hell am I doing back here. Thus, the seed was planted to return to Europe when I had enough money.
Great, well good to see you on the trip I hope to see you all again sooner than next year.
Cheers, Will
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