No bugs on the windshield
Because we drive faster!
Because we are modern
And life is better
Europe’s advancing
A world leader!
Oh, bugger.
In response to this week’s news on a dramatic drop in insect numbers
Photo: Claire Doble
atmosphere
between the top of clouds and
the lid of the sky
sunlight breathes shallow and sits
in thin air
her warm fingers edged with
cold wind
the weight of majestic rays
higher than mountains, above fields
alone, over hidden cities of busy lives,
the mess and rush of love and hate, real life
up here
not really anywhere,
significant
temporary
ripped only by metal wings or feathered flight
mostly, a lonely nowhere
except
hovering in that secret blue place
I ache and stretch tendrils of tenderness,
could I reach?
everywhere
my yearning
feels like atmosphere
The inspiration for this came in part from a poem by Frank Hubeny which conjured the idea of the sun above the clouds having its own little game up there.
I sat on this for a month because I was planning to submit it to a journal callout for ‘immigrant poems’ — it speaks to my experience as an expat/person out of place/away from home. But then I got busy and missed the deadline, oops.
Photo: Idella Maeland on Unsplash
cars & guitars
try to pin thoughts
like pressing guitar strings into
my heart – tender meat – but
I never learnt that instrument
apart from listening
my fingers, so clumsy
I can’t. No. I can’t
understand anymore
where do I start
already halfway gone, and
there’s no place to
pull in
open up my bonnet
tweak the engine, maybe
put a new one in
#26Cantons52Weeks: Schwyz
View from Sattel-Hochstuckli and the cute cable cars
Destination: Sattel-Hochstuckli
Interesting thing: As well as nicking the name, Switzerland also took its flag from the Schwyz coat of arms. As my mate Mad Dog always says: I like Switzerland; the flag is a big plus.
Special guests: my parents – they’re doing me proud on the cantonal visits – that’s three so far!
Perhaps the canton with the least vowels in its name: Schwyz! The canton is not to be confused with Schweiz – the German word for Switzerland – although it was one of the founding cantons of the country back in 1291 and is actually where the name comes from. From my quick scan of Wikipedia, it seems like Schwyz was calling the shots for a good long while there and hence the name kinda stuck.
Today we visited Sattel-Hochstuckli which, in keeping with the theme, is the beginning of the Alps. Plus it boasts Switzerland’s first revolving cable car that took us up from Sattel at 800m to Mostelberg at 1,191m in about eight minutes. (There are other revolving cable cars in CH now – I think I’ve been on two others – but this was the first one to be constructed and is a cute little thing).
At the top, there was zero sign of snow or the approaching winter, even though the “summer” season officially ends this Sunday. It’s basically a paradise for hikers and families. We didn’t do much walking – only over the 374-metre long suspension bridge and back – however, we did enjoy the kids’ stuff. My six-year-old loved the alpine toboggan (rodelbahn), downhill tube run and the giant jumping castle. OK, so dad and I also had fun on the rides as well!
Lunch was tasty at the Berggasthaus Mostelberg and then it was back for a few more rides before the drive home. Sattel is about an hour by car from Zurich.
We’ve been having absolutely glorious autumn weather during my parents’ visit and today was no exception. It was sun-drenched and 20 degrees up on the mountain. With the green of the grass and fir trees, the gold and russet of the turning leaves, and the shining silver of the rodelbahn, such a lovely day out. 10 points to Schwyz AND Der Schweiz!
Cantons visited / to go so far.
Basel-Landschaft
Basel-Stadt
Bern *
Geneva
Luzern
Neuchâtel
Schwyz
Uri
Vaud
Zug
Zürich
*I haven’t written this up yet!
dreamwindow
dreamt I fell in love
it was so simple
like a small clear window
didn’t have to search for it
didn’t have to try
your clean, sudden lines
eyes smiling in delight
you said
it’s us now, forever
for however long that lasts
I laughed, and said
you know
I used to find you annoying
with your past life, past wives…
our movie showed a map
we travelled across Tanzania
on the coca-cola croc train
stopping here and there
to refill our canteen
dreamt I fell in love
it was so simple
looked down and it was there
like a small clear window
certainty at last
a strip of perfect light
dreamt I fell in love
oh, come back night
I played around with trying to turn this into a sonnet but it didn’t work so well. Maybe it’s a ‘deconstructed sonnet’.
