Como and Milan

Como

The hotel we stayed at was run by a bit of a Nazi. Each room contained a list of rules similar in vein I imagine to most prison cells. These included no eating in the room, no washing of clothes, no moving of furniture, no guests, no talking louder than 15 db after 11.30pm and no sword fighting. The last one I made up. The Nazi also gave us a lecture on the rules when we arrived but his bark was worse than his bite because our neighbours came back at 2.30am and didn’t bother being very quiet.

I lay in my bunk screwing my ear plugs in ever tighter expecting at any moment the Nazi to come storming out brandishing a huge bayonet but nothing except that I didn’t sleep much.

Milan

Milan has turned out to be somewhat of a disappointment. There are a couple of famous sights. The Il Duomo Cathedral is impressive as is the old castle in the park. The rest of the city has a drab and dusty quality typical of some old European cities. After a while each of the intersections began to look the same. I’m sure there will be many who disagree and it may be the world’s fashion capital but it is not a beautiful city.

There are many beggars. We caught the metro line number two and there was a crippled man walking slowly through the carriage holding out a cup. We got out of the train at the wrong stop and got the next train going the same way and there was another crippled beggar walking the same way in the same direction with cup held out.

African and Asian migrants try out their dubious schemes on tourists. On the Public holiday we were there, there were many at Piazza Duomo giving out free colourful wire ribbons to tie to your wrist to bring good luck. I wondered what the catch was until I saw a boy accept one to the consternation of his father who was ultimately asked for some money after the man had laboriously attached it to the boy’s wrist.

Crowd Photos

Have you ever noticed how when you want to take a picture of a famous building with a crowd of people milling about, just when you press the button, a fat American walks into the shot. I prefer to have a pretty girl walk into the frame for purely aesthetic and artistic reasons of course, but every time you line it up a group of ugly businessmen appear eating their greasy sandwiches.

Salty Food

Salty Food



Two nights ago we shared a cheap can of ravioli – cans of ravioli seem to be the main tinned meal in Switzerland – there’s no Irish stew or sausages and vegetables. Anyhow it was so salty that we could have used it to preserve a boatload of fish.

Last night being our last night in St Moritz and in Switzerland we decided to splurge and went to the Hotel Laudinella’s restaurant. I had eggplant and baby tomato pizza and Lena had lasagna. We shared as usual and I ended up eating lots of the lasagna. The béchamel sauce was so salty we could have used it to flavour twenty bags of peanuts.

So tonight in Como, Italy - the birthplace of pasta, the waiter of our restaurant says first thing, “Sorry we have no pasta, only pizza and antipasta”. Lena wisely ordered the salad. I being slightly confused by the plethora of choices ordered one of the pizzas without thinking which one it was. When it came it had anchovies and olives. It was so salty I could have used it to salt the earth of my enemy’s pastures.

Now I’m constipated from all that cheese. I’m getting fat from all that cheese. And best of all my blood pressure is so high that when we went for a walk in the evening in St. Moritz it was only about 5 degrees Celsius but I could have been wearing a thong swimming costume and still felt warm.

In our Como restaurant, when the bill comes it has a five euro table charge just for sitting in the restaurant, water comes bottled and costs three euros. So the bill for pizza and a salad and a bottle of water was seventeen euros. I’m not impressed by Italy so far.

Smoking

Let’s be clear. On the scale of things smokers are just above mass murderers or is that below. Either way I don’t look kindly on people potentially giving me a fatal disease.

So we’re queueing to take the funicular down the mountain in Como on a Sunday afternoon. It’s crowded. The queueing system is pretty arbitrary. A bunch of kids jumps ahead of about a hundred people by jumping over the metal barricade. No one seems to care and there is no one to stop them. There is no one controlling the process as there would of course be in Switzerland.

Behind me in the queue there’s a young couple and the guy is smoking. This is in a big crowd of people unable to escape the fumes. We move forward slowly. Now we’re on steps waiting. Below us is a plump baldy slowly pulling on one and the wind direction is taking it directly into the crowd. He considerately drops his ash into the flowerbed next to him. Above us, a fit guy in a tight t-shirt with tats on his muscles is leaning over us chaining away and he’s actually flicking the ash onto the heads of the people standing below. The German woman who is directly downwind of the baldy waves her hands at the smoke and casts a horrified look at her partner but she is the only one who seems overtly upset. Europe still loves smokers.

