It is January 2025, the last month of my work at the Institute. I am supposed to move to a new continent in two months. Not surprisingly, my life was not smooth, and my mind kept swirling around the list of things to do. Days of cloudy greyness continued unendingly in Hannover, and pre-menstrual hormones cruised through my body. All of this cumulatively led to a day where I could not get out of bed and get things done.
The super-intelligent entity responsible for me in the simulation then did a Command+X on me and a Command+V into the Swiss Alps.
We started in Zürich, where my friend, a climate scientist, had a conference. I joined her once she was finished with that. She’d been in the country before and had ideas of what to do – I had never been here before and was totally on board with her plans. And boy, was I glad. I knew I was starting in Zürich and ending in Interlaken, but before the trip, I had no time to get acquainted with the plans for the five days in between. The angle at which my jaw dropped was inversely proportional to my ignorance of what to expect. She took me to places she’d loved, and here’s me reinstating my gratitude for that.
Zürich, 17/January/2025
We met and caught up over a filling South-Indian lunch to kick off our trip. We both come from the same part of the planet and indulged in the comfort of familiar food.
We had a Swiss Day Saver Pass for this day since we’d be moving a lot. [1] Remember, the earlier you book, the cheaper your day-saver pass is. After lunch, we headed to the Lindt Museum, where they shower you with chocolatey-love. Then it was already time to head into nature. A couple of trains later we arrived in Weggis, in the canton of Lucerne.
I already felt very good at being plucked out of my stressors in Hannover and being dropped into a new, albeit short Chapter.
Weggis, 18/January/2025
We started the day with time spent near the lake. Absolute still, cold air with only the voice of water around. I felt the calm wash all over me.
Mount Rigi – 18/January/2025
We took the mountain train from Vitznau to the top of Rigi. At some point in the vertical climb, we spiked through the clouds, and there, shining brightly and never really gone, was the sun. We spent the rest of the day atop Mount Rigi, walking around, sunbathing at 0 degrees Celsius, and eating a hearty lunch at the restaurant. With the warmth of the sunbeams on my skin, I arrived inside my body after a long time, with nothing else on my mind except the sheer pleasure of existing as a mere earthly creature that needs its star for well-being. At lunch, I had a Wurst with Onion sauce and Pommes and a local beer for lunch. As the sun moved closer to the horizon, it began to get more chilly and suddenly it was windy. We took the 17.00 train downhill, planning to watch the sunset on-board, and the imagery from this train ride is quite literally burnt into my memory.
Lucerne – 19/January/2025
Time to move from Weggis to Kandersteg, the next destination. We stole a couple of hours from the day to lounge in Lucerne. The Swiss cities I saw on the trip were both flowing on in peace – an unlikely feature for major cities.
We stored our baggages at the Hauptbahnhof and strolled around the city. Watching swans do silly things, crossing the iconic Chapel Bridge, munching on Maronis (roasted chestnuts) inspired from a gorgeous Russian woman who offered us some in return for indulging her wishes for photographing her in specific ways.
We arrived for a slow lunch at Restaurant Schiff right across the bridge, and had a pretty Swiss meal chatting about climate change.
Artistic?
We then walked all over the Altstadt, humming Malayalam songs like we did in Seville. The only place we headed to with an aim was the Löwendenkmal.
And then it was time to head back to the Hauptbahnhof to catch our train to a tiny Swiss village which would be our next destination. Little did I know what lay in store for me there. When we’ve spent considerable amount of time on the planet, we grow an intuitive expectation of what it holds – or so I believed. But I now know, the visions Kandersteg held could not have been imagined by my mind from that intuition. I also had not googled the place to look at it beforehand. More of that in the next post!
[1] https://www.sbb.ch/en/tickets-offers/tickets/day-passes/saver-day-pass.html
Here’s Spotify’s compilation for my trip:
Alleys 
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