A long walk

You may have noticed that I’ve been doing quite a bit of walking lately. In particular I’ve been hiking with a group of people training for the Oxfam Trailwalker, a 100km walk that you have to complete within 30 hours, which basically means walking all day and all night until you’re done.

I wasn’t planning to participate myself, just to be one of their supporters, but one of the team members injured herself so last week I was asked to walk in her place.

As I wasn’t expecting to walk, I haven’t done any of the long training walks, so I am not at all confident in my ability to walk 100km. But that’s okay, not all team members have to finish the 100km, so I’ve set myself a target of completing 50km. If I can do that much, I’m happy, and if I can do more, that’s great too.

The walk itself is this weekend in Morvan national park in France. It looks like a lovely place, and should be a nice weekend away no matter what. The whole thing is in aid of Oxfam, in particular their Robin Hood Tax campaign (a tax on financial transactions).

One of the reasons I originally decided not to walk is that my left knee gives me trouble when I do lots of exercise. It was particularly bad when I was skiing, but also acts up when I cycle and hike. So last night I went to see an osteopath to see if he could see anything wrong.

Well it turns out that my pelvis is out of line, so my left hip was higher than my right, artificially shortening my left leg and putting pressure on my knee. I could feel it myself actually once I lay flat. My ankles didn’t touch each other, for a start. So the osteopath eased it back into place with all sorts of pushing and pulling and prodding and, presumably, magic, since it immediately felt much, much better.

Today I’m quite sore – my hips feel very stiff, and I’m a little worried that the left one has moved back a bit overnight. But my way of walking has noticeably changed – I used to put my foot down flat, but now I am definitely rolling my foot from left to right as I believe people are supposed to do. I don’t know whether this visit will have fixed things, but it has certainly changed things. It takes about 48 hours to settle down and feel normal, just on time for my big long walk.

If you think this sounds like a very long way to walk and if you like Oxfam and what they stand for, we’d be very grateful for your sponsorship here.

Hot property

You may have heard that Andy and I are buying a flat in London (with the very generous support of family). It’s oh-so-lovely and I can’t wait to move in. It’s a funny story, really: we actually viewed this flat in about November 2009 and loved it but it was just too expensive so we reluctantly decided not to even put in an offer. Then we were browsing RightMove, just for the fun of it, because I was showing Andy quite a fun flat that had been featured in the Guardian, and Andy spotted the flat up for sale again but £25,000 cheaper!

So we swooped. It may yet fall through, but it is looking good so far. It is so lovely to think that I could move back straight into a wonderful new flat instead of having to move from one rental place to another while we start the long, tedious process of viewing flats again.

But what I really wanted to tell you about is Switzerland. Did you know that hardly anyone here owns their own home? Apparently the home ownership rate is about 40% but I think I have only met one person so far that owns their own home – I’m told people in the Italian area and older people inflate the figures, but most standard Swiss people just rent.

There are a few reasons for that. At first, people will tell you that there just isn’t a culture of home ownership here, and why would you bother, but dig a little deeper and you’ll find that the real reasons are very high prices and crazy tax systems coupled with a rather complex way of arranging mortgages.

I don’t know if this is verifiable fact, but someone told me that 90% of the property in Switzerland is owned by the top 10% of earners, and because property doesn’t come up for sale very often the prices are extremely high.

What’s a bit more crazy is that people here don’t ever want to get close to paying off their mortgage, because when they do they get hit with quite a bit of tax. Their mortgage payments are tax deductible, and at some point (not sure precisely when) you start having to pay income tax on what you would be paying in rent if you were renting the property. Isn’t that ludicrous? So apparently people set up 99 year mortgages, and any time they get close to that magical threshold, they re-mortgage and renovate their home. There is also a property tax of about 0.3% on all your assets (depending on the canton), which could add up to quite a lot if you fully own your own home.

This crazy system also means that Swiss homeowners approach mortgages in a whole different way. It’s apparently quite common to have three separate mortgages on your home – a big chunk will be interest-only, and then you might have a fixed rate mortgage and a tracker mortgage. Apparently this cushions you from big changes in interest rates, but it seems pretty darn complicated to me. I’m finding getting my head around one mortgage quite enough thank you.

The concept feels alien to me: people in their fifties and sixties, with full families, renting apartments in blocks of flats. I suppose it’s that my experience of Ireland and England is that people live in houses, not flats, unless they live in big cities, and we generally aspire to own the place we live. It just makes sense – I am afraid to even tell you how much Andy and I have spent on rent since we moved to London in 2008, and we’re never getting that back.

