So, How is Switzerland ??

When people ask me this question in a passing or to a open conversation, I don’t quite know how to answer. I manage to mutter the same lame words every time, ‘It’s lovely’, ‘It’s beautiful and I really like it here’ or ‘I love it’. I’m saying ‘lame’, not because it’s untrue or I lack conviction in it but because all of my laconic replies are understatements to what I actually feel. And at that moment I’m at my wit’s end to find a word as grand as I really feel!

So here I am saying it out loud. Switzerland is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

 

When I return home I’ve often repeated this question to myself and of course, I’ve come up with an essay of a reply to it! I hope I answer it better this time 🙂

 

Well, I have loved Switzerland not from when I landed but even a step back from it. Right from when I was up in the air and a primary school general knowledge question popped in my head, ”Playground of Europe?”

”Switzerland!” And I could see why that was the answer.

 

I kept smiling to myself, comparing it to those virtual reality games where you build a city or a landscape. By the time I was on my way to Lausanne, my cheeks were hurting, for the smile wouldn’t fade. It felt like being a part of those landscape paintings you see on random calendars (that I never believed  to be entirely true). So yes, I found it and still do – très magnifique! 

 

It was a big change for me. From bowing to elders, touching their feet to get blessings to three pecks on the cheek, my world had changed by 180 degrees, if not more!

 

Change in terms of a new suburban life was both big and refreshing. The clean mountain air, the sight of Alps and the feeling of being enveloped in them, the feel of wooden floor boards and their creak breaking the ‘Swiss silence’ and being able to reach the locales of Yash Raj movies within a two minute walk was indeed very refreshing. Even if there was no ‘clean mountain air’ the feeling of going to bed without having to scoot to work next day was refreshing enough!

 

When you find man and nature coexisting in such perfect order, it often takes you by surprise considering I’d made a landing from the land of disarrays and constant chaos. As is said of India, my homeland, that the moment you land there, you’re bombarded with sensations – the smells, sights, sounds, the heat, nudging and trudging, the colours and whatnot! They come all at once to you unheralded, without leaving enough time for your brain to even register, read and sort them out for you.

 

There are as many stimuli here as well only thing you have all the time in the world to see, feel, taste and enjoy them without risking being engulfed in the storm of the sensations. They all come gently to you like the slopes of meadows and the rolling hills of the Swiss countryside.

 

Everything about Switzerland is gentle – genteel, rather. The weather for example. When it rains, it’s seldom noisy or thunderous, it’s never too windy, never snows by truckloads, nobody honks, no one hollers, dogs don’t bark (uncalled for). Even the mountains look gentle unlike the Rockies or Himalayas that in all their beauty are as fierce and daunting as mountains can get. The lakes are ‘lake size’ and not like a ‘sea’, they lap gently and invitingly at the shores. Birds chirp dutifully without being cacophonous. Even when the ticket checking team arrives in buses and trains, they issues a challan with a polite merci, they are quite gentle! The Swiss planes land without you even knowing it has touched down. People take their seats and not slump in them. It has a ‘text book’ spring, summer, autumn and winter landscape.

 

Nothing is under seasoned or over spiced, over rated or undermined. Things are as they are. Smooth, rich and no sharp edges, just like their cheese. Benign and gentle. Too beautiful for words or pictures. You have to see it to believe it.

 

Of course, you have to pay for that! 🙂

 

As I’m on the step ladder of getting acquainted with Suisse, I love it more and more. The ‘Swiss’ life makes more sense as ‘the’ way of life and the ‘art’ of living.

 

In short winter days, I often stand by the window with my evening cuppa and catch the Alpine glow that the setting sun casts on the mountains stringing around Lake Geneva and feel reinvigorated and humbled by the sight I behold! Anywhere else I would’ve credited the invigoration to the cuppa. Not here. 🙂

 

Switzerland is so supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. In Switzerland, I’ve found my Shangri La!