Surprising Switzerland

We sit on the terrace in the vineyard, looking over the rows of grapes that slope down towards the lake. Their pinot gris was a bit sweet for me, but this glass is excellent.

No, I’m not in France, Italy or Germany. I’m not in the Napa Valley or, closer to home, the Okanagan. I’m in Switzerland.

Apparently I had a stereotyped idea of the country. Alps and chocolate. Efficient trains and clocks. Julie Andrews twirling in a mountain pasture in The Sound of Music. My childhood imaginings as I read Heidi.

Our visit to Switzerland started out with satisfying alignment to my preconceptions. We took the train from Italy and stopped for the first night in Brig, a small town tucked in a river valley between mountains. Our room looked out on a quaint square, where you could buy big mugs of beer to drink with your fondue or raclette.

The next day we took the train to Zermatt and then a gondola up to the highest point, where our view of the Matterhorn included skiers traveling down the runs still open in mid-summer.

Fantastic to see it in person, and pretty much what I expected! But after that?

That evening we traveled to Lausanne, fourth largest city in Switzerland, and one I’d never hear of until a friend invited us to visit. The city and the land around it sloped gently to Lake Geneva, or Lac Léman, as the French speaking residents of this area prefer to call it. Medieval and Renaissance architecture mixed with the modern. (International Olympic Committee, anyone? It is based here.)

The next day, Nathalie introduced us to some of her friends over brunch at her cosmopolitan apartment. Later, east of Lausanne, we toured the Lavaux vineyard terraces, a UNESCO World Heritage site, for its terrace walls and thousand year history of cultivation.

The same day we headed north, stopping for a swim near Neuchâtel. It felt like a lake in BC, full of paddle boards, small boats and swimmers. There was a casual informality: no signage, no facilities, a ramshackle takeout kitchen, cash only, with thrown together wooden picnic tables for dining. Not the highly organized and regulated beach I would have expected in Switzerland, if I could have even imagined a lake that was not at the toe of a glacier in the mountains!

The cheese fondue we had in the hills above Le Landron was as delicious as I had hoped. But I did not expect to be eating it in a farmhouse in the forest, in the company of locals.

At the end of our time in the country we swam again in Zurich, yet another Swiss city on a beautiful lake. I expected banks, which there were, but the city was also full of parks and relaxed residents, casually enjoying summer life.

Of course, there was much of Switzerland that didn’t surprise me. The trains were frequent and on time. It was expensive. I never heard anyone yodel, but there was certainly a large population who loved hiking in the mountains, as we did.

But to my surprise, Switzerland holds a place on my short list of countries I plan to revisit on my brave travels.