Swiss cheeeese please
Trip Start
May 24, 2005
1
7
25
Trip End
Ongoing
Ins,
Switzerland
Friday, June 3, 2005
However, as we travelled we became gradually aware of covert clashes continuing beneath the calm, and wondered what it is that keeps this diverse collection of French, German and Italian-speaking cantons together.
Perhaps it is the referendum culture, with regular public consultations encouraging bankers, watchmakers, dairy farmers and chocolatiers to think creatively about their individual and collective futures, empowering citizens to enact change from the micro to the macro level..? Answers on a postcard..
Cat in the hay
.As we passed from a French community nestling in amongst a German-speaking canton to a remote Swiss-German mountain village on the border with Liechtenstein, and through into the southern Italian cantons where olive trees cling to the mountainous slopes we saw myriad posters and billboards everwhere reminding people of their civic responsibility - to Vote on Sunday. (This time it was a question of closer ties with Europe and same-sex marriages - both proposals were accepted).
So it was that, as we cycled through vineyards, walked along stunning mountain ridges, and worked our way through feasts of swiss german delicacies, our hosts and casual interlocutors had other, weightier issues on their minds than where to get the best wiener schnitzel (not at the campsite on Lake Morat).
Our journey was made the more interesting thanks to the invention of Schlaf in Stroh (sleep in the straw). Over a hundred farming families take part in this cheap version of bed and breakfast where guests are lodged in a hay barn and, on waking and showering - often infront of an audience of cows and chickens - are served a traditional farmhouse breakfast.
Our first stop was Ins, and the three lakes of BielerSee, Neuchatel and Lac du Morat where we set forth on foot to a farmhouse where fresh straw had been lain in the upstairs hayloft and a ginger and white cat stroked its way round the bales
Eoghan In Ins
. Downstairs, across the courtyard and tucked away next to the cattle enclosure, there was a shower. The toilet was next to the tractor. The farmer and his wife were of protestant French extraction, their ancestors having fled Catholic persecution a couple of centuries previously. Now it's not religion, but language that's causing tension. What language should children be taught at school in addition to their mother tongue? Should it be English for commerce and travel or German/French so that people can chat informally with their neighbours?At the train station people had refused to speak French, and our (French) hosts were adamant they would not speak German with their neighbours. That said, Switzerland is still a place where someone can give you a lift to the shops and ask 'which language would you like me to speak in?)
But back to farmhouses. Having breakfasted handsomely on homeade jams - pear, rhubarb and walnut, peach - but not the farmer's home brew (an ancient law allows dairy farmers to make one litre of home-made brandy per cow, ostensibly as cow medicine) we set off on a cycle tour of Lake Morat. A gentle ride took us past marinas and stylish middle-class houses nudging carefully manicured shores.
That night, after an achingly rich sunset, we sank happy but exhausted into the hay
Eoghan's Dad gets down in the hay!
. It was not long before the heavens opened and thunder crashed. Eoghan spent a sleepless night frantically working out the stastical likelihood of our barn being struck by lightening and the hay going up in smoke, carrying us with it. He had it worked out so minutely (down to which loose cable would cause the first spark), it was almost an anticlimax for him when his dad and I woke refreshed and unharmed. Taking advantage of a soggy following day, we drove across to the border with Liechtenstein. In a farmhouse set amongst misty pine-woods overlooking the tiny princedom we feasted on home-made cheeses, jams, yoghurts, cakes and breads, before walking along the ridge of the mountain range on whose slopes our barn rested.
On our last day of three (the ruddy -cheeked, bare-footed and strawberry-blonde trio of kids giving us just one more reason to stay) we woke at dawn in the midst of a cloud to the sound of cow bells and, after brushing the straw from our hair, tramped through the sodden grass to the farm house where the farmer, Mattaeus, was loading the milkchurns. Hitching a ride down through the forest to the bus stop, we left this little corner of Switzerland still swathed in mist.
A train and bus ride later (through the seemingly endless and rather dingy San Bernadino tunnel) we landed just north of Locarno (Villa Maggia to be exact), in the Swiss/Italian Alps where the Schlaf in Stroh outfit was well organised but sterile, so we decided to pitch our canvas home again. Locarno was pleasant enough, but there was no escaping the feeling that this was Italy with the vitality missing.
So why not try Italy...?
