I just spent five days in Glion sur Montreux, a postcard stamp village in the Swiss Alps, located about one hour’s drive from Geneva. It was a unique place to have a business meeting. After traveling aboard Lufthansa Airlines from Washington to Frankfurt, with a connecting flight to Geneva, I took a commuter train to Montreux. In Montreux, I boarded a cog rail train, which took me directly up the side of the mountain to the Hotel Victoria, the venue for the meeting. Although I’ve made numerous trips to Switzerland over the years, this was the first to a destination outside of Geneva, amazingly enough. A few observations drawn primarily from this and previous trips to the land of clocks, cows, cuckoos, and army knives follow.
A Few of My Favorite Things
1. The highlight of the travel en route to Switzerland had to be the self-cleaning toilet seat in the men’s room in the Frankfurt airport.
Immediately following the automatic flush, a cleaning device emerges from behind the seat, which transforms itself from an oval to an oblong as it rotates under the device, which emits a blue liquid. Being behind a locked door allows you to stare at this latest technological miracle without having to worry about other people frowning upon your adolescent fascination with the convenience. Obviously, I’ve made too many connections through Frankfurt if this is the kind of thing that now pushes my buttons. My first trips in the late ‘80s were to visit my son Stephen while he was in the neonatal intensive care unit in the 97th Army General Hospital. Now I go to watch the magic toilet seats. Something is definitely wrong with this picture.
2. Once in Switzerland, you have to love the fact that the trains and buses run on time.
People say you can set your watch by them, and it’s the truth. I did overhear one woman complaining, however, because her train left the station at 10:19 rather than its scheduled 10:17. Somebody’s head is sure to roll!
3. Chocolate. Chocolate with cream. A variety of cheeses. Cheese serve with chocolate and cream, smothered with raspberry sauce, and a free coupon to any Swiss hospital for a complimentary angioplasty.
4. The Hotel Victoria, first constructed in 1869
*At 700 m altitude, the Victoria offers exceptional views of the snow-covered Alps, which descend to the shores of a shimmering, placid Lake Geneva. It’s a truly spectacular sight.
*Gourmet meals in the hotel restaurant, which also serves as a training school for Swiss chefs
*Museum-quality masterpieces on the walls of the bedrooms, in all the meeting rooms, and throughout the lobby and hallways
*Plastic bag dispensers strategically located on the manicured grounds for picking up after one’s dog, although I’ve never witnessed a Swiss dog doing its business in public. Frankly, I’m surprised that such a thing would be permitted.
*A bidet in every room, perfect for rinsing out exercise clothes after a workout on the stationary bicycle
*WiFi, even though you shouldn’t desire such a distraction in a place like this
*Fresh apples and nectarines in bowls and flowers in vases on every floor
*The most accomodating hotel staff you will ever meet
5. The peace and tranquility and sheer beauty of life on the side of a mountain
6. The International Finishing School, which is located directly behind the hotel. The School, according to the sign I saw posted at the front gate during a walk, was founded to help tourists who have trouble cleaning their plates at the hotel restaurant, who do not make their beds before leaving their rooms, or fail to pick up after their dogs.
A Few of My Less Favorite Things
1. Everything about the Franfurt airport, with the exception of those nifty toilets
2. A curious Swiss predilection to recreate things in miniature
En route to the hotel from the cog rail station, the traveler passes a model of the village of Glion, complete with a mountain stream. There is something slightly askew with the collective psychology that delights in this kind of activity. I suppose it’s a fine craft and obviously a quite skillful thing to construct. It’s just that it makes me a bit anxious, the way I feel when I watch movies such as the Wizard of Oz and the Lord of the Rings, or when I see a circus clown in the flesh, up close and personal.
3. Pulling a large suitcase up the side of a mountain from the cog rail station to the hotel, while kicking myself for not bringing my suitbag
4. Discovering, after all these years, that the hills are not alive with the sound of music
People, we’ve been duped, unless you are willing to count the sound of the church bell that tolls several times a day, and all those ring tones from cell phones.
5. Order, timeliness, and all matter of perfection, with the accompanying low tolerance of the opposite of any of these
The one exception I observed was the prolific amount of stylized graffiti on warehouses and other buildings along the train route to Montreux. A chink in the armor perhaps?
6. An extention of #5 above: Roger Federer
It’s not so much all the winning, but rather how simple he makes it all look.
7. The Hotel Victoria
*No matter how one negotiates the shower set-up, a guest cannot avoid getting the floor wet or being partially exposed to the cold air at various times during a shower. There is a half-door attached to the wall, and a detached shower head with two aluminum anchors where it can be affixed, neither of which is high enough for a 6’ human to settle under comfortably. Holding the shower head securely in one hand while soaping up and shampooing with the other is not only unsatisfying, but I also usually end up with a ceiling much wetter than the floor.
*Advice to the restaurant staff: Enough already with the cream!
8. Based on a small number of observations of a non-scientific sample of the Swiss in action, my hypothesis is that folks tend toward a high degree of outrage over the most minor of infractions.
For example, on the train ride back to Geneva, there was an incident in which a would-be thief entered the train at one station, lingered in the aisle for a few minutes while pretending to be interacting with his phone, then suddenly removed a bag from the overhead bin directly above me. As soon as he realized he had a woman’s compact in hand, he dropped the bag, and quite nonchalantly exited the train, before disappearing down some stairs. Although I didn’t realize exactly what was transpiring until it was all over, perhaps because I had stored my bags elsewhere on the train and was half asleep, the event, all-in-all, seemed to me to be rather harmless, even a bit amusing.
Well, the bag’s owner obviously thought otherwise. She gave her traveling companions and others in the vicinity an ear-full for a good 20 minutes. She went on an on about this “fool,” questioning both his mental state and his audacity, then called the steward so she could repeat the entire story again. Many more passengers became engaged in this drama, both commiserating with her “tragedy” and questioning the current state of Swiss affairs. I suppose such an unusual event is a bit shocking for this place, but in the end no one was hurt and everyone departed with their personal effects.
9. Aggressive Birds in Search of Food Inside the Geneva Airport
On my return home, I was eating a croissant while leaning against a large clock (of course) in the Geneva airport before passing through security and making my way to the gate. After one bite, I heard some noise behind me, and turned to see three tiny birds, which had alighted on the top of the clock. Before I could take a second bite, one of the three dove at the croissant, broke off a section, adroitly retrieved it from the floor, and took off with his treasure. At first I was outraged that such a thing could happen in an airport! Then I thought about the incident on the train and decided to get over it and move on.
10. All that neutrality (soon to be a Broadway musical)