Photo: https://unsplash.com/@joelmwakasege
Added to dVerse open link night
#26Cantons52Weeks: Obwalden
Cogwheel railway
Canton: Obwalden
Destination: Mount Pilatus, Goldene Rundfahrt
Interesting thing: Canton Obwalden is the location for the geographical centre of Switzerland. The cogwheel railway up Pilatus is the steepest in the world and dates from 1889!
Special guests: my parents
Pilatus is the ‘dragon mountain’ and its dragon symbol is rather a triumph of branding, with everything from the boat quay to the bus stop labelled with that same red swirly beast. To my mind, I can kind of see how the spine of the mountain looks a bit like a sleeping dragon and, where Rigi – “the queen of the mountains” is gently sloping and green, Pilatus seems to loom menacing and dark above Lake Lucerne. Except, as we made our way across the waters of the Vierwaldstättersee (as the lake’s called in German), I realised the mountain I’d been identifying as Pilatus actually wasn’t. So much for my theory anyway! Er… the real Pilatus looks like a dragon too, a bit! (Wikipedia tells me the dragon comes from a medieval legend about winged beasts with healing powers living on the mountain.)
Pilatus’ cogwheel railway is really something. It was constructed in 1889 and electrified in the 1930s. From lake level of 464m at Alpnachstad, the railway rises almost vertical in parts up the side of the mountain to just over 2,000 metres. The elevation gain is 1,635m in total and it has an incline of 48% at its steepest (this is the sharpest incline you can have – otherwise I think you’re actually vertical?). It’s steeper than the triangle of a Toblerone. It’s a longish journey too – about half an hour. Which is great if you’re excited about it, maybe not so great if you’re closing your eyes, blocking your ears and holding on for grim death due to a fear of heights, as my sister-in-law was the last time we went (sorry Laura!).
My parents are thankfully not much affected by vertigo and we had a lovely, clear early-autumn day for our ascent. So nice, in fact, that we even ate our lunch al fresco, with a panoramic view of the mountains from the terrace. Lovely. Afterwards dad and I climbed the “Esel” (donkey) peak to 2,118 metres for a top-of-the-top view. From here we watched a huge cloud roll up one side of the mountain, completely whiting-out the view for about 20 minutes, until it passed. Amazing how fast the weather can change at these altitudes.
To descend, we swooped down in the gondola and cable cars, then caught a bus back to Luzern to complete our “Goldene Rundfahrt” (golden round trip).
Full disclosure: the several peaks of Pilatus are actually on the border between two cantons – Nidwalden and Obwalden. However the cogwheel railway and Pilatus Kulm both fall on the Ob side (and I’ve already written up Nidwalden).
Cantons visited / to go so far.
Basel-Landschaft
Basel-Stadt
Bern *
Geneva
Luzern
Neuchâtel
Obwalden
Schwyz
Uri
Vaud
Zug
Zürich
*I haven’t written this up yet!
Love letter to Zurich…
Zurich. Photo: Claire Doble
I had an opinion piece published in The Local today: 12 things that surprised me about moving to Zurich.
Enjoy!
#26Cantons52Weeks: Schaffhausen
Canton: Schaffhausen
Destination: Rheinfall
Interesting thing: The Rhine Falls are the largest waterfall in Europe by volume: 487,690 litres per second at the time of writing. It’s the Niagra Falls of Europe!
Special guests: my parents
I’ve been to the Rheinfall once before, with my in-laws almost exactly two years ago. I had hoped not to double-down on stuff but the year is marching on and there’s still many cantons to visit!
Last time we approached the Rheinfall with a long walk down down the river (nice) past a sewerage works (not so nice). This time we thought we’d go more direct and maybe check out the castle that overlooks the falls – Schloss Laufen.
Unfortunately things were not so simple. We were stymied by the fact there’s too many options for how to get to the Rheinefall! I guess because it’s quite a big, impressive attraction, there’s many ‘entry points’ and viewing stations. So we ended up catching a train to Schaffhausen station, then a bus to Neuhausen am Rheinfall and not bothering with the Schloss… Now that I look at it, the river marks the border between canton Zurich and canton Schaffhausen and the Schloss is on the Zuri side so this works out well for my writing project anyway!
