Liverpool-Manchester-Geneva-Lausanne-Biel-Basel-Bern-Lausanne-Basel-Köln-Brussels-London-Liverpool

Such is the route of my latest ten-day trip - mentioned  are those cities where I had/have to at least change vehicle or mode of transportation. It is left as an exercise to the reader to work out how much of this was planned at the outset. Ok, well, as you may guess from my previous post, everything up to the second visit to Lausanne was actually scheduled. That's when the volcanic ash hit Europe. This post is being started while I am still in Switzerland and I am hoping that it does not require any revision on account of the coming 16-17 hours to be spent on trains. 

C (a friend from Berlin) and yours truly spent a nice weekend checking out some of the climbing places around the city of Lausanne. Turns out that there is actually quite a lot of them. We did some sport climbing, some bouldering, some alternative exercises, and more sport climbing - as evidenced by these two images.

Of course, being in Switzerland, I have a story about the proverbial swiss mentality that is worth relating. It was Saturday afternoon, and we were having our (packed) lunch in some small town or other, in the region of Wallis and in full sight of several mountain ranges. The weather was outright gorgeous - yes, that's the same system that was being held responsible for not raining out the volcanic ash. We had parked C's van on what we thought was the local Marktplatz and were sitting on a crash pad nearby, chatting away and enjoying the scenery. Along comes a lady who asked whether we were living in the house behind us and informed us in French that this is private parking. One should only park in spots marked with white lines fifty metres on - not those marked in yellow. Fair enough, we asked for five minutes to finish our sandwiches and were going to leave this place. As far as we were concerned, the private parking looked public and was not marked properly anyway, in addition to there being more than enough room for everybody. We had never heard about the evidently local rule of white vs yellow lines either. As the lady went into her house, she suddenly turned vicious. This time, she yelled in German (C's car has German plates). What were we thinking breaking the law like that, and, did we not know that this kind of misbehaviour was totally unacceptable in Switzerland. She did not really know about Germany, but in Switzerland one can't just break rules like that and she could not imagine it to be any different in the neighbouring country. This particular point was repeated several times, I guess she was worried that the severity of our infraction was not sufficiently clear. Off she went and we preferred not to be there when she came back in five minutes time. I must admit that it was a very impressive display overall, as well as an excellent route to an early heart attack. 

A second story unfolded the next morning (Sunday), when the Geneva airport displayed my flight as being canceled. I packed everything on the off chance of being able to catch a train, with the alternative (and original) plan to go climbing if the immediate train ride failed. Ha. Little did I know. Upon arriving at Lausanne Gare, there was a crowded-out ticket counter with only one question: "how do I get across the channel????" Well, I suppose there were a few other ticket-buying passengers who were dealt with rather quickly, leaving the staff to answer their favourite question of the day. The thing is, not only were there no flights, but on top of everything else, some of the French rail workers appeared to be on strike (more or less unpredictably on a time scale of more than one day) such that a journey through France could not be guaranteed. In any case, the trains from Paris to London were all fully booked. The first sign of light was a first-class ticket through the channel, leaving on Wednesday night from Paris (CHF 541 ~ £340 just to get from Paris to London, ugh!). I winced enough and argued that there was no way that my University was going to refund a first-class ticket. Using three languages simultaneously, another second-class journey was found via Brussels - which I am currently on. This Plan B had the additional advantage that it was scheduled to be 12 hours quicker than the Paris route. And cheaper. 

PS: so, in the end, almost everything else went as planned. The Eurostar from Brussels to London was some 45 minutes late, but everything else worked out wonderfully. After 19.5 hours door to door on trains and platforms with hardly any sleep I had to crash for a while at home. Taking it slowly from there. Back to regular life tomorrow … 


PPS@21:40: Today is really not my day. Feeling totally shattered from the train ride, I was just having some dinner and working through my extended list of chores at home when my kitchen cupboard pretty well fell off the wall!!! Gaaaaaaaaaa, time to hide in bed.