It’s Been 2 Weeks Since My Last Confession

Well, only if you consider this blog a confessional. Since I last sat down to confess my travel sins, I’ve visited two more countries. Three if you count transits.

After France, my next stop was ‘home’ to Poznan, Poland (via Germany). You’ll be positively thrilled to hear that the paperwork I was waiting for was sorted in my absence and I’m now officially recognised as existing again. Lucky that - I was beginning to feel faint around the edges.

The big news in Poland of course was the Lot Airlines aeroplane that landed in Warsaw the week before - sans wheels. Apart from the general excitement of it all, the reason this is significant is because the pilot flying that craft is the good friend of my step-family. Fame by 600 degrees of separation is still fame. Happily for the world at large, I shun fame and therefore shan’t bother to make anything of this connection other than to give major kudos to El Capitano. Since I was in France at the time of the accident and officially holidaying, I didn’t see any of the news. In Poland it was much harder to escape. Which isn’t a bad thing because actually, the footage and interviews were quite interesting. Managing to land that plane with barely a bump was quite extraordinary. Of course, he says it’s all in a day’s work and is very nonplussed by all the attention but there’s at least a couple of hundred people who had busily bid farewell to their loved ones who will be forever grateful that he is jolly good at his job (and flies gliders for fun). It led me to wonder how many critical decisions were made in those moments of overwhelming fear. How many relationships were saved? How many were ended? How many lives have now been redirected? How many have a greater confidence of being on the right track? What realisations did they have as their life flashed before their eyes? We are told by philosophers and pop psychologists alike to live each day like our last. Easy to say, hard to practice. I bet that NY-WAW flight reminded a heap of people about the importance of that. As well as all that deep stuff, it also made me wonder about the truth of those allegations that mobile phone interfere with the plane's equipment. Unless it was mobiles that stopped the landing gear popping out, they didn’t seem to have much of an impact on one of the most delicately executed emergency landings performed in aviation history. (Allegedly, just before landing most of the passengers were texting their loved ones madly, or perhaps telling their bosses how they really feel about work or whatever else was weighing on their minds at that moment. Probably not the fact that they'd left the car service too late but possibly wishing they had gone to that party last week.)

With my faith renewed in pilots world-wide, I barely gulped when it was again time fly. This time to Geneva (via Germany). (Germany gets a big workout with three transits, but no love - the airports are not worth blogging about.)

Switzerland is a fascinating place. It’s land locked. Surrounded by alps. Traditionally neutral in times of strife. Maintaining that neutrality economically by not being part of the Eurozone. Mostly self-contained. Very punctual and well organised (despite being bordered on two sides by the chaos that is France and Italy). It’s both globally irrelevant (small population, economy) and the centre of world affairs (through the UN and banking). Geographically and by its nature, it would seem that if any country in Europe was going to have a strong and unique cultural heritage it would be Switzerland, but somehow it escaped getting it’s own language. Some argue that the Rumantsch Grischun is proper Swiss. Sure it is officially one of the four national languages but less than 1% of the population speak it and within it there are also several dialects. There is Swiss German, except that there isn't really such a thing as they speak different Swiss German in each canton. And the cantons aren’t very big. And it’s only spoken in the cantons that are in the bit of Switzerland that’s German Switzerland, not the French or Italian bits. Despite the fact that culture and language are usually so intertwined, in Switzerland there is no common language and yet there is still an undeniable and distinctly Swiss culture. You can’t mistake it. Even if you didn’t pass a checkpoint you’d know if you were in another country. Italy is very different from the Italian part of Switzerland, even if it’s only separated by a train platform. I’m sure the same is true of the French and German bits. Switzerland gave me a very strong sense of people just getting on with what needs to be done. And so with everyone just getting on with it instead of letting a little thing like communication get in the way, it’s little wonder things work so well.

