In April, my daughter Catherine and I went to the United States (Hagerstown, Floyd, Annapolis). For the first time in forever, there was no business to be done: no moving, no paperwork, no nothing; just pure visiting and vacation – so very strange.
In August, I traveled to Switzerland (Bonaduz, Chur, Zurich). It was all business: because my boss would be away for several weeks, and because we had new people in our department, it was best if I was on site: meet all the new people, crack the whip, catch up with friends.
Although the destinations were extremely different, there were a surprising number of similar experiences, but some were better than others.
Getting there
The trip to the United States: walk to the tram, tram to the Gare St. Roch, train to the Marseille, shuttle from train station to airport, Lufthansa plane to Frankfurt, then another Lufthansa plane to Dulles Airport. I won’t do that route again: the flight to Frankfurt took us slightly east, but we were traveling west; the flight was about an hour longer than if we had flown out from Paris.
At Dulles airport Catherine was startled and intrigued by the drug-sniffing German shepherd. At the luggage carousel I was told by a Lufthansa agent that my bag was missing. My name and bag number were already on a list, and it would be delivered as soon as possible. I would get the bag two nights later, dropped off on the front porch at about 0100; I left $20 under the doormat for the driver. In the meantime, lacking clothing, my sister Courtenay drove straight from the airport to Old Navy (t-shirts, underwear, sweater) then to Marshalls (pants, 24-pack Ralph Lauren socks).
The trip to Switzerland: the easy, high-speed train itinerary, Montpellier to Mulhouse to Chur, (only two train changes), last traveled in November, 2021, no longer existed. Now the itinerary was a mix of TGVs and regular trains: Montpellier to Mulhouse to Basel to Zurich to Chur. It took longer than previously, with more changes, and because my company was paying for it, I was in second class. Nonetheless it was easy and enjoyable: no baggage check, no security, no passport control despite crossing a border, and best of all, no lost luggage.
Winner are the Helvetians, because nothing beats train travel.
Book store
I had last been to Pile of Books in Zurich four years ago, pre-covid. This time, on my first Saturday in Switzerland, I took the train to Zurich, where my plan was to swim at the Hallenbad, visit to the English language bookstore, eat Mexican food, and last, shop for gifts at Fabrikant.
I was the only shopper in Pile of Books, well stocked with many books that looked interesting, but nothing I really wanted to buy. As the time remaining gets less and less, I must decide what new books to read, as well set aside time for the books I want to re-read. The new-read criteria are quite high. I browsed, several times pulled a book out, leafed through it, put it back. I was about to leave when I asked if they had any poetry by Mary Oliver.
They did: Devotions – The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver. Yet as I paid for it, there was something not quite right; the book was over 400 pages, large for a collection of poetry, although it was collected from all her poetry, 1963 – 2015. It wasn’t until I got back to France that figured out what I didn’t like. All the other poetry books are my shelves are slim, usually less than 100 pages. I already have Oliver’s Blue Horses, less than eighty pages; the same is true for the other poets: Billy Collins, Emily Dickinson, Wilfred Owen, among others. And that’s how a poetry book should be: thin – rich in words, they are a small portion of high protein filet mignon meal for the brain, the heart, the soul. An anthology is too much: the tall stack of pancakes, smothered in what passes for butter and syrup, along with a Denver omelet, side of bacon, side of sausage, biscuits with gravy, and bottomless cup of coffee.
The English writer J.L Carr understood the benefit of less is more for poetry books. In his biography of Carr, Byron Rogers writes:
[Carr] was the publisher of tiny editions of the great poets (‘mind-enhancing micro-tomelets’, the Times Literary Supplement ponderously called them), who had informed them that his was a business venture based on logic, people being unable to take more than sixteen pages of poetry at a time.
– Rogers, Byron. The Last Englishman: The Life of J.L. Carr. Aurum Press.
Anthologies are like a music band’s greatest hits: someone has decided (do not use the word ‘curated’ else I will find you and piledrive you into the ground) what should be in, and this means something must be left out. The risk here is that something great was overlooked. Better to buy the individual books written over the years, not the double album of greatest hits.
The experience at Wonder Book and Video was quite different. It was not in a cute store in quaint, clean Zurich, but instead located in a dingy strip mall in gritty Hagerstown. The store could be a setting for a story from Bourges: young people in black, with tattoos, work under old yellow neon light; there’s a labyrinth of books on shelves, books on the floor, books out the ying-yang. But there was a lot of gold in that ore. Catherine’s haul of books spanned Meditations by Marcus Aurelius to Single Dad Sheriff, picture of hunky guy on cover. Among others, I got out with the Pevear and Volokhonsy translations of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, some Nevil Shute books, and The Spirit of Liberty – Papers and Addresses of Learned Hand.
Winner are the Hillbillies. It’s very hard to compete with Wonder Book and Video.
Swimming pool
Like bookstores, when traveling I look for places to swim. If you swim at a public pool in a strange city, you’re a native for a day, or at least a few hours. You’ll share the waters with locals, see how they go about locker rooms and showers, pool design, get an insight not available in museums and cafes.
In Maryland and Virginia there are no indoor pools in rural areas, and since it was April, there was no outdoor swimming.
In Switzerland it was better. At the Obere Au sports complex in Chur, there is a fifty meter outdoor pool, shallow at both ends, somewhat deeper in the middle. I was there on a Saturday, cool and cloudy, and I had a lane to myself, which meant that during my sometime not so straight backstroke, I didn’t risk bonking into anyone on the other side of the lane.