Perhaps aspirations are changing: a report from Halifax this week says that most youngsters are not intending to buy anytime soon. But I have little sympathy for Sarrah Laspa, quoted in the report, who seems never to have ventured outside Zone 1 – she lives in Borough (which for you non-Londoners is very central and undoubtedly very expensive) because she worries that, being single, “it would be pointless living in the middle of nowhere” a bit further out (which, you see, would enable her to save up for a deposit because her rent would be cheaper). Such wisdom. I often worry about poor Andy, living in green fields with not a person in sight, way out in Balham, but somehow he seems to find the occasional passer-by to speak to.

Back to the Bernese Oberland. On Sunday we went to Lauterbrunnen valley, which is an absolutely textbook example of a U-shaped valley – I’m surprised the place wasn’t full of Geography students taking notes.

From Bernese Oberland May 2011

Unsurprisingly, this means waterfalls. My guidebook describes the valley as a “mini Yosemite”, with something like 72 waterfalls dropping down its steep sides.

First up, Staubbach Falls, just a five minute potter from Lauterbrunnen (the town). Staubbach is a 300m cascade of water tumbling straight over the side of the valley, barely glancing off the cliff on the way down. You can climb a metal staircase that takes you to a fenced-in ledge almost under the waterfall, with lovely views of the completely flat valley floor (the lower picture above was taken from there).

From there it’s a half-hour walk to the Trummelbach Falls through some really lovely meadows. I mean, at first I thought they were just plain old fields but (I’m about to have a Fotherington Thomas moment) oh! The flowers! I wished I had been wearing my Heidi costume but I frolicked in the fields nonetheless.

From Bernese Oberland May 2011

I thought Staubbach was supposed to be the main cool waterfall in Lauterbrunnen but Trummelbach wins hands down. It’s inside the mountain, and is the only waterfall draining the “mighty glacier defiles” of the Big Three: the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau mountains, all about 4000m high. (Up to) 20,000 litres of water per second come thundering down, bringing over 20,000 tonnes of rock down with it each year. It’s deafening, and a testament to how strong the rock must be that it hasn’t ripped away the side of the mountain completely.

Instead it has torn a weaving, rounded cleft down the inside of the mountain in a series of ten falls. The clever touristy people have monopolised on that, using some old tunnels and blasting new ones so you can take a sort of a box/lift (like one in a mine) up the hill then walk alongside the water, with lots of vantage points to stop and stare and take photos full of spray (well, I did – Andy managed to take some rather good photos on his camera which are not filled with water dots). It’s so loud and wet and awe-inspiring, I can barely describe it, but I highly recommend a visit.

From Bernese Oberland May 2011

Stormy weather

I promise to continue my tale of the Bernese Oberland soon, but today I want to tell you about the storm we had last night. I was not in great form yesterday, feeling quite homesick and impatient to be done with my year abroad. In fact I’d been feeling that way for a few days.

So after work yesterday I decided to go sailing, and I also decided that I was in need of a bit of physical exercise so I opted for dinghy sailing instead of yachting. I cycled out to the sailing club, and even that 6-mile cycle (at a fairly fast pace) made me feel much better, so by the time I got to the sailing club I was positively cheerful. I got a space on an ISO, hopped into my wetsuit, rigged the boat and off we set.

We had a lovely sail – fairly gentle winds but we had good fun with the spinnaker and my sailing partner even got to use the trapeze a little. But big black clouds started to build up over the far shore so the safety boat gently herded us over towards the harbour. The warning lights on the far shore started to flash, which means wind is on its way (they have quite good warning systems here because of how quickly the Bise can pick up).

So we floated back into harbour (rather slowly – there was still no wind at all on our side of the lake) and just as we approached the slipway it started to rain. Big, fat raindrops which made the lake shimmer. Then the lightning started, huge fork lightning above the mountains on the far side of the lake. We got absolutely drenched as we derigged, but in a really satisfying, wonderful way (and anyway we were wearing wetsuits, what does it matter). Then we went and had a beer at the buvette, watching the lightning and listening to the deep rumbling thunder.

Stormy Lac Leman

It was a very satisfying storm which blew my bad mood right away. The lake looked stunning (quite like in this picture, which isn’t mine), with thick dark clouds and a red glow above the mountains and the occasional rainbow (or part thereof). My only regret is that we didn’t get nice wind like that when we were actually out sailing, but I hear there may be a Bise next week.

The storm was still going two hours after it started, when I reached my flat. Thankfully it didn’t rain all that much after the first burst so I managed to stay dry for the cycle home, but the thunder and lightning persisted. It looks like stormy weather is fairly common here when it is warm – certainly the weather forecast for the next week says there may be thunder storms every evening.

Chute d’eau

I’m not sure exactly when Andy and I turned a passing interest in waterfalls into an addiction. It may have started in Croatia, where we spent our time visiting waterfall-based national parks including the enormous thundering Krka waterfall (where we swam at the base) or the eerie Plitvice Lakes waterfalls, a series of sixteen lakes flowing into one another serenely while tourists wander around on wooden walkways built on top of the lakes.

