Travelogue - Switzerland

March 27, 2006

Now, onto our latest sally into the land of the chocolates, watches and cuckoo clocks! JJ. Since we were flying easyjet, and had to leave from Luton, the plan was to spend the night at Sonia’s place at St. John’s wood coz the bus stop is at Lord’s – just 5 minutes away. So, Velu and I eventually rock up to her place close to 10 pm (by the time I got back from work – had the corporate learning program that evening and then had to pack). Dinner was pizza, and somehow we managed to keep chatting and laughing (in between periodic suggestion about calling Bideesha at 1 am to check if she’d finished packing J) and before we realised, it was already 4 am – time to get ready to make the bus. Well, as our luck would have it, it was pouring, but we made it to the bus stop in good time, or so we thought, only to have 5 National Express’ whizz past us, and not a Greenline in sight! (well, unless you counted the one going in the opposite direction back to Victoria!). We just couldn’t figure out how we could have possibly missed a bus…..and then just before 5 am we called the minicab guys to check how long before they could send us a cab, how much, etc…. at 5 past 5, panic was slowly seeping in coz our flight left at 7. 05 am and it takes an hour to get to Luton! Of course, as luck would have it, none of the minicab companies had cabs fee, and then we decided to just hail the next black cab we saw and hope for the best, but as Sod’s law dictates, right after we took that monumental decision, the black cabs just vanished! (and having reviewed my past performance with flights in and out of Geneva airport, sole fault was attributed to my presence!). We called Y&B to let them know and Bideesha was already ‘you guys won’t make it…’, and just as were were about to give up, in the distance what looked like a Greenline – and yes, there it was, only at 5.20 am (and we’d been waiting since 4.40am!!).

On the bus, we were hoping the driver would step on it and we’d make it by the skin of our teeth….but of course, he thought he was on a nature ramble!! When we called Y&B to let them know we were finally on the bus and en route, they were approaching the airport!! (please note this bit coz it has a deeper, underlying meaning which will become apparent by the time we get to the airport). Anyway, having resigned ourselves to our fate, we just trundled on and as soon as we reached Luton, everyone just emptied out and started running pell mell towards the check-in counters…. Where we were greeted by these huge lines for the Geneva flight which I found comforting. Then, we discovered, that Y&B still hadn’t checked in and were in one of these lines up ahead for the past 50 minutes!!! Talk about total bhasad!! It was complete chaos, with ski equipment, noisy babies, irriated adults and harried staff – the stuff of nightmare holidays and it really looked like we’d never make it off Luton coz the lines just weren’t moving! Anyway, we managed to rush across to one of the new last minute counters that started taking the Geneva flight, and as you would have it, we actually check in before Y&B much to Y’s compelte and utter disgust. After that there was drama with the car seat that took time, and we barely made it to the aircraft!! Phew! Talk about dramatic starts to a holiday, and all this before 7 in the morning!

But it seems my destiny is closely entwined with Geneva airport one way or another. We finally arrive, and the weather looks very iffy (forecast was rain for all of Friday and Saturday with some improvement on Sunday!!) but hey, we’re actually in Swtizerland and I’m happy J. We coasted thorugh immigration (you gotta love the Swiss) and then…the drama began! Our luggage as in Velu’s/mine and Sonia’s arrived immediately (ours was actually the first bag on the belt!!) and of course, there was no sign of Y&B’s stuff! Well, that showed up soon enough, but the car seat was the clincher – it was supposed to come as special baggage (along with ski equipment and suchlike) for which there was a separate counter and we waited and watched masses of foks collect their stuff and head out, while I was building upon my dubious claim of having an insiders knowledge of Geneve Aeroport by night, but adding another dimension of Geneve Aeroport by day!! After a frustrating few hours, it was clear that the car seat was not in the country, and so we had to make alternate arrangements, and it was past one when we were finally able to leave the airport – Aashish was already cranky and just wanted to get out of the building J. Anyway, we eventually did, and the ride was easy – an hour to Montreux, but unfortunately,the view was marred with rain and fog – most depressing. Still, at least we were in Switzerland.

