A ride with cheese and cows with my thinking cap on

Achtung! We have reached Switzerland, the country that we are familiar with sadly because of chiffon saree-clad women dancing around on the Alps as the actor sings to her, snug and warm in a couple of woollens. A couple of Swiss cities were all it took me to know that the cow and cheese country definitely goes beyond all the build-up.

                       

It all started in Zurich with a platter of Mexican and Moroccan salad with beans, potato and cous cous. Yes! the name itself makes you feel full and not fat as it is a salad. Well salad can never be a thing for one who lusts for chocolates and desserts. New country! New food! You got to do it so I told the chef to bring it on. He was apparently an Indian and was from South India so I stuffed and stuffed myself with the over generous portion of salad, which we had for dinner by the way. My taste buds were shocked but in a good way. Under the pouring sky and amidst streets brimming with graffiti, we meandered here and there, without a handful of people in sight.

With a travel pass in hand, we traveled across the financial capital of Europe in trams and buses. The old town with beautiful architecture, the Linderhof church, National and Art museums, University, the Swiss Flower Clock was a lot to take in so it followed an easy to digest McDonalds meal, the one that could be counted as three McDonald meals from here.


Mount Titlis was an adventure on its own as we travelled by road and two cable cars, out of which one is the first revolving cable car in the world. With an illuminated glacier cave within the cable-car station, which also includes shops and restaurants, Titlis, stands high and cold at 10,623 Feet. As soon as we stepped out and into the snow, it started to snow again. The day remains memorable because of my first ever snowfall, a childhood dream literally being showered upon my already enchanted self. The cows grazing in the fields below, as we happily hung and swung in the cable car, were no less of a sight than the snow itself. The valley chimed with happy clangs from cowbell around every cow's neck. The farmers ensure that there is a cowbell around every cow's neck so that they do not need to look out for their darling (it is an understatement) pets in the fields. Every autumn, the cows are left on the mountain tops to graze, only to be brought down during Spring season, decorated with flowers, in a parade where a Spring Queen happily moos its way down the hill. Swiss are obsessed with cows and are amazed by them in the same way as we would be if we accidently spot dinosaurs in our land. I wonder if any cow-obsessed citizen would give a thought to import the garbage-munching, confused and ill-treated cows from India.


An overwhelming sight from a wondrous height was waiting to be checked off on our list. Seventy-five feet high and 450 feet wide, Rhine falls, straight out of Ice Age, formed 14,000 to 17,000 years back, boast of the highest volume of water amongst all waterfalls of Europe. After a short boat ride, we climbed up to a point from where the falls were right beside us. Drenched in water and adrenaline, we climbed down, but not before we spotted a rainbow. Nothing could have been better than those colours that seemed painted across the water. If not for God's sake, then at least for cow's sake!

I had once taken a childish Facebook quiz that predicted my death by falling in a cauldron of hot, melting chocolate. I had secretly rejoiced at the thought! I thought about it years later, when we got a chance to browse through every possible chocolate that Lindt has ever come up with, in a huge factory outlet.


After the blissful and delicious tryst with chocolate, we made it a point to stop for a while at Lucerne for its souvenir shops, the Chapel Bridge and the loved Dying Lion statue. The statue commemorates the Swiss Guards who were massacred in 1792 during the French Revolution, when revolutionaries stormed the Tuileries Palace in Paris, France. Mark Twain had once praised the sculpture as "the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world." It is indeed a thought-provoking piece of stone.

Lucerne is divided by the river Reuss into an Old Town and a New Town, with the two districts being connected by the world's oldest covered wooden bridge, the Chapel Bridge, which dates back to the year 1332. The bridge was rebuilt and the paintings on the ceiling were brushed up again after the fire of 1993 and leads to the actual landmark of Lucerne, the octagonal Water Tower. The simple and yet charming wooden bridge was surrounded by small boulangeries and restaurants. What could have been tastier than a meal in an Italian restaurant overlooking the bridge? After licking the plate of Risotto and Panna Cotta clean, we went back much more than a full stomach and a smile.

Zermatt was a municipality in the district of Visp; a car-free area and nature at its best. It is a mountaineering and ski resort of Swiss Alps, with countless cottages made into homes and resorts. The Matterhorn mountain peak, the one that has found its place on the cover of much loved Toblerone Swiss chocolates, is on the border between Switzerland and Italy, overlooking the town of Zermatt.

                                 

Geneva was our next destination and by this time it felt that we belong to Europe-a place where we could grow old in but not find a speck of dust, where the world seems friendly and cheerful, where rules are not a burden but a habit, where teenagers and grown up residents hold their head high and earn their pocket money by playing music on the streets, where employees of companies skate around in formals, where elders take time out to dress up gracefully and immaculately but are geared up and stay active enough to trek and hike, anytime. Spirit and contentment-our country could do better with these. We got an opportunity to visit UN and a few other places during our one day stay at Geneva.

Interlaken was one laid back town where we could stroll around carefree and find gardens, churches, souvenir shops, small restaurants and of course, tourists, tonnes of them. Wherever we had gone up till now, our life revolved around cheese, cheese and even more cheese. In all these towns and cities we have walked beyond count and ate without giving it a thought. When we thought that the food could not get better, we had a rendevous with Cheese fondue and chocolates at Schuh Restaurant that boasts of offering unparalleled chocolates in Switzerland. This was after a chocolate making show where Schuh chocolatiers created truffles, pralines and other delicious chocolates before a free tasting spree.

The Trummelbach Falls drain glacier defiles of Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau are a series of ten glacier-waterfalls inside the mountain made accessible by tunnel-lift and illuminated. There is quite a bit of a climb but we had seen throughout our trip that to walk here means to reach a mind-boggling destination. So, we loved every bit of it and peeped from every nook and corner to catch a glance of the falls, which twisted and turned along with the rocks with a thundering sound. Ben Hohfen caves was another long stretch with a climb that was worth the view; thousands of stalactites and stalagmites counting back to olden times when a saint named Ben apparently drove away a monstrous dragon.

I just hope that once I get back to India I do not have a strong urge to drink tap water! Glacier water, I would miss you and miss drinking straight out of the tap. Walking fearlessly on my side of the road would not happen as the honks and curses would bring me back to reality. So, well I shall be afraid yet again. Stepping on cow dung in the middle of the road would take a little time to get used to though. I am tempted to know what a Swiss citizen might say about it.

No matter what, India is where we live and yes it has its own set of flaws, well a lot of them but it has me and you! So, friends we shall stay on track, not on the railway tracks which are used in place of overbridges, but on the right path, regardless of how many cows attack us with their tails and how many honkers order us to take the left path instead of the right one. But, trust me on this, only a few might take the right one, so we can stroll happily.

With fingers crossed I hope for only one thing for India-acceptance. Acceptance of people irrespective of caste and creed, acceptance of varied ways of life and a better standard that an individual sets for himself to raise the bar every time.

Cheers to the spirit of the Swiss. I guess that my destination was not a place but a new way of seeing things or rather a way of seeing new things.