We spent last weekend in the Bernese Oberland and rather indulged our obsession. In fact, by Sunday afternoon we’d seen so many waterfalls that we weren’t the slightest bit impressed by the “dreadful cauldron” that is the Reichenbach Falls, scene of Sherlock Holmes’ ‘death’ (by popular demand, he later amazingly rose from the dead “due to his knowledge of baritsu or Japanese wrestling”). The numpties have built a hydroelectric power thingy that drains the water out of the main plunge pool, meaning the flow from it downwards is barely a trickle and you can see lots of ugly concrete slabs. It was just a bit dismal and disappointing really.

From Bernese Oberland May 2011

I want to do the waterfalls justice so I won’t try to cover them all in one post. But just so you get a taster of what a good waterfall is like, here’s the waterfall at the entrance to the Beatus Caves:

From Bernese Oberland May 2011

Lavaux vineyards 2.0

Sunday week ago I went for a 20km hike through the Lavaux Vineyards with a group training for the Oxfam Trailwalker, a 100km, 24-our walk taking place in June. Like Carouge, last time I went to Lavaux, Andy was visiting and it was wet. We had a nice walk through the western part of the vineyards, then decided to focus on wine-tasting in a nice warm ‘cave’ (as in, French for cellar, a place where you can buy wine, not a hole in a mountain) instead of walking.

This time, because the weather was beautiful and we were supposed to be training, we resisted the temptation to stop and have wine in the sunshine. The vineyards are truly stunning: 11th century terraces stretching up and up, with higgledy piggledy “fields” contrasting with the poker-straight rows of vines. The eastern part is possibly more beautiful than the west – it’s steeper, with no villages or houses in sight for several kilometres, just the vines climbing up or dropping down to the sparkly blue lake. It’s too pretty to describe, so I think this needs to be a photo post instead. The full set is here.

Sam in the sun

How sneaky of Geneva. I’d spent months and months telling my friend Sam it’s boring, grey and too expensive, yet the weekend he finally visited, Geneva pulled out all the stops.

Exhibit A: Carouge

I’d been to Carouge once before. People had extolled its virtues: quaint, charming, pretty, great market. But when Andy and I visited it was a) rainy and b) Sunday. We walked around gazing at shuttered shops, guessed where the market might have been had it been Saturday, and huddled over a coffee in the one open cafe before beating a hasty retreat.

But on Sam’s visit it was a) sunny and b) Saturday. The quirky shops were all open and the market was in full swing. People were sitting around being continental, drinking wine and coffee and relaxing in the warmth. We bought a punnet of strawberries and roamed the street, Sam admiring funny cars, me admiring the oh-so-perfect kitchenware and stationery. At the very same cafe we basked in the sun instead of huddling for warmth. Makes me sick.

Exhibit B: Plainpalais

For a city-centre location, Plainpalais is remarkably unprepossessing. It’s this big diamond-shaped open space, covered in an ugly orange tarmac with a skate park as one end, a flea market around the edge and a great hideous nothingness in the middle.

But this time? The circus AND the funfair were in town. Gelato Mania (best ice-cream shop ever) had opened for the summer, so we stuffed ourselves with ice-cream then went and played on the dodgems.

The dodgems, by the way, were like some sort of twilight zone where teenagers go to mate. The boys drove around like gangsters with their hats perched high on their heads, holding themselves up high in their seats with their arms. The girls seemed to teleport between cars while we weren’t looking, charming their boys with their high-pitched screeches of joy and terror.

But it was fun, despite the large bruise I got on my bum. Those contraptions are dangerous.

Exhibit C: the balloon festival

Normally tuned into Genevan festivities in my quest to find something to do, the impending hot air balloon festival had completely passed me by. So I was rather startled on Sunday morning, when investigating a loud whooshing sound outside my window, to find a hot air balloon floating by not 20 metres away. That doesn’t normally happen either, and it took me by surprise so much that I didn’t get a photo.

Exhibit D: the pedalo

The weather was so hot and the lake so inviting that I was desperate for a way to get out onto the water. Sam and I criss-crossed the lake several times on Geneva’s little yellow ferries, but it didn’t satisfy my craving for watersports. So imagine our delight to find that the pedalo-peddlers had set up shop for the summer. We spent a very enjoyable hour pottering around slowly on the lake, reading Time magazine and just floating. Joy.

So you see, Geneva conspired to completely undermine Sam’s faith in the accuracy of my reporting. I can see that now the summer is here I shall have to seek out, enjoy and tell you about more fun activities.

More photos here.

The Rostigraben: a report from the frontline

The Rostigraben is an ethereal beast. I thought we were safe in Murten, several miles west of the Sarine/Saone, until I looked around me and realised we were surrounded on all sides by beer, bratwurst and men in lycra. We could only be in the German Bit.

