So Suzanne e-mailed me out of the blue with a great idea. “Let's go to Switzerland!” Delta was having one of their annual fare-dumps on tickets to Zürich, and she was phoning round trying to recruit the rest of her family. “But I've got my prelims coming up...”, I protested. “Well, this can be your reward!” So the day after my committee had decided I was worthy of trying for a PhD, we were on the plane with her father and brother.

Needless to say, anything practical like learning a little more German had not been foremost in my mind. I’d done no more than skim the guidebook (cardinal sin for Mr. Anal Retentive), and the fact that this country had four national languages was only beginning to seep in. In the end, we coped fine with Suzanne’s excellent (and my adequate) French, her Dad’s occasional attempts at Spanish, and the almost completely English-speaking Swiss.

Zürich gets dissed, but it’s a pleasant walkable place. Pity it was snowing when we arrived. I was chuffed to discover the location of the Dadaist Caberet Voltaire, and the house Lenin stayed in during WWI. We found a street vendor selling the ancestral ur-hot dog (bratwurst on a crusty roll), and realized once again the USA’s talent for neutering other people’s food. Exhibit B was Swiss McDonalds, offering tasty McRaclette, McFondue, and (my fave) McVacherin-Fribourgeois. Surreal.

One of the many fountain-adorned squares in Zürich. S is standing on a thoughtfully-provided auxiliary dog fountain.

Cultural highlight was the Kunsthaus, where I saw my first Giacometti. Isaac and I were absolutely blown away, and I then and there resolved to see the travelling show when it came to New York (which I did, eight months later.)

Off to the Ticino, the Italian-speaking part of southern Switzerland. The Swiss holiday there, but nobody else does, it seems; we saw nary a foreigner. We were in Lugano, scenically wrapped around the shore of Lake Lugano, just across the water from Italy. Picturesque villages perched on the hillsides, fabulously expensive holiday homes, and a slightly more adventurous cuisine involving a spiral grilled sausage on skewers. On the whole it’s like Italy except expensive, well-organized, and clean. (A brief detour through northern Italy confirmed this shocking stereotyping.)

And then to Lausanne after a few days, stopping for the night at Sion (not the most exciting place). We did the Crumbling Castle tour, enlivened by a flock of wheeling black birds. “Les oiseaux, comment s'appellent-ils?” I asked excitedly. “Les corbeaux,” replied the guide. Crows, my foot. I guess you can’t expect the locals to know their birds. (Probably Alpine Choughs, I worked out later).

That must be Italy over there.

Not a lot is more pleasant than cycling along the lakeshore on a sunny day.

All this time large amounts of cheese and chocolate were being consumed; these seem to be two of the Four Swiss Food Groups (meat and potatoes being the others). After two years of bad cheese in the USA, it was pretty welcome.

In Lausanne, after stressfully attempting to navigate the central city by car, we finally found a hostel; S and I did a bilingual good-cop-bad-cop and bargained down our room to a reasonable rate. Then off to see the one Swiss attraction I'd heard about before, and never thought I'd get to for real: the Musée de l’Art Brut.

Art Brut is art created by convicts, wacky spiritualists, mental patients and the like—folks without formal artistic training. Some of it was bizarre beyond belief, such as the deeply twisted paintings of Henry Darger (now largely owned by the Folk Art Museum in New York— go see!) The museum is a marvellous old building, crammed with amazing stuff over multiple floors, including the garret-like Darger collections, and a bunch of “dolls” that look more like rotting corpses than anything else. What a find.

Lausanne seemed a livable city, if a bit vertical. We were amused to find the multiplex with bilingual dubbed versions of “Dude, where’s my car?” (“Eh mec, elle est oú ma caisse?”, and “Eh Mann, wo ist mein Auto?”, in case you were wondering.)

The Kurtzers with a bust of “Giorgio Washington”, sent back to Lugano by some patriotic expatriate Swiss.

Also worth noting is the sad addiction of the Swiss to razor scooters, about a year after they became unfashionable in the US. Isaac and I kept rival counts of scooter-riders, appropriate (i.e.: kids), and inappropriate (middle-aged guys) — it was running almost 50/50. Tragic. Here’s a case for UN intervention if ever I saw one.

Back to Zürich, completing a circuit of a the country in nine days. Too much driving and not enough chilling, but hey, these were Texans, from a state where people drive fifty miles for lunch. The obligatory Swiss Army knife and watch purchases on the Bahnhofstraße, more church sightseeing, and it was time to go. I’ll be back though; there’s some hiking I want to do. And Golden Eagles to see.

Lausanne from the top of the cathedral, a storm coming down Lake Geneva. I got up really early so I could run around and do my Obligatory Tourism without annoying the others, who weren't morning people.