So my time in Switzerland is drawing to an end. Very sad times indeed.
However this will not be the last post about this delightful country and this is about what I have learned about Christmas in this part of the world.
So – they don’t have Father Christmas/Santa Claus!!! No local hall visits from the Merry Red Man for the Swiss children.
The Santa we all know and love
The Swiss have a Christmas on the 6th December (St Nicholas’s Day) and at work, a lovely lady came around with a trolley and gave us a Grittibänzen:
Grittibänzen – Swiss sweet bread Christmas men!
Instead of Santa, they have two ‘Christmas Guys’ – Samichlaus, who is similar to the big FC, but is more like a monk wearing red. He performs similar duties as Santa with gifts and is generally a stellar guy. The other guy is Schmutzli – he wears black, has a dark beard and follows Sami around, leading a donkey usually. Despite what you might think, he is good and helps Sami do stuff, he’s just a bit dull.
Samichlaus und Schmutzli, he’s meant to wear a monk crown thing, but Americanisation has led to him being more similar to Santa.
So this is lovely. But there is a dark side to Christmas around these parts. Luckily in Switzerland this is not a thing, but nearby in the Black Forest and Austria and other German-speaking places, there is a thing called the KRAMPUS. He is the evil anti-santa who chases, captures and tortures children who are naughty.
I kid you not, this is terrifying and if I was young enough to expect presents from any portly bearded men, I would make sure I was pretty effing good.
Seriously creepy
It’s not even funny how scary this is, worse than anything from Halloween. Imagine if you thought that because you had had a tantrum in Toys Я’ Us that this demonic thing would come out of the Black Forest and carry you away. That could affect your personal and social development!
ARRRGH
Anyway that’s what I’ve learned about other Christmasses. Apart from that, it has been lovely, with Gluhwein, trees everywhere, christmas markets and good food.
Going skiing this weekend – SO EXCITED ABOUT SWISS SKIING!
Almost three weeks ago, we had a wee race, a HITCHHIKING race. Folk were keen to do this after hearing how easy it was to hitch here and of course I was keen. Keenidy keen. Also meant an excuse to visit the stunning city of Lausanne. Very nice place indeed.
Happy Leaves
So it started by team formation – team Scotland (Kiera and Myself), Team Yorkshire (Leo & Georgie), the other team underwent several line-up changes before being Team Fifty Two (Ben & Vivian because they both are from latitude 52 and that sounds better than Team-Everywhere-South-of-Yorkshire).
One half of Scotland showing how to get places
So we went to the brilliant Pratteln station and hitched one after the other, the ‘race’ started as soon as you get in your first car, rules being no public transport apart from inner-city trasport. Fifty Two left in about 20 mins, Yorkshire left in the time it took Scotland to sneak around the building, take some shite photos and spy on them – i.e. 2 secs. We also made friends with the poster from the Erotic Megastore and watched two fat hairy lorry drivers go into the shop together. Hmm
Mrs Erotic-poster
So then we had a rubbish time standing there for 1 hour 30 mins rejecting every lift that was offered to Zürich. Eventually two guys – an old guy and his freshly-off-the-plane nephew who was driving picked us up. They were on their way to Geneva so took as all the way! Lucky or what! The old guy spoke French and looked like Santa. A Serbian Santa! Madness. The other guy spoke English a bit. It was like a linguistic rainbow in that car – Serbian, English, French and German, luckily Kiera speaks much better French than me, so all good. Good craic in the car and the sharing of chocolate. We arrived at Lausanne in the outskirts and met an English IT guy on a business trip, he helped with directions and was really friendly, I enjoyed his chat about the cable-shop he had just been to, enthralling. He came with us to the cathedral, but didn’t stick around all day as I thought he might.
Oh! The cathedral! Yeah, I suppose we won. Though only really on a technicality as our time of travel was slightly shorter than Fifty Two. A trophy was waiting for us when we arrived which I engraved and WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Scotland Wins!
The other teams:
Fifty Two: Did extremely well! Got two lifts, one to Bern and one immediately after getting out of the car to go to Lausanne. They were actually exploring Lausanne for about 2 hours before we arrived due to this. I guess this means they did better than us, as I said it was a technicality. So their initials were also engraved.