After a couple of false starts, we found the hotel, checked in – they are literally on the lake front and had a terrace with a magnificent view of the lake and the mountains across. Of course, since we were paying such low rates, we didn’t get the lake facing rooms, but the rooms were pretty good and the bathroom spectacular! By this time, Aashish and I had already made up our minds never to travel with kids ever again (of course, we will have to grin and bear Vienna…. But that is absolutely it!!). by the time we headed out to scrounge for lunch, that is exactly what we were doing as most places has stopped serving lunch. Eventually we found a café and managed to restore some equilibirum. We even made it to the Chateau de Chillon with enough time to spare (although for a while it looked like touch and go!) and as a bonus, the sun made a valliant effort to break through the clouds and before long, there was brilliant sunshine (although the top of the mountains stayed obscured). The chateau was a revealation – I’ve been wanting to visit ever since Leysin, but somehow it never happenned – the interiors were far larger and filled with much more stuff than I’d imagined, and we spent a very happy few hours meandering about the place and taking all sorts of filmi shots (everything in Swtizerland makes a good filmi shot!). Yagya wasn’t too keen on the chateau, so he stayed outside with the brat, and towards the end of our meanderings Bideesha got a call – they shut the gates at 5 pm and the boy was worried that mama was shut inside and getting all waily!! The 3 of us however, huffed and puffed our way up to the keep and had the most wonderful view J and I even bought myself a souvenir ‘Dastardly Deeds at Chillon Castle’ childrens’ book J.

Later that evening, we went down to the promenade and checked out Freddie Mercury’s statue and the little jetty seat – unfortunately, the market ran only Wednesday’s and of course we’d missed it. We strolled on the promenade before settling at a restaurant for dinner – and our first proper meal of the day, which turned out to be like all the other meals I’ve ever enjoyed in Switzerland, truly excellent. I had the rack of lamb, and they brought me two little clothes clips before the meal… was wondering why I’d actually need them to hold up my napkin – speculation was rife coz maybe they knew I’d be using my fingers to gnaw the meat of the bone…blah, blah… turned out, the rack of lamb comes on a little sizzler JJ and the clips were just the thing to prevent the sizzle ruining my clothes JJ. Aashish had an excellent steak, while Sonia had the fish and Bideesha the veal, all washed down with some local wine (in case you’re wondering, Yagya & son are true phillistines and eat only pasta with tomato sauce, so have been duly excluded from all descriptive imagery surrounding the food). We managed to sqeeze in dessert – a lime sorbet which was really excellent as well before heading back for a night of the dead sleep.

Now where was I? Dead sleep. Except of course, since everyone was in such a good mood, we all gathered in Y&B’s room and spent the next few hours talking absolute rubbish, chock full of innuendo and cackling at our own jokes – it’s amazing that we didn’t wake the kid up! We even managed to procure room service after a fashion (and believe me in Europe, room service is absolutely exotic and only the extremely high end hotels would even make a pretence at offering it!) – miraculously, the room phone even had a button for room service. Anyway to cut a long story short, we wanted tea, and they were happy to provide it to us, except we had to come down to the bar to fetch it J. We did think of sending Yagya in his Raamu avataar complete with bright turquoise chaddi’s but then decided to not to drive any other unsuspecting hotel guests to the brink of madness and sent Velu & Sonia instead. My suggestion of trying to see if our reservation for posh nosh could be changed from lunch to dinner allowing us to visit Interlaken (otherwise known as the home of Bollywood, Yash & Sharukh) met with great enthusiasm, and success at Le Mirador when I called to change our reservation, and we were all set. Eventually after much jocularity (no pun intended), we rolled off to our respective rooms at some unearthly hour (believe Yagya was in bed and snoring in less than 2 minutes flat after our departure J)