When the funicular arrives it’s open slather as far as how many we can fit into the car. The opposite of Switzerland again – did I mention that. We’re close to the world record for most people in a funicular. There’s a guy touching parts of me I’m used to only Lena being allowed to.

How I Stopped the Glacier Express

Murren

Yesterday was one of those days that it’s difficult to complain about anything. We were in Murren, a town in the Berner Oberland with probably one of the best locations in the world. When people talk cheaply about fabulous views in any other part of the world, they’re just wrong. Places like Murren actually deserve to be described in this way.

At the Eiger Guesthouse in Murren where we stayed, you can look out of your window at three of the highest peaks in Europe – the Jungfrau, Eiger and the middle one I can never remember the name of. They look like they’re just a kilometer away. Unless you’re Swiss or live in the Himalayas the scenery is the best cure I can think of for depression or negative outlook on life.

We caught the cable car from Murren to the top of the Schilthorn, site of a scene of one of the old James Bond movies. I don’t think they need a crappy Bond movie to sell themselves because the Schilthorn’s 3000 metre views will remain long after the next generation have stopped watching old Bond movies.

In the cable car were about fifty mostly Swiss or German’s. They disappeared once we reached the Schilthorn and we only discovered where they had gone to when we went inside the revolving restaurant which was serving a buffet breakfast.

We stayed outside taking snaps – it was about five degrees. There were a couple of other’s outside – an older English couple and a pair of American girls both of whom I asked to take pictures of us.

We kept running into the Americans – wel l there weren’t many places to go – and eventually decided to go for a walk with them. They turned out to be lovely people both from Oklahoma – Mindy was working in New York for Sesame Street and Heather was working for similar organization to the Peace Corps in Germany.

How I stopped the Glacier Express

At this point I have to say a word or two about Asians in Switzerland because as I write some have just sat down near me. I am an Asian but the behaviour of other Asians abroad is boorish and embarrassing. In the summer tourist season.there are hordes of Indians in Switzerland as a result of the popularity of shooting Bollywood films here.

We were on the train from Zurich to Interlaken and there was an Indian family – the parents and their young son – in the seats ahead of us. They started to eat their meal which included tubs of yoghurt. The mother having removed the plastic lid calmly threw it out of the window. This kind of thing annoys Lena and I everywhere but in what used to be the cleanest country in the world it seemed like a doubly vicious crime. My blood slowly boiled over and then cooled but the second time it happened I reached over the seats and said “You shouldn’t do that here.” There was mild shock but it didn’t happen again, probably because they didn’t have any more garbage.

You can already see garbage in the lakes and walking trails. If Switzerland doesn’t go on a massive education campaign about litter for tourists I suspect that eventually Switzerland will resemble India.

On the Glacier Express from Andermatt to St Moritz our trip was to some extent spoiled by two Chinese couples sitting opposite us and as the seats were allocated we couldn’t run away from them. They were yet another example of how certain Chinese speak in only one volume – loud.

I suspect that I am more sensitive to the behaviour of Indians and Chinese because of my heritage.

Speaking of the Glacier Express, I stopped it. When we arrived at Samedan I said to Lena that as we were going to Zernez it would be quicker to get off at Samedan rather than go all the way to St Moritz. She wanted to go to St. Moritz. I said that it was pointless as we would then have to come back to Samedan anyway. Finally Lena agreed. We started to get our stuff and went to the door. Just then the conductor appeared.

“You are going to St. Moritz, yes?” he inquired in friendly fashion as the train began to roll out of Samedan.

Seeing the train move I said half-heartedly, “Well we need to go to Zernez”.

“Zernez”, he exclaimed, consternation on his face. He whipped out his set of keys and inserted one into a slot and spoke to the driver. The train stopped.

We got out repeating our dankeschons to the conductor. And that is how I stopped the Glacier Express.

Murren Again

We have now almost completed our ten days in Switzerland and we both agreed that Murren was the highlight. The scenery everywhere has been amazing but Murren was on another level. The day in Murren was just a lovely day.

How We Climbed a Mountain and Came Down a Hill

In Zernez is the only National Park in Switzerland, which is surprising when you consider the whole country has the feel of a National Park. From Zernez there are numerous trails you can start on. We took the trail to Chamanna Cluoza. After lots of arguments about turning back because it was so steep, we did reach the summit of Bellavista at 2000 metres, the highest mountain we have climbed (although Zernez is already at 1500m).

Going back down was a lot easier.