A stopover

I get good ideas. On rare occasions. One such occasion was when I thought of stopping over at Zurich for 2 days on my way back to Bangalore. Essentially a company-paid-holiday…

The flight from London to Zurich was fairly eventless. Apart from, of course, some drama at the London airport which wouldn’t have ended as nicely as it did if it were not for my friends Prasanna and Akshata who pleasantly offered to see me off at 2:00 am on a Saturday morning. They did all the thinking for me as I did the lazing. Since I had had less than an hour of sleep the previous night, I remember very little of the flight. I remember looking out of the window and wishing that I had been carrying my camera. And I remember the announcement on touchdown.

Zurich airport. World’s best I hear. Was not particularly interesting. The part where it started getting interesting was where I got out of the airport. Into Zurich.

The driver from the second cab got off and walked towards me. “Zic Zac Hotel” – I said. I was to get the first taste of Swiss German. A language which if I could understand would have made my life easier the next 48 hours in Switzerland. “Chic Chac Hothel?” he said. What was I expecting anyway? I pick the cheapest of hotels on the web and book a single room with shared bathroom and expect the cab driver at the airport to have heard about it? I pulled out my all-important sheet of paper. A figment of the new-improved-me. Well organized. Practical. Prudent. Or so I thought. The paper in question had all the numbers which could save my life if I were to ever be pushed to the edge. The reservation number for the hotel, my flight details, passport details, numbers of the Infy office at Zurich, Thomas Cook numbers, my traveller’s cheque’s serial numbers, my umpteen money card numbers (you only need address and identification proofs to stuff your wallet with plastic cards. Not money…thankfully). I had about a dozen prints of this on half sheets of papers strewn in my baggage, my jeans, my jacket… They call it elimination of a single-point-of-failure. Thanks to my job.

Well then…I was looking at the address of the hotel and trying to choose the best possible pronunciation for Marktgasse. That was where the hotel was. I tried many variants. The man still didn’t get it. I showed him the address. The print was too small. For a man of his age, he did well. I was asked to get in. “How much would it cost?” “Abouth 50 Franc” I was told. 2000 Indian rupees. I thought I’d try to be friendly and sit beside him on the cab. ‘That’s my seat’ - he told me. ‘You are from England aren’t you? Dhrivers sit on the left in Switzerlandh.’ Oh yeah…ofcourse…I’m sorry…I didn’t realize. I either said that or just mumbled something that must have sounded like that. I took the back seat obligingly. So much for trying.

I tried with better success than expected to hold a conversation. ‘I’m from India’ I said. ‘I haven’t seen snow’. I wanted something to get him interested in this rare specimen from god-knows-where. It worked. And yeah…better than expected. The roads didn’t look any different here. Looked like ‘foreign’ – as hum hindusthani would put it. I asked him about places to visit. Wanted to get some insider information. Interlaken? Lucern? ‘Oh…it’s got mountains and lake you know. A combination you do not see in England’. Like I had seen England.

‘What’s the best place in Switzerland?’ ‘You mean Intherlaakan or Luzern?’ He was among those I would meet who spoke enough English to give you the information you wanted. But of course, you had to make compromises. Ask them open questions and get every thing from them that they knew. With out being fussy about correctness of language or aptness of answer. Like in this case. I wanted to know the best place and he thought I was asking him to compare Lucern with Interlaken. ‘Yes Yes’ I said. ‘Which is better, Lucern or Interlaken?’ Anyone who’s done requirement analysis can relate to this. Thanks to my job.

Very soon we were out of a maze of highways and driving beside a river on a busy city road. They call it a lake. I thought lakes didn’t flow. This one didn’t look like a lake. To me.

Having realized that I was excited about the place, he had got more affable and was now more or less playing a guide along the way. Which I thought was fine as long as he did not consider charging me for the service. ‘The town of Zurich starts here and ends there. You see the tower there? It ends there’. He wasn’t kidding. He added…’Zurich is small. But ith is the biggesth thown of Switzerland. Andh ith is beauthiful. Beside a lake.’ That I could see. It was beautiful indeed. But it was when we cut into the old town that I lost my breath. Narrow stone paved streets lined with houses and shops on either side. Buildings of stone. Either of stone or of the color of stone. Streets were not straight. Not flat. An aerial view would have looked like a piece of modern art. ‘This is beautiful. I had only seen such places on the television’ I told him. I had to tell someone. He was amused. I think.