We took a boat tour out to the falls, which I hadn’t done before. There’s various options, we took the shortest/easiest – the Klein Rundfart 15-minute trip – and that was really worthwhile. The flat tourist boats go quite close up to the thousands of cubic tonnes of water crashing and boiling down the falls. It seems thrillingly quite dangerous but probably isn’t. We didn’t opt to climb the rock in the middle of the flow as it seemed rather risky with a 2.5 year old.
Next time I’m gonna nail the transport and hopefully make it to the castle as well but for a first-outing with my slightly jet-lagged parents on this trip, it was a good one.
Disobedient
Sid Vicious “I did it My Way” RIP Sid & Nancy Spungen, you disobedient delinquents. Photo: https://sonicmoremusic.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/swindle.jpg
I wrote every day
every day
then started to disobey
my plans and programmes
I guess
life
got in the way
distracted in the fray
of various this and thats until
well…
sometimes you need to rebel
I make the rules, I break the rules, no one tells me what to do
I always say
and no one fucking publishes rhyming poems either
I may
have discovered too late
but here we are today
you like it, hey?
keep on
disobeying
Written obediently in response to the WordPress daily prompt: Disobey
#26Cantons52Weeks: Fribourg / Freiburg
Fribourg
Canton: Fribourg /Freiburg
Destination: The canton’s capital city, also called Fribourg (Fr) / Freiburg (De)
Interesting thing: The “röstigraben” – the divide between French and German speaking parts of Switzerland – runs right through the city of Fribourg, literally, in the form of the river Saane / Sarine.
Our visit to Fribourg was another slightly last-minute affair. I had actually planned to use my trip to this western Switzerland canton to check out the city of Gruyères, where the cheese is produced and also the location for the goth-horror designer H.R. Giger’s museum and bar (it’s the largest collection of his work, and the bar looks wicked!) But I sort of forgot that and also not sure the kids are quite ready/old enough for the Giger onslaught. Anyway.
One thing I love about Switzerland is pretty much every canton, area and large or noteworthy town has its own tourism website with a wealth of info and suggestions. There’s usually a “family” section too, which is where I found this downloadable map for a Discovery tour of Fribourg for Kids. We were set.
It is about 1.45 drive from Zurich so we arrived just in time for lunch. Another thing I love about Switzerland is, while almost all the shops are closed on Sundays, you get a really nice atmosphere at the restaurants, with groups of friends and families coming together for brunch, lunch and beyond. On this particular Sunday in Fribourg, we hit a restaurant that was catering to a twins convention, so it was twice as nice!
As well as Giger, the canton also hosts a museum for two more famous local sculptors: Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle, which we also forgot to check out (oops!) although I would have liked to. We did see the Tinguely fountain in the Grand-Places park though! Tinguely, who is famous for his kinetic, surrealist sculptures, was born in Fribourg and Saint Phalle (his wife) was French. If you know Zurich, you should be familiar with Saint Phalle’s colourful “Nana” angel sculpture which hangs in the main hall of the Hauptbahnhof. And you may have seen Tinguely’s stuff down the lake and/or in Basel.
Tinguely fountain, Fribourg
Anyway, we had a very pleasant wander around Fribourg following the discovery trail (and won the prize of locally-made chocolate from the tourism office!).
The town is set quite dramatically in a gorge between three rivers and the old bit contains some beautiful medieval buildings and frontages. The stained glass windows in the cathedral were particularly stunning – art deco style, my fave! It’s a university town and it seems the mix of French/German and students adds a real zing of liveliness. I must confess I was sorry not to be able to spend a few hours also checking out the many charming pubs and beer bars we kept passing.
Our final stop on the kids tour was possibly Switzerland’s stinkiest funicular. The Fribourg funicular is powered by wastewater – unique in Europe. Although no doubt it’s a triumph of recycling and sustainability, you could really smell the sewerage: Pooh! Glad the trip was only a few minutes’ long.
stinky funicular
Cantons visited / to go so far.
Basel-Landschaft
Basel-Stadt
Bern *
Fribourg
Geneva
Luzern
Neuchâtel
Obwalden
Schwyz
Uri
Vaud
Zug
Zürich
*I haven’t written this up yet!
clairevetica 
