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| Talk,
Thomas Garland,
16 January 1999 | |
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I once decided to visit Switzerland, I set myself a budget of a hundred pounds for a ten day tour, I was young and didn't know any better. That didn't leave me with many options, I had to sleep out in the rain on one occasion and there was only one affordable way to cross the country and that was to rent a Swiss rail bicycle. It had a lady's frame, three gears and a little rack on the back, ideal for potting around town for the day and the only way for me and my pack to cover the 500 Km over to Geneva. This turned out to be wise choice, though I did come to realise why the Dutch were famous for cycling and the Swiss weren't.
I picked up my bicycle at St Galens' railway station, I could return it to any other station. For a week I cycled through landscapes and villages that were picture perfect and I mean picture perfect, you see it is only in Switzerland that the post cards you send home look exactly like the real thing: green alpine meadows, snow capped mountains, well kept flowers in window boxes and neat piles of fire wood. Even the cows looked very pretty and the industrial estates were immaculate. Eventually I got tired of it all, like a beautiful sunset that never sets, it started looking a little cheap and tacky. All I ever seemed to see was the Switzerland I knew from chocolate boxes and puzzles, I'd even find myself humming the theme tune to "Heidi".
But if Switzerland was so nice it wouldn't be very interesting. I'm reminded of a friend's most memorable impressions of Sweden, that it had the best car parks in the world. Fortunately Switzerland is a very odd place. For one it is famously peaceful and neutral since the dawn of time, yet it is armed to the teeth. Every bridge I'd crossed was mined, any invader would soon be overrun by the Swiss coming down from the hills on their Swiss army mountain bikes armed with their Swiss army knifes and much much more. Every home comes with its own nuclear bunker and until recently the women of Appenzel couldn't vote. But most of all, as in Lynch's "Blue Velvet", there is something nasty beyond that white picket fence, and I like that. When everything looks right one can only assume the worst, how else could one explain the absence of unsightly weeds and road side junk.
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