It was scary. Sam took to it like a duck to water, but I was all at sea. I had already found the train station, nobody had a duck on their head and there wasn’t any strange-tasting orange juice so I couldn’t use any of my carefully learned German phrases (all quite useless, even the train station one, since I wouldn’t be able to understand any directions proffered). I tried to order a glass of wine in French but the vendor looked at me as if I had three heads (what is this strange language you are speaking? Latin?) so Sam and Andrea had to step in to save me.

I looked out for signs of xenophobia and strictness. Xenophobia wasn’t particular in evidence (although they have very high town walls to keep out any strangers), but I was firmly informed that we couldn’t park in the empty spaces on the street even though it was Sunday because rules were strictly enforced. Nor were there any rosti to be found.

Thankfully, just an hour’s amble took us round to the other side of the lake, back to The French Bit, where I could order my ice-cream and buy my boat ticket with relative ease. I did enjoy my sausage-and-bread (although I can’t understand why they give a slice of bread instead of a roll to put the sausage in), but I was quite happy to beat a retreat to Geneva at the end of the day.

Lies, damned lies and statistics

Since January, I’ve been taking some rather good French classes at our local supermarket language school (very classy). Aside from the obvious advantage of vastly improving my French, they have an additional perk: each lesson is a mini insight into Swiss and French culture. We all sit there spellbound (or perhaps just struggling to translate) while our teacher prattles away about Swiss politics, music, food and sport.

An intriguing cultural observation that Tea (pronounced tay-ah) shared last week (while we grappled with the correct way to express quantities) is the Franco-Swiss obsession with statistics. I hadn’t realised it until then, but the Swiss are unusually obsessed with counting things. Every week my Co-op newspaper (of Rostigraben fame) has an opinion poll pie chart on some subject or another, and the daily free paper 20 Minutes has giant percentages shoved into every gap they can find.

I don’t mind that sort of passive manifestation of a national obsession (it’s quite charming really), but I have to draw the line at World Radio Switzerland’s new ‘Brain Freeze Quiz’. You may remember me promising to pen a homage to WRS a few weeks ago, and perhaps you have been on tenterhooks ever since, wondering when that day will finally come.

Well it won’t. Because after my lovely weekend in Lyon with mum a few weeks ago, we woke up on the Monday morning to find that WRS’s morning radio show, The National, had a new host. And he is an idiot. He has introduced an exciting new format that essentially involves him urging, nay, pleading with us to text in our answers to today’s Brain Freeze Quiz every couple of seconds.

The premise is simple. He plays to the Swiss statistics obsession by reading the first part of a statistic, and you have to guess what’s missing. So, for example, 23% of women do what every day? Then we all have to text in and spend an exciting hour listening to all the wrong answers until the thrilling moment at 8:35 when he reveals the answer.

I can’t stand it. The National used to be rather good, mixing news and political analysis with an eclectic and quite excellent selection of music. But alas, there is no time for any of these things now we are so busy thinking about statistics. If it weren’t for the World Service news bulletin at 8am, 100% of listeners in my flat would be adjusting their set.

Summer in the city

Geneva has been completely transformed in the last fortnight. Spring sprung then swiftly scarpered, leaving clear blue skies and blazing sunshine in its wake. A good type of blazing sunshine: not grumpy hot, but warm enough to ditch jumpers and tights and switch to sunglasses and suncream. And as I sat on the swing eating icecream in the garden at work today, I felt quite happy.

I felt like such a newbie at a meeting in a tall building yesterday – I couldn’t keep my eyes off Mont Blanc, still snow-covered (probably always is) while we bask in the warmth. For much of winter you couldn’t see it at all, now it looks like it’s only a couple of miles away. This is a good place to be when it’s warm. There are still cooling breezes to be had from the lake and the mountains, and it’s so very pretty.

La Terrasse, the rather popular Genevan bar by the lake, opened for the season last Friday. It’s essentially a bar with a tiny marquee above it, some seating to either side, and swarms and swarms of people sitting on walls, grass and park benches. All Geneva’s great and good come out of their hiding places and congregate there every evening. I think I was a bit quiet when I went there for the first time last night; I got caught up in watching people pottering around on boats and just staring at the water that other people felt a bit superfluous. I love, love, love being by the lake and it is such a treat that it is warm enough to spend plenty of time in its company. My sailing course starts in a few weeks – hopefully I’ll get to sail at least twice a week from early May, and the water apparently gets nice and warm by June.

When we get a spell of warm weather like this at home it’s very exciting, and we keep checking the weather forecast to see how long it will last. When I enthusiastically mentioned to someone yesterday that this weather was forecast to stay for at least a week, I was rather overwhelmed when he responded, “Actually, it’ll probably last til October”. Geneva is so much better in the summer.