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Chamonix and Switzeland |
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Finally I’m home. What could be more exciting than a week in Switzerland? If all you do is what I did, stay from morning till night at a customer and work, then there is no excitement to be in Switzerland, I could have been anywhere else on earth. This was in fact my training in business software programs. During this time I had no chance of reading my email, which makes things much, much worse. So I’m so glad to be home. There was only one day when I really felt I was in another country, on Sunday. I arrived in Switzerland on Saturday, and I spent the weekend in Geneva with some marvelous people and very good friends of mine, Luz, a former Piece Corps Volunteer and her husband Marco. Marco is a lawyer, but his burning passion is the mountains. He has been almost everywhere where a human being could get in the Alps. He is even a guide in these mountains, and almost every month he has customers to get to the inaccessible peaks of the Alps. He eats alpinism on bread, a vertical ledge of several hundred meters is like a stroll in a park for me. And his definition of skiing is totally different than mine. He gets to the top of the mountain and when he looks down, he sees his skiing slope. “What you see is what you get!”. Madness! What would such a person like to share with his visiting friends? Of course the mountains! So we went to Chamonix to see the French Alps, Mont Blanc and other peaks that are worldwide known. Don’t get wrong impressions, we were not climbing. I very much like the mountains, but I am a little past the time when I could climb Mont Blanc. My right knee, my left ankle, my … ok (I will send the list separately), all tell me that I have to slow down. But a walk in the valley, in the nice luxurious mountain resort, on a sunny day, is what I could define as time well spent.
For lunch we went to a little cozy restaurant. In front of it there were tables and chairs, directly on the snow, and people sat there. Even if there was a sunny day, the air was very cold, and I thought it is a little odd to summon such bravery just for the pleasure to look at the mountains outside. Later it was explained to me that the umbrella like things placed near each table were in fact heating ovens, and the bold customers were actually not so courageous.
Geneva and its surroundings, thanks to my friends, is a wonderful place to visit. So wonderful that a description in words is totally powerless. Dorel Jurcovan 6 Feb 2005 |
The view is breathtaking and Marco spent a lot of time
with his litany of peak names and glaciers, how to get there, what are the
dangerous points and how to overcome them. He pointed to me different
jutting ledges and the more he talked, the more I got confused about what is
what. I have to look on internet to know the names of these peaks, if I go
there again it is polite to recognize them, we were once formally
introduced. Marco spoke with such enthusiasm and abandon that I almost
began to feel the elation that he has in front of this marvel of the
nature. I admire and I envy him: young, lean, handsome like a model, with a
beautiful wife and a charming 6 months baby, capable of living a totally
consuming passion, what else could someone want in life?
Chamonix is a place for everyone to visit, to look at
the hotels, to window-shop. If you want to live here, then it is a
different story, you have to be really loaded. I do not think you can have a
room here for less than 130 euro ($168). A nice hotel, very well located,
charged 250 to 590 euros per night ($325 to $890). Generally, when I visit
a place that I like, I go to hotels and I get a card with their address and
contact information; this time I didn’t bother.
We sat inside and our table happened to be near the
door leading to a corridor to the toilets. Our bad luck was that the door
didn’t close very well, it remained stuck and no one bothered to close it
completely. Marco silently went up several times to close the door, then he
began to tell people to close the door. When a lady went to the toilet, I
wanted to be of help and I shouted after her “Poussez fort, poussez fort”,
which for me meant “Push hard, push hard”, push hard that damn door, because
it gets stuck if you don’t push. To my surprise, Marco and Luz began to
laugh loud and nothing could stop them. Then they explained me that
“poussez fort” is the advice you give to someone sitting on a toilet seat,
to do a good job while being there. This is something you can say only
between good friends and I run the risk that the lady will give me a slap on
my face when she comes back. Probably the lady found me “simpa”, a nice guy
and she included me in the list of her best friends, because the slap didn’t
materialize.
The same day in Geneva I witnessed a natural phenomenon
that happens rather rarely in Switzerland. The winters are cold, but not
cold enough to freeze the Geneva lake. The coldness is increased by a
northern wind, “la bise”, which brings very cold air from the North Pole.
When this wind blows very, very strongly, which was the case when I was
there, the lake has rather large waves that breaks on the shores, and the
water spray is carried by the wind on all objects on the shore, freezing
instantly. The result is astounding, a glimpse of Siberia in the heart of
Europe. Trees have an inch of two of supplementary ice bark, and huge
icicles, large whitish stalactites hang from the branches. The benches had
3-4 inches of ice 
coat. The boats in the marina got covered by a thick
layer of ice, weighing several tons, and many boats sunk. Even the birds
suffer; the oil from sunken boats stains the feathers, the smeared feathers
do not protect the bird any more against the cold and the bird dies. Cars,
parked illegally on the street running along the shore, got cast in an inch
of ice, and there is nothing to do to defrost them (police announced that
they will not fine the drivers, they were punished enough by nature).