Our deal with the hotel was inclusive of breakfast so Velu very diligently set the alarm for 8.30 am to give us more than enough time to make it for b’fast before it closed at 10 am, except he forgot to change the time on his mobile (i.e. set it forward by an hour), so there we were very blissfully showering and getting dressed when I chanced to glance upon my watch to see it was already 10 past 10! So much for breakfast! Anyway, we did stop at the supermarket to pick up fruit (room service was only able to provide tea, so we had resolved to stock up on nourishment) and also managed to lay our hands on pain au chocolat, so it was indeed a most successful breakfast (we’d already managed to wrangle tea, juice, cheese, bread and butter for only room service charge that morning). Of course, travelling with a child made us realise that we weren’t getting anywhere away from the hotel before noon…. But eventually, we did leave and even made it to Interlaken (driving through Bern – well skirting it really) in time for lunch. To be honest, we wouldn’t have done Interlaken if Bideesha wasn’t so keen to see where Sharukh danced, but I have to admit I’m glad we included it. It’s really pristinely beautiful and you get a direct view of the Jungfrau which was really cool. We stopped at Interlaken East and spent the afternoon there – the sun was out and we relaxed and had a wonderful lunch at a café basking in the warmth. Then we split up (thankfully, coz the brat was getting really annoying!!) and Aashish and I investigated the old Chateau and the 2 churches next door, which was really cool, coz one of the churches was made of stone and looked really old, while the other looked newer, but the interiors were just the opposite! The newer looking exterior housed a relatively conservative church with the usual stained glass, wooden pews with ornate carvings and carvings against the woodwork all-around, while the older one had one of the most modern and minimalist interiors I’ve ever seen in a house of worship! Really funky, with cool stained glass – abstract in design with animal motifs, a vaulted pentagonal arch ceiling and plain pews with funky light fixtures handing down – just gorgeous!

After that we walked to the other side of the main promenade, and of course, there was a chocolaterie that did live demonstrations all day, but only during the week and naturally that had to be a Saturday!! Watapity watapity! Still, it was a wonderful afternoon. We started heading back around 5ish, and this time took the scenic route (on the map it looks much shorter, but I is as mountain route with narrow roads so effectively the time is the same) and happily after several rather loud discussions and flinging around of maps and abrupt silences, we were finally on the right road (of course, in my opinion we were on the right road, before Mr. Velkar went off on his high horse). It was a lovely drive, and we went through the alps, up some really steep slopes and past loads of snow covered bits. But of course, it took us that much longer, and we had to make a pit stop for the kid coz he seemed to be getting feverish. Anyway, made it to Vevey without incident and spent some time hunting for a pharmacy that would still be open and checking directions to Mt. Pellerin (which is where the Mirador and our gourmet dinner was waiting). We succeed on both counts, and started up the mountain in a happy frame of mind.

At Le Trianon (that’s the gourmet restaurant) we had a corner table overlooking the terrace and well, even with the rain, it was a pretty sight with all the lights up the mountain side and across the lake. The meal of course was superb and I had the double satisfaction of eating a pigeon thereby not only enjoying a lovely meal but also doing by good deed for the day by eradicating yet another pigeon off the face of this planet, and I’m happy to report I was ably supported by Bebou Velkar who did his bit for mankind by ordering a pigeon salad J. So let’s see, we decided to give the 5 course a skip coz invariably there was something or the other there which someone didn’t want (I wound up with 4 courses anyway, 2 starters, main and dessert J). I chose a warm lobster starter followed by pan fried duck liver, then the pigeon and finally, now don’t laugh – a half baked chocolate cookie with sesame ice cream J. Aashish went for the warm duck salad, followed by the angler fish and finished off with a myriad of cheeses. Bideesha went the route of the pan fried liver followed by the John Dory (except they all kept calling it John Smith!) and then the half baked cookie while Sonia did the scallop ravioli, the John Dory and a champagne sorbet J. The funniest bit of the evening though was when Rohan wanted vanilla icre cream, and when it came he just took one look at it and loudly declared that it wasn’t vanilla ice cream and refused to touch it JJ. Not that I blame the child – it really didn’t look like any vanilla ice cream that I’ve seen – squished inside two little tapered oblong bowlettes and sprinkled over with ground pistachio – looked more like rasmalai J. Poor kid was devastated. Still, despite everything, it was a spectacular meal and everyone enjoyed it thoroughly although I would have definitely preferred to have gone alone with Aashish. Next time…..