Yorkshire: HA! Exactly what was expected of these two happened. They got five lifts, only got to Bern and arrived in Lausanne at 8pm by train. They went to some wee villages, had a drink in a military base with an enthusiastic woman who made them signs. They then got to Bern, found a nice salami and bread shop and had a lovely lunch in this beautiful city watching the bears. After unsuccessfully trying to hitch in the dark on a busy road, they hopped on a train and joined us in Lausanne.
A bit about Lausanne. Lausanne is nice. Standard Swiss city situation. It has a lake – Lake Geneva which almost feels like the sea, actually some impressively sized waves. We walked along that, which was awesome. Will got soaked by a freak huge wave, hilarious.
Shittily jumpingView from the Cathedral
All 12 of us stayed in a lovely hostel, it had a free breakfast, very posh. Got drunk here at night and had a great meal in this random place. Felt like a school trip. Spiel und Spaß!
Went to Cathedral several times at several light-levels. People left all through the day gradually. When it was just five of us we decided to do several crazy things so as to make more fun.
Crazy Thing #1 – Give shoulder rides and run around like idiots
Crazy Thing #2 – Throw leaves up in the air only to have them blasted in your face by the wind.
Crazy Thing #3 – Go to an aviary
Crazy Thing #4 – Draw a giant face in the leaves
In the midst of the crazinessLausanne StreetThe tower we watched someone get trapped in, then climb and totally ruin a couples romantic moment HAHAView from the towerGoodnight Cathedral. Goodnight Lausanne.
Finished off by myself and Alina walking up the hill behind the city, climbing a tower and seeing the city at night in the heavy rain. Speil und Spaß indeed.
So this is likely a bit more patchy than Part 1, seeing as it was more little day trips, or trips involving a combination of public transport also. Hitchhiking in the Autumn/Winter rain is a lot less enticing than standing in the Summer sun. Also I have already wrote about previous trips, so this will be about the actual hitching. Anyway here’s some bits and bobs.
So I introduced Georgie to hitching! Woo! We hitched from a service station at Pratteln to Zürich one fine Saturday to go for a bit of sightseeing and to go to an AWESOME attic rave.
Lovely Pratteln Services with the awesome shops/ restaurants etc etc
It was dead easy, we got offered many lifts but eventually a guy was going past Zürich, so he gave us a lift to the big service station at Baden. He was Bulgarian and was a consultant on his way to Italy, he kept up an interesting social commentary of the attitudes and politics of various European countries, interesting man he was, but not a good driver. He also had a fit car. After 5 mins at Baden, we got in the car of a very shy Swiss guy, I don’t think his English was great, but he seemed to just not want to talk much, hmmmm. Anyway we went to Zürich and had a BLAST in the attic.
So, what feels like AGES ago, we went to Liechtenstein, it was a great trip and was very much ALL about the hitching as Leo had never done it. I wrote about this a while ago, blah blah blah. It was great and everything went smoothly.
Hitching to Kandersteg for the hike up to Blüemlisalphütte was a little more rough. It seemed a great idea to hitch after work on a Friday and camp there. However, we didn’t get a lift for AGES and after a nice sunset it got dark, and in the dark everyone looks like murderers so we did not get a lift for ages. We stood under the street light at the Pratteln service station, which I love, for about two and a half hours. We said to ourselves, “If the next car doesn’t pick us up, we’ll give up and go catch the train.” the last car passed and we started walking. But as we did so, a people carrier stopped and a Senegalese and Polish couple who were going to Lausanne gave us a lift! AWESOME STUFF. All the way to Bern! Woo.
Walking around Bern at night
After laughing while standing in a place called ‘WANKDORF’ we got a tram to the centre. Lovely. There was some event on, so we walked around in our rucksacks getting free cheese and wine in fancy art and jewellery shops HAR HAR HAR. Took some photos around, got more food then got a train to Thun.
Mapping on the train to Thun. Spiel und Spaß!
After our EPIC HIKE, we hitched out of Kandersteg, catching all the traffic coming from the car-train-tunnel-thing, got a lift first with a doctor who took us to a trout farm, where there were people fishing in the lime-green water.