Geneva is, as I’m sure you all know, in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Luckily for the Swiss, they didn’t adopt the cultural norms that go with the language on the other side of the border. Things work in Switzerland. Things are easy. Places are open. Signage is regular and reliable. Hoorah! Geneva pleased me. OK, so it’s not as pretty as Paris, although I’m not exactly sure why not. The backdrop is made up of alps, and a beautiful lake, the streets are clean and tidy, the individual buildings are mostly attractive. The only thing I can put it down to is uniformity and geometry. The Parisian city scape is quite uniform - most buildings are shades of the same colour. And Paris has a more geometric layout than Geneva. Maybe it’s just my eye. Prettiness scale and opinion aside, Geneva is a pleasant city. It’s soooooooo easy to get around. Whether by public transport (the hotels hand out free public transport cards) or by foot, even for a first timer it did not present any problems. Of course the best thing about Geneva is that I had two friends there, one of whom I caught up with for lunch (John) and one who I met for fondue and (outdoor!!!) ice-skating (Yvan). And thus, on the basis of ice-skating alone and abetted by fondue, Geneva has been added to my list of cities I would be happy to call home. There’s something quite adorable about a city who’s number one tourist attraction is a big jet of water that started as a simple engineering necessity to stop the city’s pipe network from blowing a gasket. Those Genevans are my kind of zany.

Although Geneva was a hard act to follow, the rest of Switzerland didn’t disappoint. I caught the train from Geneva to Zurich. Bear with me a minute while I have yet another nerd-alert moment and get excited about the public transport. From buying a ticket onwards, it was all just so simple and pleasant. The ticket centre had helpful staff - a miracle in itself. The trains are lovely - clean, comfortable, sympathetically designed for the over-loaded traveller, well sign-posted and all announcements are in French, German and English. The bliss of traveling without struggle cannot be overstated. And naturally they are all on time. Swiss trains are also helped somewhat by the beauty of the landscape they traverse. Glorious alpine vistas. Chubby cows contentedly chewing in lush meadows. Fields of vines, sunflowers, corn, cabbage. I know cabbage doesn’t sound romantic but it really does look very twee when there are rows of plump, round, deep green cabbages in a field. And of course, there are river valleys cutting dramatic swathes through forests and the obligatory pert little villages dotting the countryside. If I was a fairytale creature, this is where I’d choose to live. No wonder the hills are alive with Julie Andrews.

Like Geneva, Zurich is perched on the edge of a big lake and surrounded by mountains. Zurich by foot is wonderful - lots of lovely winding, cobbled streets, lined by elegant restaurants and shops, leading you around and around like a labyrinth. For a compulsive walker and window-shopper, it was heavenly! Overall, Zurich is a bit prettier than Geneva but my lack of German made it harder to find my way around and read menus, so Geneva is winning livability by hair’s breadth. Of course, “more difficult” is relative and getting around is still miiiiiiiiiiiiiiles easier than anywhere else. I had the added benefit of my intrepid guide (Sally) who without a word of complaint, facilitated both the sightseeing and menu negotiations. And, even more fabulously, facilitated a couple of rolicking nights out (made all the more fun by her excellent friends), one of which ended in salsa dancing in a bachata bar in the red-light district and a very bad hangover the next day. So bad that even fast food wasn’t going to cut it as a cure. Pineapple (????) turned out to be the winning curative but alas, all that did was temporarily stave off the pain. Eventually the pain came but I think that was just because I had to leave Switzerland. It’s never the champagne.

And so I returned to Poland for a couple of days where it is so cold my face wants to detach itself from my skull every time I step outside. A few francs poorer but some very happy memories and new friends richer. A week well spent, I say.

Geneva's best-known tourist attraction:

One of Geneva's streets in the beautiful old town:

Zurich:

Zurich at twilight:

Shortly before my face fell off from cold:

France - it’s just so hard to explain

In fact, it’s not just hard to explain. It’s a downright conundrum. How can one explain a country that has the highest cheese and wine consumption in the world and a lot of smoking to boot and yet one of the lowest rates of heart disease? How does a country that works a 35 hour week and goes on strike every second day maintain its status as one of the world’s largest economies? It just doesn’t make sense. And yet, it works for 63 million French people. One against 63 million isn’t great odds so I doubt I’ll convince them to change their ways but it hasn’t stopped me railing against them.

France is a very pretty country. No disputing that. I do dispute the images published in scenic calendars of Provence - looks nothing like those images (someone needs to sue someone for false advertising), but it is pretty nonetheless. But why does everything within it have to be so darn hard? My favourite car reviewer, Jeremy Clarkson, often rails against and about the French. Their cars don’t work, their GPS systems go on strike whenever you want to turn them on, their road rules are too European - he goes on. And it’s all very funny when he writes about it. I assumed, since he is British, that he was exaggerating. It’s no secret there’s no love lost between the Frogs and Brits. But after 2 weeks in France, I’m starting to side with JC. More than that, I think I may have uncovered the mother of all conspiracy theories. More on that in a moment.

