Switzerland

September 2024

Day 1 Sunday 8 September

A family wedding trip back to England so we added an extra week to visit Switzerland. It was odd how many people showed surprise at our choice…we’ve never been before so why not. Flew London to Zurich arriving mid afternoon to unseasonably cold wet weather and heavy cloud. Rode the tram from our hotel just outside the city centre to the Landesmuseum, the National Museum of Switzerland. Housed in a French chateau styled building built 1898, it was a pleasant 90 minute wander through painted ceilings, some beautiful ceramic tiles and a fascinating large collection of rings, old and contemporary. The museum felt a little austere, didn’t engage us as much as other museums usually do but was worth it for the ring collection alone.

Still overcast outside, we walked around the old town. Some attractive architecture, old shop fronts and cobbled streets, perhaps it was the weather but the city wasn’t really doing it for us… where it succeeded in efficiency and cleanliness it lost in energy and atmosphere.

We dropped by Cabaret Voltaire in the Dada house on 1 Spiegelgasse where 100 years ago the Dada movement began. Now an eccentric cafe and art gallery showcasing the work of outsider artists among the colourful circular cushions and mismatched chairs. We leant against the radiators on art printed cushion pads in the concrete but cosy space drinking hot chocolate before visiting their small gallery exhibiting the art of Lee Scratch Perry. We both enjoyed this place, found it engaging, friendly staff…lots of innovative creative ideas in the space. More rooms upstairs had a very small library of books and a larger performance space.

We met up with our New York friend Kat’s sister Stephanie and her husband Andy for dinner. Raclette served melted on plates with a Swiss bottle of wine a small dish of boiled potatoes, 1 dessert and 2 Kolsch set us back 264 Swiss Francs for the table of 4…Zurich is an expensive city. Still a fun night and we enjoyed eating a traditional dish. Rain and low cloud coloured everything in Zurich sombre but it’s an odd place; sedate, muffled. I don’t think we heard any music in 2 days apart from a speaker in the parking garage that was turned so low it was pointless. Although everyone we interacted with was friendly and helpful, smiling on the streets isn’t commonplace; solemn, purposeful…we’re used to higher energy.

Day 2 Monday 9 September

Instead of further exploring Zurich we drove an hour northeast to the small town of Stein am Rhein. The motorway dragged under heavy cloud and drizzle but the countryside rolled either side. Fields of spent sunflowers, orchards of apples, pears, crops of corn abutting roadside. Passing places displaying squash and pumpkins for sale. Traditional houses with coloured shutters sharing space with faded concrete housing estates. And then to Stein am Rhein, parking on the outskirts and walking in to the beautiful town square, it blew us away. Dating to the Middle Ages, a traffic free cobbled section of streets surrounded by preserved half-timbered medieval houses hand-painted with beautiful frescoes. Grey cloud passed for an hour brightening to blue sky illuminating the frescoes. A beautiful place to wander for an hour or two.

We leave to take a detour to Winterthur but the rain kicks back in and the interesting artsy coffee shop we pull in to has stopped serving…but everything has a silver lining somewhere and outside we meet Schatz and his friend putting together sculptures in the rain to join others they’ve made and erected among rusting machinery.

Day 3 Tuesday 10 September

Drove to the German speaking city of Lucerne (Luzern) sun intermittently dazzling through cloud. Taking the toll road…passing by Zag, its roadsign painted with cherries. We preferred Lucerne to Zurich; livelier, more vibrant. A laid back day of ambling with little agenda. We walked across the reconstructed covered wooden Kapellbrücke (Chapel Bridge) spanning the River Reuss, large parts of which were destroyed by fire in 1993 and since restored. Within 9 months they’d rebuilt. The original bridge dated to 1360, the 158 panelled paintings followed later around 1614 – 1624, painted by Catholic painter Hans Heinrich Wagmann, depicting events from the history of Lucerne. 147 of these paintings existed before the 1993 fire after which sadly only 47 were rescued of which only 30 were restored. The bridge features a water tower which pre-dates it by 30 years. We walked the other covered bridge, called The Spreuer I believe, with a weir alongside tumbling noisily with water.

