And so on to Switzerland, crossing the border at Basel (or Bâle if you speak French) – Wednesday 9 April 2014
Crossing the border from France into Switzerland, immediately everything is in German and there is an air of efficiency, and the big wide French sky turns into fluffy clouds over the mountains. Although Switzerland has four official languages (German, French, Italian and Romansh) the regions in which a particular language is spoken are for the most part specific to that language; it’s not multi-lingual in the true sense. From Basel to Luzern, where we stayed for the night, we saw and spoke only German – Switzerland is 62% or thereabouts German-speaking.
There are checks at the border of Switzerland, you can’t drive straight through as you can between EU countries in the Schengen area, Switzerland has narrowly voted to restrict free passage of EU citizens, thus giving its law-makers something of a puzzle in how to deal with this in a way that does not prove seriously detrimental to the economic future of the country. The checks seemed very cursory however, the main thing they wanted to make sure of with us was that we bought a motorway toll ticket, which this being Switzerland you do from a woman standing by the customs hut, who sells you your vignette without you even needing to get out of the car, she even sticks it on the windscreen for you. All very efficient. All very German-Swiss.
We stayed in Luzern which Sam says is his favourite city in Europe. He texted his mum to ask how she was liking it. A difficult one to answer, for while we were not disliking it, we were not especially gripped by it either, as so often in Switzerland we have nothing to complain about, but nothing either to get much excited about. We find Switzerland in general rather dull. The scenery is spectacular, but scenery is passive, and especially for someone with Alzheimer’s, it’s important to have more than passive – passive doesn’t exercise the brain much.
It was a warm sunny afternoon in Luzern so after a stroll round town to see the foreign tourists we sat at a café by the lake for a beer. I thought a walk along the lakeside path would be pleasant but Hilary wanted to sit and read, so she ordered another Swiss weizen, while I went off for a stroll, with a predetermined time to meet back at the bar. The woman in charge of the bar was intrigued, who were these strange German-speaking foreigners? So she engaged Hilary in conversation, which Hilary managed well in parts, kind of losing the German from time to time, but she feels she managed OK.
We ate in the Rathaus Brauerei in Luzern, a rather strange dinner of a white-coloured sausage for Hilary that was described as veal, though tasted of little, with chips, and fleischkäse for me, literally meat-cheese, which was a kind of luncheon meat, with what was described on the menu as bratkartoffeln. Bratkartoffeln in north Germany, if produced from good quality ingredients, can be a worthwhile meal in themselves being potatoes fried with onions and bacon fat. These in Luzern were kind of refried new potatoes. Interesting; more odd than special.
Tourists were in evidence in Luzern, lots of Chinese taking photographs of each other on their smartphones in front of the lake (which is known in English and French as Lake Lucerne, but in German, the language they speak there, as the VierwaldStätterSee). There are a lot of Chinese tourists in Germany and Switzerland these days, less so in Britain as the visa entry requirements for the UK are much more onerous; David Cameron said he was going to do something about that as Chinese tourists tend to be big spenders, but that can be tricky for him, he’ll let the money go to Switzerland instead for a quiet life at home. Who voted for him anyway?
Chinese tourists can generally be distinguished from Japanese tourists by their cameras, the Chinese not carrying elaborate ones in contrast to the Japanese who do, and by their hats. Japanese women have a tendency to upturned flowerpot hats or something equally bizarre-looking. Chinese women tourists mostly don’t wear hats.