(You will find a break here. I’ll come to that.)

The place had a rusty look. Like a piece from the past. Like I had been travelling not through space but time.

‘The red building here is Chik Chac Hotel’. It was indeed. I had seen how it looked on the web. Only I did not expect it to be buried in this old town of Zurich on a narrow pathway. I got off and verified the name. The cab driver started getting my baggage out. I wanted to tell him that I’d like to go have a look and confirm my reservation before I could pay him so that he could take me else where if things did not turn out as expected. But that would be too complex an idea for me to get across. I paid and let him go. 51.60 CHF. I was loaded with coins of different denominations now. “Have a nice time here” he said. Oh…am sure I will.

(End of part 1?)

Khan’s restaurant. A neon board read. This was one of the reasons I chose this place. It had an Indian restaurant by. A smaller board read “Zic Zac hotel- real food, real music”. It was an antique wooden door. Quite heavy. And my hand luggage was not the kind with wheels. I tried pushing it (the door) whilst carrying my three pieces of luggage. Thankfully, there was no one around to witness the awkward act.

The moment I opened the door, I was almost certain that that was the back door of a bar. Let alone a reception, I was no where. A wooden room with some high stools and ahhh….a sweeper. ‘That door’ he told me pointing right. ‘Zic Zac Hotel?’ ‘Yes Yes next door’ he said. Apparently, Khan’s restaurant and the hotel shared the same door.

Bad design. Very bad design. I had to carry my luggage up a flight of 20 wooden stairs. Another door. Possibly the hotel’s. Just when I started to push it open, some one opened it from inside. A girl. A very beautiful swiss girl. My 48 hour crush. Nice sharp features and carelessly styled hair to match. ‘I have reserved a room’

‘Please come’

The reception was a dimly lit room. Most surfaces wooden. Two windows on the far wall opened to another narrow street. The carpet was a shade of blue. Dull and unsophisticated. There were few tables and chairs - possibly for the complimentary breakfast. A coke machine at one corner. A coffee machine at the other. All along the walls were framed photographs. Of musicians. I didn’t quite realize it then. Let alone relate it to their catch line. Most of them were real black and white photographs. Displayed as if in a museum.

I pulled out the printout of a confirmation mail that I had got for the booking. The new improved me. There was something about the way this girl spoke. It was a lot like lightning. I could see it well before I actually heard it. That was because, english, apparently, was not what she spoke best. When she had to say something, she would stop to frame what she hoped to be a grammatically correct sentence in English. Then she would carefully play it to me, pausing deliberately at the nouns unsure whether she was using the right ones. That was good. But what wasn’t was that when she was in the process of framing the sentence, she would make this face that would essentially convey everything that she wanted to say. This was bad. Because that gave me all the time in the world to speculate. And I’m dangerous when I begin speculating.

So it happened that when she saw the printout she looked at me I knew there was bad news coming. Why did I let the cab go? ‘There is a problem’ she said. I knew it. ‘We generally check in at 12:00’. It was not yet 11:00. ‘And the room is not clean’. Nor am I. ‘That’s alright. I just need to put my luggage somewhere. I will be out all day’ I said. ‘Can you go and get back at…er….11:30?’ She offered to lock up the luggage. I asked her about calling cards and the railway station. The rough plan for the day was to go to Lucern to meet my friend. She ran over to the window to find out if a neighbouring shop was open. I could buy cards from there. She showed me the way to the railway station on a map.

A map. A population I did not speak whose language. A city. A head on my shoulders.

One of my first follies was going to a cloth shop to buy a calling card. Not my biggest one though.

(another break here)

It turned out that no one on the roads had ever heard of a post office. That was where I had to buy calling cards from. A woman came by. She looked Chinese. ‘Which way to the post office?’ In reply she said “ksdhf skdf skdfh sdkfh” and I realized I had to try something else. I made up some synonyms of post office in english. I was getting nowhere. ‘La Posta’ - I had heard someone say. Thought I’d try. I looked around. No one seemed to be watching. ‘Where is La Posta?’ I asked. Now she got worried. Coz she thought I was asking her something really important. I apologized and left.

Thanks to a rich old man, I found La Posta. The Post office I mean. They called it a post shop and it looked rather like a railway station to me. ’20 Franc card. 10 Franc card’ – the women across the counter told me. ‘Show me something cheaper’ – I made up some synonyms this time too. Didn’t work . I had to buy the 10 franc card.

