SWITZERLAND JUNE 2024

Long wait in the palatial Milan Central station, in the marbled Bistro but I had made it.  Worries now were crossing the Swiss border, and the Lugano Lucerne connection.  Dodgy?  Queues?  Red tape?  Delays?

So in the train and here I was, lst class for the mountains!  Off we went, via the triumphal arches which were Mussolini’s signal boxes.   Stopped at an unremembered station, wait of a few minutes while three officials strolled along, chatting, on their backs  written DOUANE.  So, that was the border!  Into Switzerland.

Along a great lake to Lugano, and here was my Lucerne train on the opposite platform!  Swiss efficiency.  Can’t stop staring at fellow passenger, is she a trans?  Then, along mountains still topped by snow, looking down on verdant valleys and chalets and cattle – all very alpine. Splashed by sunlight.  Wished I was down there, walking the valleys.  And along the lake, and into Lucerne.   Simple getting a taxi to my hotel a mile or so away, costing £100 a night because I wasn’t up to paying £400 plus to be more central.  Yes, Switzerland is more expensive than Italy.

Hotel, modern, ordinary, fine, run by Koreans, as efficient as the Swiss and similar in their straightforward unsmiling practicality.  A large limping woman, matriarch of the place, tells me about bus stops and says she will order a taxi  when I leave – and I know she will, and not forget.

So the next day, lie in bed and read news on my iPhone – Dr Michael Mosley is lost in Greece after setting off for a midday walk in a temperature of 30C plus with no phone or water.  The fool!  Who’s he to give advice?   (Bill later says he obviously strode off after a furious row with his wife).   I get bus to centre and beyond, because the sun is shining and I must ascend a mountain – their snowy tops beckon beyond the far side of the lake.  Get off at the suburb of Kriens  and reach the gondala terminal for Mounty Pilatus – this will be in two parts, with a stop half way up, before going to the top.  Then coming back I can go down the other side on a monorail, to the lake, and get a ferry back.  Sorted!  Into a slow moving gondala as it swings round, and rocking gently up I go.  It’s beautiful, the greenery, skimming the trees like a bird, flowers  below.  I’m flying. Get out at the half way station, and then with several others  proceed to the summit in cable car and again look down at the greenery and the flowers and a chapel and I feel like a prisoner, why aren’t I running on the grass, breathing mountain air?

We arrive at the summit centre, which comprises a hotel, cafe, shops galore selling souvenirs, Swiss chocolate, red handled pen knives and Swiss watches and cuckoo clocks.   So many.   It’s Saturday.  The place is seething.  It’s awful.  Queues everywhere.  Go outside, and along a narrow rocky path with several others to the summit.  Cold.   Virtually no flowers, it’s at the snow level, and overlooks mountain ranges.  A couple of Thai girls take my photo.  Now along the railed in Flower Trail.  It ends after fifty years with NO ENTRY.  Return to centre, and Information says no flowers yet because June’s too early.  At the cafe buy a roll and a drink, and sit on the crowded  floor with lots of others.

Bugger this!  Join queue for cogwheel gtrain which goes down the far side of the mountain to the lake.  Climb in little carriage with a man and boy, and down we go, what fabulous views, glimpse of a little chapel, and what flowers!  Gentians, narcissi, orchids, ones I don’t know, oh so many, I could almost touch them.  Why aren’t I there?  We pause at a halt.  I must get out!  We haven’t arrived says the man.  I must get out, and pull at the door and an official opens it for me, and I step onto some steps by a barn with lowing cattle.  Well!  Not so many flowers here, but there will be more further down and I can see a perfectly decent path zigzagging into some trees down to the lake.  A couple come, oh, it’s about 5 km to the lake, yes, a tolerable track.

Off I go.  Slowly.  The sky lours.  It’s now dark with cloud.  Thunder.  Lightening.  Rain starts, then it pelts down.  I carry on, overtaken occasionally by young fit people who say Can I Help?  I’m in woods now, and the path is a stream and my waterproof jacket is soaked.  I have been a damn fool.  The path in places  is a series of mini cliffs and chasms.  As I negotiate another two or three foot drop by sitting and pulling my legs over and down I lie down and feel comfortable, I’d like to stay here for ever and just fade away.  I am exhausted.  But I mustn’t and so stand up and stumble on.  Fall.  Get up.  I must not break a leg.  A young man comes and says, Have you Got a Phone?  I hand it to him, and he taps in the Mountain Rescue Service number which he thinks I need or soon will.  Take care!  Off he goes, and I carry on slower and slower and think of Dr Michael Mosley on his walk.

When the clouds split I look down and see the lake still miles away.  Wade down the path, the water pushing into my legs before rushing past.  Eventually, out of the woods.  Stagger on, and reach thank God a narrow tarmac lane.  Which way?  One way seems to go down, so i limp down the road.  Eventually a little car comes and I wave.  It’s three young Russians who can’t speak Italian or English, but one jumps out and ushers me into the passenger seat.  I get in soggily.  They drive me down to the lake pier, and as I get out all I can do is thank them profusely and hope my wet seat is not thought to be pee.  The angels in my life!  I hope Dr Michael Mosley has found his.

The last ferry has gone, so to the adjacent village station.  I feel colder and colder but a train comes, and takes me to Lucerne.  Margaret Pearson is also staying in Lucerne this moment with her son, in a luxury hotel, and I think of her horror and what she would say, You are mad, Do you realise how you look?  Bus to my hotel.   Shower.   Walking downstairs is painful, but when changed I manage to clamber down to the bar one step at a time for a strong drink.

Next day, still creaky.  A toe nail is almost detached, it’s on a hinge.  Walking downstairs is still far worse than going up, but I’ve a day to recover.  Michael Mosley is still lost.  A day or two later he’s found dead.  Poor man. (But, who was he to keep shelling out advice?)  I have been lucky.

After massive continental breakfast, bus (can’t get over their efficiency!) to the centre, to explore the old part of this very Germanic city.  Woman has a brolly covered like a toadstool. The covered Chapel Bridge with its picturesque tower now a gift shop, the plain church (lots of them, Protestant and Catholic) – which I enter and actually kneel to give thanks for my survival – the wild northern designs on the walls of the houses, such fun, hunting scenes and the like, so unclassical, the smart shops, the bridges, the shop of male erotica, the tourists.

And so back, and Fraulein has ordered my taxi which comes to the minute the next day.  They say Zurich is the busiest station in the world, but being Switzerland it’s all simple, arrive Zurich Central, elevator to another platform, miss an airport train but another soon comes, and then in the airport, such clear directions, can’t stop myself buying a Swiss knife, and onto my Swiss Air flight, which gives us all a bar of chocolate, Swiss, what else.

To Heathrow, and there stands my darling Toby.