First up, The Jungfrau. This is a mountain peak billed as "The highest point in Europe". I highly doubt that, but it was pretty big. In fact, If memory serves, Mont Blanc, a very close neighbor tower over it by a good thousand feet or so. The blatant false advertising is not the odd part of Europe, that is more of an American Specialty, no, the first oddity was seen on the doors to the bathrooms in the mountain. (I say 'in' because the "toilettes" were indeed inside the mountain. You see, the train travels through the mountain to get to the summit. Throughout the trip, the passengers are able to de-train and soak up the view from the windows constructed into the rock. It was indeed an amazing site and one of the photos is a photo from the window looking down. Guess which one.)
I had noticed the signifiers for male or female bathrooms or WC as the French say, and they were different than Americas, but these were even more different. They have the same basic shape as the other WC signifiers I saw, except these were painted a lovely color. Such care taken for such a simple sign. I like how they have a certain chic sense about their apparel.
Next up we have batteries. Now, I am unaware if this feature is available in the USA, but I fell in love with it. I needed some batteries to supply juice to my camera for all of the oddities I felt I was going to encounter. When I went to extract a battery, I noticed that they had individual little breakout perforations for each battery. I know just about everyone in this world (well, maybe not the world because the Swiss seem to have it right. Maybe in the past they had troubles with batteries and that is why they came up with this amazing innovation) has had the problem of only using two batteries in a pack of 4 and then having the others roll around on the floor because you had to open one giant backside in order to get out 2 batteries. Rather than being mildly infuriating to put in batteries, it was a real treat. The design is perfect.
Keys: Just look at them. I wonder if in the olden days (70's) the Swiss had keys like the Americans, but changed over to these interesting pieces, or if they have always been like this? What's the advantage? I just don't know.
Relatedly: Doors. US doors close flush to the frame and rest on the jam. In Switzerland, the majority of doors I saw were not perfect rectangles like US doors. Instead they were like a US door with a panel on the front that sticks out on the opening side. This panel rests on top of the frame while while the rest of the door goes into the frame and rests on the jam. The only reason for this that I could gather was that having the lip added a little bit more sound deadening qualities. It looks kind of cool as well, that may be part of it too.
Since that door lead to the bathroom, lets talk potty talk. All of the home toilets have these gigantic flusher plates mounted to the wall. Whether to remind you to flush or to just give you a large target, I like them. When you flush, you can watch the little plastic batter board move up to it's resting position. Once it reaches its resting potential, the flush is complete. There is some sort of satisfaction about watching that little plate move up like a physical progress bar.
Now, this next picture is not odd because of the right triangle shower, this is more of a Lieber oddity than a Swiss oddity (although they do hail from Switzerland). What is odd about this is that all of the tubs I saw (3) were ridiculously deep, some were even on a kind of pedestal. The Swiss must love their baths because these are serious tubs. You could wash a bear in there and still have to worry about the water going above his head. Giant.
Cars. There was a huge population of bicycles and scooters. The train stations were filled with two wheeled vehicles. A large number of the bicycles were old Peugots and Biancis and the like; stuff that fixed gear dreams are made of. But that is a digression. The scooters were mostly of the Chinese sort with a couple Vespas thrown in for good measure. But the cars were interesting. I saw a car that had two wheels in the front with one in the back. It seemed a little illogical, but I suppose I am just used to the tradition of tricycles. I saw scooters with full coverage that were made by BMW. They looked like little cars but they had two wheels and sounded like a very large angry squirrel. Then there was the car pictured below. What an interesting vehicle. I was only able to get this aerial view and it was gone by the time I figured out how to get down there so I don't know many details, but doens't it look great? It looks like the speed cars they have on the Bonneville speedway. I think it is a scooter with a rocket body. Most of the cars were small and Audis were like fords over here (in terms of quantity, not quality). Max drives an Opel and it beeps whenever you are close to something.
How about Geneva? Well, they lay claim to the worlds tallest fountain. It shoots a thousand someodd KM into the air and sprays the unsuspecting visitors. It is pretty large and as you can sort of see from the picture, it can act as a beacon to guide one back to the train station (it was the only way I found my way back to the train station. I found it really hard to navigate those streets for 2 reasons. 1. They are not labeled very well and 2, they curve without you knowing it. On 2 occasions I thought I was heading one way when in fact I ended up just going in a circle; ending up right where I started. I did a lot of walking). There were some neat old churches with some mosaic art. I know nothing about these churches other than they looked neat. There was a nice area where you could get on top of a courtyard next to the church and look down on the city. This church was in an area where there was no car traffic allowed and the buildings were very close together. Also, the apparent mascot for recycling is a hedgehog.
The trains were great. I like them loads. The seats are comfy, you get a wonderful view of the countryside and they go just about everywhere you would need or want to go. On the train home from Geneva, I went to the upper floor of the car and was surprised by a wonderful little playground right in the train. It had a slide and among other things, monkey bars. It was fantatstic. There were some kids playing on them so I had to be coy with my picture taking. I didn't want to look suspicious by taking pictures while kids were playing. That blew my mind. I can't believe that if I wanted to, I could play on a slide while I traveled to Frauenfeld.
And finally, the winner of the bizarre drink award: Rivella. Apparently this sweet, yet dark drink is made with lactose. It is a fun, different flavor to drink when you are in the mood for something sweet but not really sugary. Speaking of food, you know the very unappetizing pre-made sandwiches that you can get at gas stations and airports and other places where quick meals sell? Well, in Switzerland (as in other parts of Europe as I hear) these types of sandwiches are delicious. My fist experience with one was a gas station and it was made up of a good baguette, butter, salami, cheese, tomato and cucumber. It was quite good and I was told it wasn't even a very good one. I had more of those throughout the week and indeed, they come in better varieties and they are quite good. I wish I could get those here. I wish America would realize that food is something to be enjoyed, not just consumed.
Well, I think that's about it folks. If I think of anything else I'll let you know.
1 comment:
You lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky bastard.
I see that you've caught the Europe fever, just like me. Wanna bike acrosst it, someday?
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