The little display on the pay phone read ‘Karte Jinsterh’ - or something equally incomprehensible. I had some coins. I was looking for a place to insert them. I tried in vain - like a little boy trying to dismantle his toy car. No one noticed, thankfully. The slot was too thin. More like the one for a credit card….ahhh….so that was what Karte meant?...The display changed to something else when I inserted my card. I presumed I was being asked for the number. I dialled. The women at the other end said something. It sounded like a question to me. I entered the calling card PIN. She asked me something else. I thought the next thing that she would want to know would be the destination number. I entered. ‘Hello’….I heard mom’s voice. Mission accomplished.

The railway station, I heard, was the largest roof covered area in Zurich. It looked a lot like Chennai station to me. There were trains to Lucern at 30 min intervals – I was told.

‘Oh… we are 92% booked today and the cleaning woman is stressed you know’ – lady lightning told me when I got back to the hotel. ‘But I will thry to find a …er….solution’ ‘Solution is the name?’ she asked me. She meant to ask if ‘solution’ was the right word. ‘Yes, it is’ What’s in a name anyway? It’s the solution that I’m interested in. I had to wait there for a while. That was the solution. ‘Can I pay by traveller’s cheques?’ (The-new- improved- risk-averse-me). I saw something coming. ‘Now…that is a good question’ – she told me. (without an interesting answer, I’m afraid – Hugh Grant, Notting Hill). ‘You will have to speak to the manager’. How customer friendly.

The cleaning women materialized as I waited there. Two young girls in black. One looked Chinese (I cannot tell the Chinese from Japanese). The other looked rather English. They checked the status of rooms on a sheet of paper. And ticked off rooms they had cleaned. It all looked very important. With ticks in various shapes and room names highlighted in different colors. Some cryptic colour code. Like a general crossing off targets destroyed on a war map, she ticked off room names. The only target I cared about was Elvis Presley, Room 204. The manager was some music fanatic. Rooms were named after musicians. Mine was Elvis. Target destroyed. Obliteration complete. Thank heavens.

I had half a mind to press the alarm button. But then I’d have to talk to lady lightning and tell her that I was stuck in the lift. That would be embarrassing for sure. I’m glad I decided against it. Because I wasn’t stuck. It wasn’t the lift door that I was pushing. It was the wall. Thankfully, the second wall I tried was the door. High time lift designs were standardised.

The room looked like it lagged the rusty pathways by a good 100 years. Walls were dull but freshly painted. A bed. A shelf. A wash basin. And a television. Windows to the far wall opened to the cloth shop I’d tried buying calling cards from. Elvis was all over the walls. A photograph of his credit card. One of him performing. And one of a bottle that contained water from his swimming pool. Authentic – it said. Impressed.

44 francs for a 2 way ticket to Lucern. Glies was german for ‘platform’. Wish I knew. I wouldn’t have found myself in a fix if I did. The train arrived. It looked enormous. It was two storied. Oh…I see.

The ride was… rather funny. More than 24 hours of no sleep and all the exhaustion felt like a strong dose of sleeping pills. The carriage was almost empty. I dozed off. Somewhere in a suspended state of consciousness, I realized that I was missing some exotic landscapes. I pulled out my camera clumsily. I had succeeded in putting it in the right mode and clearing the haze off the window by the time the view was obstructed by a fantastic tunnel that plunged the carriage in darkness for …er….I don’t know how long….I’d dozed off again. This recurred almost every few minutes. I’d wake up and try to point and click. And then doze off again. By the time I reached Lucern I’d taken 3 snaps. Bad ones. Clicked only out of desperation. Like the warrior who raided the archers to make up for a lost battle…

‘Walk alone the red line’ – the women at the tourist information centre at Lucern told me, handing over a map of Lucern (Follow the white rabbit – Matrix). Déjà vu. Another city. Another map. My friend could not be reached over the phone. So I was left alone with the map. Lucern, how are we doing today? (It was a special day for Lucern. I was to find out)

A river ran through this one too. Exquisite roads. All of them steep. Narrow. Lined by churches, towers, forts, the city walls. Nearly as rusty as the old town of Zurich. I rambled about in wonder randomly shooting pics. Soon I realized I couldn’t place my self on the map. I was officially lost. I ended up in some private property. A house I’d kill for. I took a pic and left the place.