Firstly, let me tell you about our trip beyond the chateaux and balloons. We set off with some trepidation for Auvergne - cheese country. The trepidation didn’t relate to cheese, but our lack of GPS (though if Clarkson is to be believed, it wouldn’t have mattered whether we had one or not - if it was French, it wouldn’t have worked regardless). We also didn’t have a map and Simone had declared early about her map reading skills. Since I was driving, navigation would be reliant on what I could remember from google maps, reviewed that morning. In the end, none of our challenges related so much to us as much as they did to the way the French do stuff. Where to start?

Well, firstly, Simone wasn’t completely incapable of reading a map at all. I’d never been so pleased to discover her to be wrong. Once she knew where she was and which direction we were heading, she proved to be an excellent navigator. No thanks to France’s signage. Or lack thereof. Very, very large lack thereof. Evidently everybody knows exactly where they are going and therefore signage is irrelevant.

Sure, we made it harder for ourselves by not buying a road map. But even a road map does not help when there are insufficient signs to orient yourself against. And before someone goes all Man Versus Wild on me, let me just point out that using the sun was not a viable option - it rained almost the whole 2 weeks.

As well as the signage issues, there are a couple of other little French foibles relating to roads. For example, tolls. Loooooooots of them. And no e-tags either. Pay when you roll up - unless of course you’ve discovered that you’re in the credit card lane, which when you eventually back out of, you realise why you made the mistake. The sign telling you it’s a credit card lane is on the side of the lane, which you can only see once you’re alongside it. How could we miss it? Another example, unmanned petrol stations. While we’re talking petrol stations, let’s add, no (or at the very least, extremely sporadic) highway services. Unmanned petrol stations are probably very efficient for the business owner - no pesky people to pay wages too. Excellent. How does one pay at such a place with cash? One can’t. Ergo, if one’s card is not liked by the machine, one can’t get petrol. Anyone else see a problem here? Sporadic services.....when they appear you may not be able to use them..... any takers want to work out how the story is likely to end....? Well, don’t worry, we didn’t run out of petrol. We’re two organised, highly capable women so we were fine. But again, no thanks to the French.

Other issues include a lack of public toilets. Scratch that. Let’s tell it like it is and say that the sanitary facilities in every place we’ve been to in France are substandard when they are available but mostly they aren’t. Average grade achieved by French toilets was a C-, buoyed by the fact that we occasionally found one in a restaurant.

So, back to cheese country. Interesting segue because our adventure in cheese mis-fired thanks to a tummy bug picked up by Simone. I’ll spare you the details but it made for a slightly tense drive to Provence as we tried to make sure rest stops could be timed to fit need to the aforementioned sparse services. The countryside in this part of France is beautiful. Lots of ancient villages nestled amongst craggy hills. Simone and I agreed that cheese country warranted a return visit for further exploration and cheese consumption. Alas, lured by the promise of the abundant beauty of Provence and the Cote d’Azur, we left behind the cheese uneaten and drove on. And on. And then some more. It turns out it’s a long drive to Provence.

Arriving in Provence late in the evening, we still had our joyful expectations in tact when we checked in to our excellent hotel. What we hadn’t counted on was that the next day was All Saints Day. Guess what that meant. Oh, something fresh and new for France - everything was closed. As we wandered around Aix-en-Provence and found most things closed, it occurred to me that the town looked nothing like those scenic calendars claimed. Sure it was pretty, but hardly the stunningly charming pictures I saw in the calendar. Given everything was closed, we elected to go to the movies that night and saw Ides of March.

The next day, given that All Saints Day was over, we decided to drive through the countryside to explore the allegedly quaint villages dotting the countryside. By now, you won’t be surprised to hear that they were also full of nothing. Closed nothing. So, word up - if you’re traveling to Provence, try another season.

Day 3 we had a little more luck back in Aix and found some markets. Since the town now had life, it’s calendaric quality rose a smidge. We were however, completely sick of rain so we headed south to Nice, where there are 300 days of sunshine a year.