That night we were back in Y&B’s room but a little more subdued as our stomach’s were just too full for excessive frivolity and Sonia madame had fallen asleep under the guise of getting changed. Still, we did manage our regular tea and this time, we even had someone bringing it up! Sadly neither Aashish nor I got any sleep – think the 2 bottles of local wine laid us low… but we did make breakfast the next morning and funnily enough I was feeling quite chipper to boot (rather shocked Aashish actually, right from day 1 that I wasn’t up scowling as usual). Like the other days, Velu and I spent the mornign on the terrace enjoying the sun and the spectacular view and we even managed a stroll on the promenade all the way upto the casino and back before the troops had gathered and were ready for another day of adventure. Today was back to the roots day – a trip to Leysin and hopefully paragliding.

Well, Leysin still looks the same J only I couldn’t find the fromagerie and there’s a new chinese restaurant. I also had trouble identifying the school building from the Croissanterie, but I’m deliriously happy to report that the Crossanterie still has the best pain au chocolat anywhere and their sanwiches looks as orgasmic as ever! We drove around a bit (not that it takes long to get around Leysin anyway) and headed for the Telecabin to take the cable car upto Berneuse – Erics (the paragliding instructor had called saying the winds had eased up and we could go ahead). We got there around 1ish and pfaffed around a bit, alternating between being totally awed by the snowy splendour all around us and beign silly and tossing snowballs at each other. Had lunch at the Kuklos cafeteria before setting off for the paragliding. Yagya was the first to go, coz Eric said he’d do a single first and then 45 min. later 2 with his partner Thierry and since the rest of us had just started lunch, Yagya was the obvious choice. We were too busy feeding our faces to see him lift off, but suddenly there he was swinging around just outside our window and coming precariously close to the open terrace causing several people to shriek J in alarm. Sonia got a little worried then and I have to admit, I didn’t like the pendulum swings that Yagya was doing…

Still, there we were when it came our turn after Yagya was back, and suddenly the wind picked up!! I would have been most pissed if they’d had to cancel our flights coz of wind after Yagya had been considering it was soemthing I’d wanted to do ever since I was in Leysin and finally there we were… anyway, the wind did ease up a bit and we got sorted out. Sonia went with Thierry while I went with Eric – they told us to go down the face of the mountain a bit and that’s bloody easier said than done – Sonia went first, and was almost waist deep in snow. I tried helping her but was giggling too much and then next thing I know I’m thigh deep in snow myself J. After several false starts we both managed to get down, and strapped in and then voila…. The wind took charge and literally hauled us up into the air. Amazing! The feeling is most incredible- a little scary when you look down and see how far away everything is and of course the inevitable thought – if the cord snaps, that’s a jolly long way down J, but then the sensation is indescribable – finally you know what it’s like to be a bird or as close as you’ll ever get – just soaring on the thermals, rising higher and gliding along – it’s totally quiet up there and the view… well, it’s beyond magnificent. The feeling is totally unreal and these guys have such amazing control, that they can just hover in one spot for ages and that’s the best part I think. We went to the other side of the mountain, an all the peak from there were pristine white – untouched by skis and just blanketed in blinding white. Had a moment of queasiness but thankfully that passed. I’m actually glad we came towards the end of winter coz the snow capped peaks are really an unique experience. Don’t know how long we stayed up there, but we were chatting and there was this other peak across Kuklos which had a sheer rock face and Eric had actually landed and taken off from there as well, which really intrigued me, so we soared higher coz you needed to get higher than the peak to get close to it (of course this was after he did a couple of the cheap thrill dips and swings which I assured him were not going to get him paid J) but when we got to the other side and much higher than Kuklos which became a tiny slur on the white top at Burneuse it was just magic. Of course, while you felt like you could have stayed there indefinitely, there was the realisation that you couldn’t feel your hands anymore (and this is through the gloves) or your face or your legs J! Eventually, we moved lower down, and then gradually drifted towards Leysin and the landing site which was just a few meters away from the telecabin. Naturally, it was a perfect landing and these guys were so efficient – the minute we land and disengage the gear, the start wrapping up the chute and harness and stuff and before you know it, it’s all in this neat little (well not so little) rucksack that they’re lugging on their backs.