Market traders were set up riverside selling cheese, jams, vegetables…opposite small shops selling jewellery and tourist wares. Walking up steps by a fresco painted restaurant into the Old Town to the car free cobbled streets, pretty architecture, more fresco painted buildings. High street retail runs the length of many of these narrow streets but buildings retain an air of grandeur and retail storefronts are subdued rather than obtrusive neon and garish signage. Streets open at intervals in to squares and there’s a friendly upbeat atmosphere here.

We loop several streets of the Old Town before walking to the wonderful Bourbaki Panorama; a circular panoramic artwork, 377 feet long created in 1876 by Edouard Castres and a team of 10 artists. The work depicts the internment of the French Armee de l’Est in a neutral Switzerland at the end of the Franco-Prussian war. Painted in oils with an added illusion of depth created by the placement of lifesize model figures in the foreground. Approximately 88,000 men marched into Switzerland abandoning 11,000 horses, 1,150 wagons, 285 artillery pieces, 7,200 rifles and 64,000 bayonets. The Swiss Red Cross are shown administering care. It was quiet when we visited and we felt like we were standing inside the scene.

From the panorama we walked to the Lion Monument (Löwendenkmal) in a small park carved from the rockface by Lukas Ahorn. One of the most famous monuments in Switzerland it commemorates Swiss guards killed during the 1792 French Revolution. Mark Twain described the monument best in his 1880 ‘A Tramp Abroad’: “His size is colossal his attitude is noble. His head is bowed, the broken spear is sticking in his shoulder, his protecting paw rests upon the lilies of France. Vines hang down the cliff and wave in the wind, and a clear stream trickles from above and empties into a pond at the base, and in the smooth surface of the pond the lion is mirrored, among the water-lilies. Around about are green trees and grass. The place is a sheltered, reposeful woodland nook, remote from noise and stir and confusion…”.

Leaving Lucerne to drive to our airbnb an hour away in Belprahon; everything switched from German to French. A gorgeous loft built in to a 200 year old timber barn with a house beneath. Views across mountains rolling pasture and trees. A welcome silent night.

Day 4 Wednesday 11 September

Waking at 7am to the sound of bells, sheep grazing next door, bells gently clanking at their necks; it sounds how you imagine Switzerland to sound. We head out early, a one hour drive to the UNESCO cultural world heritage city of Bern, passing through tunnel after tunnel, mountains and trees soaring above us. We park just outside the old city, a short stroll taking us across a bridge looking down over red tile roofs, Gaudi-esque chimney stacks. Albert Einstein lived in a flat here at the Kramgasse 49. We go to a coffee shop followed by a wander through this beautiful city, (it becomes the favourite of our trip)…it reminds us a little of Edinburgh with its cobbled streets flanked by shops under covered arcades, some accessed down steep steps beneath the street. Apartment buildings sseveral stories high with colourful wooden shutters and small attic rooms. It has the feel of a university town; music playing, more young people around, posters for gigs on lampposts. To the Zytglogge (time bell) landmark medieval gate tower built in the early 13th century with its 15th century astronomical clock. We wait with a crowd of other tourists to watch the gilded carved figure strike the bell on the hour. Carved renaissance allegorical statues above public fountains dot the city, 11 in all most of which date to the 16th century.

Berner Munster, the cathedral of Bern soars in Gothic splendour in Munsterplatz. Construction started in 1421 but its 100 metre tower wasn’t completed until 1893. The stained glass windows, hand carved choir stalls and vaulted ceiling with its lace-like black decoration are beautiful. It starts to rain mid afternoon so we head for Zentrum Paul Klee the art museum designed by architect Renzo Piano dedicated to the Swiss artist Klee…it holds a vast collection which is rotated. I’m a fan of Piano’s architecture but this one in its sweeping undulating steel is ugly and hasn’t aged well and there’s not enough of Klee’s more well known works on view which disappoints. There are some beautiful pieces and some very early work I’d never seen but the cavernous space felt oddly lacking.