You know where this is going don’t you? There may be 300 days of sun but none of them coincided with our visit. In fact, just for fun, the region decided to have unseasonably heavy storms instead. Undaunted, we did what one does when the going gets tough - we retreated to a day spa for some serious pampering.

Scrubbed, oiled and refreshed, we emerged ready to take on Nice. But not before almost anything that could go wrong went wrong at the hotel. I won’t even bore you with the details but after all the nuisances France had thrown at us, I’m not sure why I was at all surprised. On balance, its perfectly reasonable (in France) that a 4 star hotel only provides room service for 5 hours a day during what they believe to be established and immutable dining hours. Evidently wanting to eat at 3.30 is simply ludicrous. What was I thinking?

As the spa had been done and the tough kept coming, the next day we decided to leave the country and hop across the border to Monaco. Now this, I’m pleased to say was a success. We had an immensely good time and only got a little cold and slightly wet.

Monaco was not as grandly glamourous as I expected. There were some beautiful Belle Epoque buildings in Monte Carlo (and lots of heart-breakingly beautiful super cars and yachts), but the old town, including the Royal Palace were quite modest. The old town had the usual European Old Town charm but the palace was the biggest surprise. The surprise wasn’t that it was closed (it was closed but this was no longer a surprise). The surprise was that at least the exterior was very plain, quite sombre and not at all royal looking. It could have been an ancient country keep or even an old jail. Unfortunately, Al and Chaz weren’t in, so we couldn’t go to tea. Probably lucky. Tea would be awfully tense after that whole forced wedding controversy thing. Must say, the souvenir photos don’t tell a happy tale. Assuming the royal photographers would have taken thousands of shots, the fact that they chose the ones they did as presumably the best ones does not bode well for the couple.

I didn’t realise until I got there just how small this country is. Two square kilometres. With 400 law enforcement officers (police and royal guard). If they all joined hands, they could almost encircle the country. But small geographically doesn’t mean small personality. Lots of very rich and beautiful people, high-rises, an interesting custom of putting streets underground to save space and of course, the very famous F1 track, which we did a loop of.

We also had a great time seeing the wonderful selection of aquatic life in the Museum of Oceanographie. Jacques Cousteau was curator there for some 30 years and when you get a glimpse of the world beneath, it's easy to see why he was so very passionate about it. Those fish and things are really quite fascinating.

Now, the best for last. On our tour, we stopped at the medieval village of Eze. Oh my, how beautiful! Its a little time capsule, albeit with some tourists dandering about. The architecture is magical. Pedestrian only, the village houses a permanent population of 42. The buildings’ ages span the 1300s to the 1700s, with the “new” church being the youngest building in town. Perched on top of (yet another) craggy hill, the town is picturesque from every angle and exploring each street just provided view after view of a place time forgot. You can almost smell the history in the air. Not in a bad sanitation kind of way (although they only got running water in the 1930s) but simply that it seems so untouched. There is no visible imprint of modernity. The very stones felt alive with untold stories. One day, I would like to return and spend a few days there to find the stories.

And so I wrap up this blog on a high note but with one thing still requiring explanation. The conspiracy theory I believe I have uncovered which relates back to that long standing English-French rivalry. Having lived in England for a couple of years, I know it’s strengths and foibles. And when you distill the long-held rivalry between the two nations it largely comes down to 2 things: food and weather. I’ll agree that the French make better wine than the English but in terms of variety and quality of food availability (including the production of artisan cheeses), I don’t think there’s much between them. The French have been better at marketing themselves (refer to earlier observation about misrepresentative calendars) but in reality, England isn’t that far behind. Which leaves weather and that is a true sore point for the English who suffer terribly from Seasonal Affective Disorder and flock by the hundreds of thousands to warmer climes to try to make up for their lack of sunshine hours. That the English weather is terrible is a fact that cannot be tampered with. That the French have better weather is, as I have revealed, a myth. Therefore, I think it’s an obvious conclusion that for the last 1000 years, the French have just done a marketing snow-job. Their weather is no better - they just pretend it is to annoy the Brits.

So, if you fancy a European holiday in late October/early November and want to enjoy picturesque countryside, eat lovely artisan produce and imbibe a delicious, locally-produced beverage, go to Gloucestershire. The weather can’t be worse than we’ve had in France, things don’t close down for days at a stretch and you can be assured of being able to read the menu. Plus, for us Aussies, they drive on the correct side of the road in GB.