I walked in the general direction towards the river….er…I mean the lake. Some men dressed in weird clothes where playing some music. Probabilistic anomaly. Like hell. I was wrong. I met more. All of them dressed like devils, sorcerers, pirates, Vikings…and playing music. What in the name of the devil…?


It was the annual festival of Lucern. I did not bother to find out what it was called. The streets started getting denser. I was running into people. All the time. None somber. It was something everyone did - I soon found out. Beautiful women wore horns. Men wore wizard hats. Faces of kids were completely painted. Kids played drums. They carried little wooden spears. Coloured paper was strewn everywhere. The masks people wore were simply fantastic. They were scary. I almost yelled at times when they got too close. (Lady lightening would later tell me that she hated this carnival for that reason). The best was yet to come: Music. Great music. The best drums I’ve ever heard. They played in groups. Drums and bugles in perfect rhythm. In a perfect setting - an enclosed square beside a shimmering lake. Everyone was dancing. I amazed myself. Coz I danced too.

On the late train back to Zurich, I started reading Angels and Demons. The prologue was disappointing. Did it have to be so similar to the Da Vinci Code? And Digital Fortress and Deception point…?

Aaloo parata from Khan’s for dinner. The only meal of the day.

Slept well.

I browsed through some tourist brochures as I sipped some bad coffee and had some bland croissant. Ten to Nine on Sunday morning. Another day. I chose the Interlaken tour from the brochure. Lady lightening offered to book the tour for me. She highly recommended it. She made a call and spoke some German. I knew it. Here it comes. Apparently, most part of the Interlaken tour was scrapped during winter. ‘You think I should still take it?’ I don’t think she thought. ‘Is there something else that you would recommend?’ More calls. More German. The answer was found. It was going to be Mount Rigi for the day. ‘There is a problem’ she said. Oh… I’d love to hear. Long since I had one. What she said next instantly transformed the easy Sunday morning mood in the hall. The tour would start in 15 minutes and I’d have to leave right then. Suddenly, the three women (she and the 2 cleaning women who’d been lazing off there) got all excited. (5 minutes to take off and Spiderman has to stick the molten mutant on the spaceship to save the world). ‘You have to take a cab to the place’ ‘I’ll call one for you’ Oh…how sweet of you. Lady lightning almost fell off her chair in the commotion. As she dialled, she told me hurriedly ‘I would go to the room and wear a …er…er…’ ‘Jacket?’ ‘Yes. A jacket’. Of course. I ran up. No time to play the fool with the lift. I put the little black jacket on me. She wasn’t pleased. Oh…how much she cared for me. ‘It would be very very cold. Don’t you have a bigger…er…er….jacket?’ I mumbled something. Asked her not to worry. The cab didn’t come. ‘You can take Sunday morning run’ – one of the other two women told me. I couldn’t believe they were actually having fun teasing me. ‘It will be very cold. You can buy a pullover there’ one said. The other said ‘You come back and you will be snowman’ and burst out laughing. Wish I could decipher that. LL was filling up a ticket for me. She signed her name. It looked like ‘Mariah Carey’. I realized I didn’t know her name. I should have asked her then. When she wished me a good day I didn’t know that I was never to meet her again.

The cab was under a sheet of snow. It had been snowing heavily all morning. When we drove along the lake, the place looked all different. (It looks like new – Calvin, C&H)

There were two buses waiting. I had the ticket. I handed it over at a kiosk. ‘Oh…you are going to Mount Rigi. For the moment you are only one going there’. Huh? Tell me about it. I love problems. I haven’t had one in ages. ‘Well…why is that?’ I asked. ‘It is only partially guided you see…’ ‘Oh…’ Works well with me. She gave me a sticker. ‘Stick this’ ‘Huh? On me?’ ‘Yes’. The round sticker on me said ‘Mount Rigi, the best of Switzerland tours’. ‘This is for the guide to know where you are going’. I felt like a parcel sealed and addressed and stamped. Ready to be carried.

The guide could speak English. Thank god.

The bus rode through Zurich as he gave us some trivia about things on the way. He had some sense of humour. But I was haunted by the thought that he would be saying the same things to all the people. Same jokes. Canned sense of humour. Some job.