Day 5 Thursday 12 September

A lazy day….we’ve done a lot of driving so we kick back and read, watch the sheep from the windows. Eat food we’ve bought from the excellent supermarkets…Migros and Coop. An unexpected surprise when I check my instagram to see that an old friend met backpacking in 2008 has got in touch. We thought Hadley and his family were still living in Russia but are actually now in France, close enough to the border with Switzerland for him to invite us to meet him there. An unplanned long round trip to Geneva beckons the next day.

Day 6 Friday 13 September

It’s a two and a half hour drive to Geneva the motorway is clear and we power along in our rented Volvo SUV which is a beautiful car… but a pain in the arse for the small spaces in the Swiss carparks, built years before these bigger vehicles were designed. We feel a little foolish, living in America means we’ve got used to driving them but a normal size car would have been better suited. But to see Hadley…a long overdue reunion, it must have been 10 years since we saw him last. We meet him at Visitaly where we eat pizzas Italian style and I photograph our waiter Vincenzo, a Sicilian posing with the Godfather of Sicilians. The Marlon Brando waxwork is impressively lifelike. A young woman with long pink hair passes the restaurant window not long after a young man wearing gothic black with stacked shoes. This is what we’ve been missing in Switzerland…the street life we’re used to…a little looser, more rebellious. We don’t have long to wander before the school run for Hadley’s sons then heading back for Belprahon…but Lake Geneva sparkles mineral rich from the mountains, Swiss flags jut from beautiful stone buildings…we pass the former home of the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges who died here in 1986. It’s a handsome city. Lively and atmospheric narrow streets shouldered by impressive buildings.

Day 7 Saturday 14 September

Another drive out, this time 90 minutes to Gruyeres….where we didn’t eat the cheese it gave its name to but instead hung out with Alien. A gorgeous medieval town on top of a hill with a castle, mountains….and monsters. Parking at the base we walk the steep hill to enter the old town. It’s busy, lots of other visitors and a cycle race bumping across the cobbles. Nearby cafes and bars are packed with spectators as loud speaker announcements introduce each cyclist. We head first to the impressive H R Giger Museum in his old house where there’s an incredible amount of his work on view; his airbrushed art, sculptures and pieces from the infamous Alien movies. A full table with chairs, life size models of Alien. The entrance desk modelled like an Alien set-piece and even the concrete floors, wooden stairs and rubber floors throughout cut with his incredible designs. It’s intense, sometimes shocking often pornographic…and fascinating. I can’t imagine what Giger was like as a person seeing the product of his imagination, but the owner of our airbnb had worked with him years ago and described him as easy to work with…but very intense. The attic space holds works by other artists influenced by him and who Giger collected.

A wander in to the packed Giger Bar opposite the museum, it is extraordinary. A surreal juxtaposition to the quaint buildings, cobbles and castle. Alien vertebrae spanning the ceilings, moulded bone chairs, crafted steel bone table legs…a fabricated fantastical Alien version of the Ossuaries of bones we’ve seen in Portugal and Italy where the bones are real.

We walked the small streets to look across glorious landscapes and views of the castle but it’s a little too busy today to entice us to stay and eat here.

Leaving Gruyeres we head to the old walled town of Murten, first recorded as a ‘city’ in 1238. Known for the Battle of Morat in 1476 when the Duke of Burgundy laid siege to it, rescued 2 weeks later by the Bernese Army, the victory is celebrated annually in June. All of these old towns are beautiful and pristine…they start to meld in to one another but climbing the stairs to walk the city walls gives us great views across the town. Walking the streets below a procession passed through with flags and people in uniform.

We planned to stock up from Migros supermarket but discover that supermarkets close at 5pm on a Saturday. Very different to the UK and US where most things stay open later…perhaps we are too controlled by retail. A search on google maps leads us to Aaberg where in another attractive town square we find a small cafe Quaranta 4, with a fantastic waitress called Chess…she loves the game and she’s also the funniest liveliest waiter we’ve met. The owners are seated outside with their families and in conversation, one of them asks if we know a particular building in Manhattan. By bizarre coincidence it turns out to be Dave’s office building also home to Eleven Madison, the 3 star Michelin restaurant whose Chef one of the cafe owners used to work for! It is a very small world…and the more people you speak to the smaller it gets.