After our great adventure the 3 of us were feeling a bit shaky, so we repaired to the Croissanterie for a fortifying cup of tea and a little snack J. Given my weakened state ;-o I let Aashish persuade me to try the Orange & Citron tea and we were lucky enough to get the last two pain au chocolats on offer J yay J. The tea despite being pinkish in colour wasn’t half bad and came with a slide of orange and lemon which were duly dunked in under instruction. Sonia and I did debate about using the funicular to get down rather than spin down the mountain slopes but decided we were feeling much better after the refreshment break which led on to a shopping break before spiralling down back towards Montreux. Since we hadn’t slept the night before, we declined the trip to the casino and went straight upto our rooms for a change and then headed out for an early dinner by the lake front – yet again a delicious meal starting with an innovative leaf salad with oranges and grapefruit and then branching off into duck for me and seared tuna steaks for Aashish (except we didn’t know what Thun was till after it came and was tasted J but definitely the best tuna we’ve ever had by far!) before heading back and crashing while watching an episode of Star Trek (yes! Nerd alert – we had actually carried the laptop with us J oestentiabaly for the music, but also for any late night movie watching urges that might have come upon us).

Our finally day dawned clear but cloudy, but we were all past caring at this point – 2 ½ days or perfect sunshine was enough to keep us happy. A trip to Gruyere was too ambitious, so we cruised along the lake to Lausanne where we stopped for lunch at the Creperie Ouchy and gorged ourselves… hmmmm, well, at least we’re consistent with the recurring motif! Honestly, what a wonderful way to feed your face. Sitting outside in the sun, overlooking the lake and the mountains beyond (France actually from that point) with the most delicious crepes in front of you. I went for the asparagus hollandaise which turned out to be 1000 island instead, but delicious nevertheless while Aashish of course had the sausage. Ironically enough, our waiter was Bangladeshi (been living there for 10 years), who helpfully informed us that it would take us ‘Tharty’ minutes to get to Geneva J and claimed that LOndOn was an exciting city JJ. It was quite freaky coz there we were by Lac Leman (that’s what Lake Geneva is actually called) munching on crepes, giving our orders in Bengali and having someone say ‘Obosho’ – totally twilight zone! Aashish outdid himself and had two savoury crepes and then a dessert one J. The popular favourite was banana and chocolate while opted for the pear and chocolate – superb! Muaah! A perfect last meal in Switzerland.

We then continued along the lake road merrily before realising we were some way off from Geneva and the clock was ticking (and of course, my being there was just asking for us to be stranded at Geneva airport J) so thankfully we moved to the express way, and not too soon!! Managed to get to the airport in time for some shopping, but it could have been a close call! Still, I now have Odette to keep Baron von Strasse company in the bathroom and I’m jolly pleased J. Of course, a little sad to have left Swtizerland, but also relieved not to have to hang around at that airport any longer!! But I’m glad I got to take Aashish to my gaon and he seems quite smitten with it too – quite potentially a place to retire to when we’ve made our millions ;-o. Although, came home and ordered Thai food and on reflection have put our relocation plans on hold coz I’m not so sure on how easily or how good the Thai & Chinese cuisine is at Montreux!! Pathetic I know, but how can any full blooded Bong live in a place no matter how loudly it calls my name, if they don’t have decent Thai and Chinese food??? Unacceptable. Still, certainly merits another trip to scope out the town centres (which we completely skipped this time around) for any far eastern culinary developments.

Of course it’s been a bummer having to come back to London and to work, but at least yesterday saw the sun which was encouraging and today I got my bonus for last year (which was unexpected!!!) and a small raise, so goody goody gumdrops!! Yay!