We drove through some exotic places. Mountains, rivers, frozen lakes, villages. The villages were beautiful. ‘You will not find many farmers’ he said ‘Farmers quit farming because they do not get a good price for their produce. And because not many women would want to marry a farmer. They prefer shopping to milking cows.’ Pardon me. I didn’t say that.

Very soon things would get more interesting. The bus stopped at the foot of a mountain and the guide took me alone to a building. I didn’t have the faintest idea of what was in store. He bought some ticket across a counter on the first floor. He gave me the ticket and said ‘We’ll pick you up at Lucern at 5:20 in the evening’. But its not even 10 yet. ‘Well…where am I going now?’ He showed me a map (not again). ‘You take the cable car to Rigi Katbald’ ‘and then a cog wheel train to the peak-Rigi Kulm’ ‘and then you take a train back to Veitznau. Make sure you take the red one. And that the name reads ajsdjadjgbju’ ‘From Veitznau you take a ship to Weggis.’ ‘Here is your ship ticket. Don’t lose it’ ‘The same ship would take you to Lucern’ ‘You walk over to Pfistergasse 5 and we’ll pick you up at 5:20’ ‘Here is the list of departure times of all the services. Make sure you don’t miss any’ ’‘You are on your own from here’ ‘Have a nice day’. I will…

Where do I start? The counter. Trust only people with badges on. ‘Where do I have to take the cable car from?’ ‘Here, of course’. I realized that that was some kinda cable car station. I waited. There were 2 young boys and few old men and women. All of them were in skiing gears. What on earth was I going to do there? I was carrying my backpack with passport, work permit and the kind of things which if I lost would land me in jail.

The cable car ride was good. We were soon at Rigi Katbald. All my fellow passengers went off to ski. I was left high (literally) and dry. Let alone the cog wheel train, there was absolutely no one there. I hoped the guy on a bench there could speak English. He could. Apparently, the place where I landed was not Rigi Katbald. I had to walk a bit to reach there. With good reason was I alone on this tour. I got out and walked on snow. For the first time. I loved it. I appreciated the pattern on my sole. I was glad I had thrown away my old, cheap, unbranded pair of shoes for a new, cheap, unbranded pair.

I rented a sledge. The kind with a steering wheel. I couldn’t take risks with the other kind. For miles there would be no medical help. I did a test ride. Making sure I could stop when I wanted to and could jump off if needed. Fine. Was fun. Now for the real ride. Was great fun. But there was a catch. Every time I came down I had to drag the sledge back up and this was taxing. Before long, I was on auxiliary power. Batteries ran out soon after. I bought a drink and returned my sledge. Took some pics and tried making a snow man. Then I took the train to the peak.

Once there, I realized why they closed down most of the peaks in winter. The fog was so thick I could barely see beyond 10 meters. Since I did not have my sledge, I had little to do here. Bought a souvenir. Bought some hot chocolate with a free coupon that came with the tour and took the red train back from the first glies(you should know by now).

It was a slow ride downhill. Very slow. An hour or so. Back to Angels and Demons. Robert Langdon was woken up from sleep. Not again.

I met a woman at the boat station at Vietznau who took my picture. Her friend was in Bangalore. He was some kind of a monk. She lived in Lucern. The boat ride was boring. Every one stayed indoors and had lunch. I stayed on the deck and froze.

Back to Lucern. Felt like home now. I didn’t need the map anymore. I had more than 2 hours to take the bus back to Zurich. Thought I’d window shop. Shops generally had heated interiors. I thumbed through some magazines. Playboy and Penthouse and the like. Ended up buying a shirt. Had some chicken at Mc Donalds. Bird flu was not on my mind. Thought there was time for some museums. I went to the Picasso museum. ‘Are you a student?’ the lady at the counter asked me. ‘No’. sigh…
They wouldn’t take anything other than cash. So I had to leave. I didn’t like his style much anyways (what’s it called? impressionist?).

I found and waited at Pfistergasse 5. And bought another souvenir in the process. The guide was overjoyed to see me. I think he hadn’t expected to.

End of day two. Game over. Not yet. The last round was due.

I lost my way from the railway station where the bus had dropped me. I got off the wrong exit and walked along the wrong river. (who would have expected 2 rivers to flow through a city and have a railway station in common?). A woman, who could speak english the least of all people I’d met, helped me. I walked with her to a junction and then she said ‘You have to go to that red board and from there….er…er….er….’ ‘Find my own way?’ ‘Yes. Find your own way.’ Thank you. I will…