SGS: Activities
What you do in Switzerland will, of course, depend on where you go. In the cities, go shop, and take lots of pictures of the pretty olde worlde ambience. No guide needed. All very self-explanatory*.
In the mountains, you can climb (in summer) or ski (in winter). Everything else is peripheral. Resort towns such as Davos or Zermatt will of course offer other activities - spas, sailing, horse riding, ice-skating - but they are there merely for show. You're there for the mountains. Get up them - by fair means or foul.
Your Swiss host or companion may try to convince you that the various cable cars, funiculars etc are there only for the enfeebled, but don't listen! For merely an eye-watering amount of money, you can reach heights undreamed of by couch potatoes such as *coff* me!** And in winter, should you not be initiated in the mysterious rites of ski or snowboard, you might be able to slide down on a toboggan - utterly terrifying, yes, but addictively so.
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*Oh, all right, I will tell you one thing. I have developed a perfectly superstitious belief in Swiss shoes. Ever since a stroke of luck on my first visit, I have made a point of shoe shopping there**, and have always done extremely well. (On this recent trip, Beloved managed to find three fabulous pairs within an hour - nothing short of miraculous for someone who normally cannot be dragged into a shoe shop until the point of extreme podiatric desperation, and then struggles to find anything remotely suitable.) It's probably not that they're better made, or cheaper, than shoes elsewhere. I suspect it is, rather, that the Swiss shopping experience is more conducive (calmer than London, better stocked than SA), and the range available more classic, less trendy - hence more to the tastes of those, like us, who prefer not to replace our footwear every season.
Beloved would add, here, that anything Swiss made is necessarily made better. He may be right. It's also possible that Swiss shoes are made to be sturdier, given local conditions (i.e.: mountainous).
** This may sound like perfectly ordinary female behaviour, but I'm actually not an avid shopper normally, and not particularly hung up on shoes.
*** Nonetheless I would like you all to know that I CLIMBED THE JAKOBSHORN ALL BY MYSELF. See those capitals? I'm THAT PROUD.****
**** And would like you further to know that the fact I spent the next day nearly comatose and very unhappy had NOTHING to do with my lack of fitness for this exercise. It was the dodgy bratwurst. The bratwurst, I tells ya.
9 comments:
Yep. That tricksy bratwurst will do it to ya everytime.
Jakobshorn - well done. Was this a hike-type climb?
But I'm distressed: two ** references, with no footnote in sight? *Seriously* dodgy bratwurst I'd say.
Whoopsies. The footnote was there, the asterisks were missing. All fixed now.
The Jakobshorn, truth be told, was a very gentle climb - ganz ruhig, ganz langsam, as I insisted to Beloved I'd do no other kind. But consider:
(1) The summit is 1,000m above Davos, where we started our climb. A whole kilometre. When you get to the top, you are looking down on all the surrounding peaks. It's high. And it's really steep in places (though not so as to require proper climbing equipment or such).
(2) There's not a lot of oxygen up there. It's hard work.
(3) We did it on our last day there, after three days of previous climbing. On the one hand, I was warmed up, on the other... tired.
(4) When we got to the top, we met a cheerful Yank* who was completely incredulous that we'd climbed "all the way from the boddom!" (As opposed to from the cable car station halfway up, or the gentler climb from a valley alongside, for instance.)
So I'm proud of my hideously underexercised self.
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* Remember we discussed whether there was a non-Southerner-excluding term? Turns out there is. Not sure you want me to use it though.
Sounds like a fine place and "time." Climbing and/or hiking in the 2000m altitude range is not for the faint-hearted, literally and figuratively. Amazing what the absence of a few oxygen molecules can trigger. The view from the summit would be worth the effort I am sure.
Even with a cheerful Yank in the vicinity.
As for choosing between Yank and a more generic alternative - wow. I need to give it some thought.
The Cow definitely recommends avoiding the preserved meats. Or any meats if you take The Cow too literally, but we remain divided over that issue.
That's odd. Friend of mine from Basel refused to do anything but shop for shoes when we got to Amsterdam. He was so pleased to get away from the shoes in Basel.
And he knows his shoes, this man. When I did manage to get him to the Rijksmuseum, he had nothing to say bout anything but the shoes in Rembrandt's work.
Greener grass, I guess. Though the Rembrandt story does suggest a man obsessed (or possessed), and clearly we cannot trust the opinions of such a person.
I think he dreams of shoes. It did rather ruin my experience of A'dam, having this voice whispering: 'those shoes are a fashion emergency.'
After all this about perfect Switzerland, you try to convince us that there's 'dodgy bratwurst' in Switzerland? Nah, nah, nah.
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