The road from Eva’s carThe aweome land of Trout
The second lift was a cool young couple who took us once more to Bern, they had been to Skye, which was awesome and had some cool chat. We were pretty knackered though to be honest, so our chat was probably pretty crap. That’s the thing about hitching is you pretty much HAVE to chat, that’s the deal.
To get some items for Oman, I went shopping in Freiburg and hitched from Weil am Rhein service station, this was a great day out, very relaxed and stuff. Sun and free food – a good combination, plus I got my boots! The first lift was this French guy, who dropped me off on some random as heck highway toilet stop. I waited here for over an hour, harassing all the old picnicking motorists and eventually a young Medical student coming from Grenoble gave me a lift out of pity. WOO PITY! She was driving to the north of Germany and was very grateful for some company I think, she was very nice, cool person.
Random Google-image image of Freiburg, with the wee street-canal-things. Didn’t take my camera…
I’m going to write more about this in the future too, but we had a hitching race! Kiera and myself (team Scotland) vs Georgie and Leo (team Yorkshire) vs Vivian and Ben (team Latitude 52 (everything south of Yorkshire)). This was awesome fun! We won, but only really on a technicality. I’ll do a new thing about this later, Lausanne was brilliant – really cool place! But I’ll say now that we got a lift with a Serbian version of Santa and Georgie and Leo had a crazy adventure. Good fun!
I suppose I had better write a wee bit now about Oman and preparations for this odyssey into the Empty Quarter.
First a small quote from Wikitravel about the Empty Quarter:
“Wikitravel cannot prepare you for something like the Empty Quarter”
Ha!
Anyway…
Kit
So I’ve started making some purchases from the list that BES sent out a while ago. To make things cheaper I have ordered from the internet and sent it to Scotland, also I hitchhiked to Freiburg (in Germany) and had a grand day in the sun eating free cheese from promotions and shopping for desert boots and stuff. So it looks like its going OK. Two things kind of worry me:
The bag – The one I have us HUGE and is meant for Norway, so not really idea, though I am very fond of it
The camera – I am going to get an SLR I think, but these are effing expensive hmmm need to choose carefully I think…
Also, the boots I got were pretty good ones (I think) – so worth it. They are Mammut LTH Men’s mid-cut boots. They are pretty good, though when wearing them in I got some pretty fantastic blisters. It has since not really been a problem. But it was a great walk in the Jura’s around Waldenburg anyway, here’s a picture:
In the Autumnal Jura Mountains
Vaccinations
Luckily I already had a few of the jabs for other travels, so the only one I had to get was Rabies. In German this is Tollwut which translates literally as ‘Great Rage’ – a very scary disease. Also the most expensive one, and since I am in Switzerland I just had to suck it up. So I went over four weeks to the Swiss Tropical Health Institute and got my arm stabbed with a needle.
Fun.
And.
Games.
Fitness
Pretty important for this trip I think. So I’ve been doing exercisy things recently. Been making the use of the Roche employee’s swimming pool a lot, which is great! Also been running around Basel, which has been good, I really enjoy these as they are just like fast strolls really, so you get to see more of the city.
Also at the weekends I’ve been trying to do fun-active-type-things. I went for this awesome hike last weekend that was extremely exhausting, but it was fantastic! So fantastic that I wrote about it! And another photo too:
On the side of Blüemlisalp
Fundraising
This is the most important thing I think, quite an expensive trip this I’m afraid. So I have been working! Nothing too exciting really. Following other guys endeavors has been interesting – open houses, inspirational talks, band nights, selling art, selling kindling etc etc
ROCHE N’ ROLL.
Mine has been less cool. Doing chemistry at Roche, working in team of scientists making drugs and blah blah blah. Can’t say much or show any photos because everything is confidential. I wouldn’t want a Novartis employee reading this hahah. Just think of shed loads of chromatography, glassware, colourful liquids, evil cackling, lightning, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, lab-coats, very dangerous chemicals. Here’s some relevant Google-Image Images:
This is my lifeI wouldn’t tell chemistry jokes, I don’t want to be Boron
Additionally I’ve been applying for funding grants, saving money by shopping in the less expensive Germany, saving on transport to travel by hitching and back in the spring I was selling buoys on Ebay. I really enjoyed this:
These are strewn all round the coast… (might write about it later)
So that’s that. The briefing weekend is soon, that’ll be a blast.
A Bolas About 