In Zurich I swam in the Hallenbad, a ten minutes walk from the train station. It was indoor, but the hall was light and airy, three stories high. As I stretched on the deck, a man in a wheel chair rolled by. His legs stopped at the knee. He stopped his wheel chair, put on the brake, slid off the chair down a ramp, clearly designed just for that type of access, then started swimming.
Although indoors, I found it much nicer than the pool at Obere Au. There’s a good picture of it here.
The last swim was in the Walensee with Andras and Silke. Intending to sail, we went out on his sloop, but there was no wind. Making the best of it, we motored to the far side of the lake, where the mountains come straight down to the water. We tied off to some trees growing out of the rocks, and swam in the cool, green water. It was perfect on that hot, windless day. Afterwards, dinner was a slab of schnitzel, fries, beer.
Winners are the Helvetians, with three different swimming venues.
Work out
At Chur’s Obere Au sports complex there is not only a pool, but a work out center with weights, machines, and stretching rooms. I never worked out there. According to entrance window lady, I had to either present a letter from another sports club that was a member at another club, or attend a Wednesday orientation. I told her that I had worked out at Enggist, a nearby sports club that had been closed by covid; that wasn’t good enough. I could not attend the orientation, so no luck.
In Maryland we went with Courtenay, Julie, and Jacob to their cross fit workouts. The class was run by Sue, tall and lean, who lead us through a series of stations: box step-ups while pressing a medicine ball, squats, planks, battle-rope (I think done well, the generated wave looks like a sin wave, but I tended toward flatline), among others. It was hell, but just what we needed after all the car and plane sitting, and all that wonderful Mexican food.
Winner are the Hillbillies for the cross-fit workouts with Sue.
Boat
In Annapolis we took a short ride on Bill’s Picnic, a working boat known as a flat-bottom deadrise crawdad catcher. Although sunny, it was cool and blustery in the shelter of Mill Creek. We stayed inside and didn’t venture out to the Chesapeake Bay, and didn’t even stay out for long. In Switzerland, as mentioned above, because there was no wind, and made do with a good swim spot.
No winner here: in both cases conditions were not favorable.
Eating
There was good, if expensive, Mexican food at La Taqueria in Zurich, otherwise there’s nothing exceptional about dining in Switzerland. There was an abundance of restaurants serving delicious, spicy Mexican food in Maryland and Virginia.
It wasn’t even close. Hillbillies.
Souvenirs
The haul from North American was small: Flatiron spices from Dane and I got the crabs in Annapolis t-shirts for the gang back in France.
In Switzerland it was better. As always, the Coop food store in Chur had jalapeno peppers, and I dropped 30 Chf for a kilo. Fresh jalapenos are hard to find in France. During my Saturday in Zurich, I went to Fabrikant, which sells high quality, high priced goods: stainless steel fountain pens, Japanese garden scissors, Estwing geologist’s hammer, A4 sized oak document organizers, and embroidered beechwood needle holders. I got one gift each for Annie, Kieran, Andre, and Catherine, and managed to keep it under 150 CHf. Last, and cheapest, were stones from Walensee near where we tied off to swim. These join the rocks collected from Alaska, Greece, and places in between.
Winner: Helvetians
Looking out the window
An essential part of travel and life.
Hillbillies, always from a car:
- Driving down the diagonal of Virginia on Interstate 81, it was no longer winter but not yet Spring. The trees were still bare, no hope of seeing the incandescent light green leaves of late Spring/early Summer. But there were long views of these old, rounded mountains, so different from the mountains of the Cevannes, north of Montpellier, or the younger peaks of Switzerland.
- We stopped to look at the eclipse, where we had 80% coverage. Nephew Dane had given us the safety sunglasses, which gave us a view of a black disc covering a white disc, and it was hard to process that this was almost 400,000 km away.
- At a home in rural Virginia there were a number of signs in the front yard, the largest advising passers by: Don’t vote for Joe and his Ho.
- Towards Annapolis: the very beginning of the mid-Atlantic coastal region: not the South, not New England – it’s a flat, subtle landscape.
Helvetians, always from a train:
- Along Lake Zurich: large homes, both traditional and modern; old hotels, and swim clubs. The swim clubs had beaches, wooden floating platforms out on the lake, some with diving boards.
- South of Zurich: cornfields and cows.
- Against the deep blue sky, para-gliders spiraling down from the peaks.
- Mowed lawns, clean streets, no graffiti.
- On the return trip through Geneva: as the train skirted Lac Leman, the view was sloped vineyards running down to the water and grey mountains behind wisps of clouds, on the other side – exceptional.
Cities
Their names are sort of an onomatopoeia of their characters: two-syllable Zurich is precise and business like: let’s get to it, what time is it? Annapolis takes a while to say, no hurry, a bit humid, how are the crabs? Both are on the water: Zurich overlooks fresh water Lake Zurich; Annapolis sits where the Severn River meets the Chesapeake Bay: fresh water that soon turns to salt. Zurich has banks, Annapolis has the Unites States Naval Academy. Both would be excellent places to live, but Annapolis has the advantage of being the home of the best man in the world.
Neither here nor there
Back home we have our own versions of hillbillies and Helvetians. There’s not the prosperity and security of Switzerland, nor is there the violence and uncertainty of the United States. There are pools and bookstores, habanero peppers and places to work out, but not family and friends, which is why we always welcome and appreciate their visits. Every place is always a compromise.