Travelling a bit frequently does bring with it the same complacency that i've noticed in spouses who have been with each other for too long. I also take my preparations for granted – I use a checklist to pack at what can be considered dangerously last minute. And then just before travelling I prepare a list of my flights / hotel details to keep in my pocket. As I was doing it this time I was quite excited - was travelling to Geneva and then moving to the Grand Massif region in France to try my feet at a bit of skiing. And on the way back, I was planning to hang around a bit in Geneva and Zurich.
Whilst preparing the 'hotels detail' list, I wondered why the Hotel in Geneva had France written at the end of its address (I had booked the hotel a few weeks earlier). On a bit of investigation I realised that I had booked a hotel with the correct name I was looking for, but the only hitch being that it was in a French village some hundreds of miles away from Geneva. Imagine the look on my face (and that of the hotel staff in Geneva) when I would have brandished the printout of the hotel booking only to be told that I was about 200 kms away from where I should have been. Fortunately, I discovered this faux-pas while in the warm confines of my flat in Edinburgh rather than at the hotel lobby in Geneva.
But that was not the end of the frequent-traveller-fouling-up story - In the shuttle on my way to Edinburgh Airport, I was remembering the four girls throwing up when I was on the shuttle the last time - and laughing at how stupid some people can be when I realised that I was going to the Airport four hours in advance of the flight time (instead of the required two). In my over-enthusiasm and oh-i-travel-frequently complacency, I subconsciously subtracted two hours twice from the flight time.
As I was checking-in (after twiddling my thumbs for two hours at the airport), I noticed that I was the only one who didn't have skis or snow-boards. The entire plane seemed to be filled with downhill, slalom, and snow-boarding experts. I pretended to have the look and confidence of someone who has a pair of skis waiting for him at every port. But I think my being Indian must have given me away.
Travelling in Europe by public transport can be extremely inefficient - after a two hour train journey from Geneva to the French 'town' of Cluses, I took a 30 minute taxi ride to get to the village of Samoens (which is probably only 50 miles from Geneva). The Taxi driver, encouraged by my attempts to make conversation in French, decided to have a discourse with me (in his mother tongue, naturellement) about the etymology of the term 'Indo-Europeans' (I had no idea) and why Red Indians are so called (atleast I knew that one). Then he wanted to know what we Indians think of Monsieur Sarkozy and Madame Bruni. For me, the 30 minutes passed extremely slowly.
The village of Samoens (in ze French Alps), with a population of around 2k, would be missed by most people were it not been for the fact that it lies below the Grand Massif Ski area (which has over 260 kms of pistes). Despite the fact that there was snow all around, the weather was rather good with the Sun god smiling on me for most of my stay there (as opposed to his perpetual anger with me whilst I am in Scotland). To reach the pistes, one needed to take a cable car (tele-pherique) upto mille-six-cents ('1600': a referent to the altitude). From there, one could get a 360- view of snow clad mountains. But once on the ski slopes, the panoramic view was the last thing on my mind – getting a sense of balance and trying not to tumble over was priority numero un.
Since I had done skiing ('done' is probably an optimistic overstatement) only once earlier, the instructor made me start with the 'green' slopes - the level of difficulty is denoted by colours - green (obviously, the easiest), blue, red, and then finally black - I harboured no misconceptions how much my skiing 'skills' would increase over the 6 days I planned to be there. But I surprised my instructor, and myself, when, by the end of the week, I managed to handle the intermediate blue slopes as well. My instructor, unable to pronounce my name, started calling me 'Jean Paul'.
The instructress had a typical 'I am fransh' accent and whenever she said something I had to keep a straight face - my biggest test came when she was teaching me how to get up if one falls down - she said 'keeeep yourgh aind naixt to yourgh buim' (the last word was said in an extremely Inspector-Clouseau-esque fashion). I burst into laughter when I pictured Peter Sellers with the 'BuimB' in his hand and a puzzled expression on his face. My instructor fortunately didn't understand why I was struggling to hide a giggle.
What really scares novices like me are the skills which the youngsters there had. Children as young as 3 or 4 years zip down the slopes with ease while those like me tentatively slide and crash their way down. During winters, the school kids of the area come for skiing twice a week as part of their school curriculum – a bit different from where/when I was growing up. Having no fear of falling, or the concomitant embarrassment, these kids learn very fast while elders (and I think I just about fall in this category) struggle to pick up the sense of balance and turn on the slopes.
But it is also fun to see the instructors leading the children in a neat row (like a mother-hen or mother-duck leading her ward in a file). And at every turn one (or two) of the little ducklings tumble over. It is difficult for them to get up also and I think the instructors don't help them to get up (so that they learn to do it on their own).
After 'skiing' down to the bottom of the slopes (in my case the verb should be 'tumble' or 'slide'), one takes a tele-ski (pulled by a rod), tele-siege (seat), or a tele-cabine (duh!) to get back to the top. Using the first two is not at all easy and requires just about as much skill and confidence as one does to ski. The tele-ski is the trickiest as one has to let go of it at the right time when one reaches the top. If you let go of it a bit early, or a bit late, you are in for trouble. And heaven forbid, if someone falls in front of you - because there is precious little you can do - you cannot let go of the tele-ski because you will slide / tumble down again - not a pretty sight.
So, on my last run on one of the days, when I was feeling rather good about having survived a day without having broken anything, a little child in front of me toppled over. Not yet possessing adequate skills to avoid the child, I also toppled over and then two other children behind me also crashed into us – and then the four of us slowly started to slide down the slope. It did give all the others a funny story to tell around the fireplace.
Getting up after one has fallen down is probably the toughest thing to do. I had to undergo all sorts of permutations and combinations – toppling over with the skis still on, toppling over on a steep slope with one ski having fallen about 10 painful metres away, falling on level ground with the instructor at hand to help me get up, stumbling with both skis off. Again there is little novices like me can do apart from wait for some samaritan to stop. Once, on the reddest of the blue slopes, I struggled for over 10 minutes to get to my ski which was about 5 metres away – but then I couldn't get the ski to snap on. That is when an extremely stunning looking French lady came and helped me – obviously amused to find me there. I didn't know whether to thank her (for saving me) or to thank God (for sending a beautiful angel from his/her repertoire!)
Given the cold weather and the calories I burnt, I could obviously be forgiven for perpetually consuming Fondue and Raclette - both of which are specialities of the Savoie region. In Samoens, I also went for an extremely traditional meal in a cute family-run restaurant where the house speciality was 'Soup Chatree' (?)– roughly translated as 'castrated soup'. Before your imagination ventures into a painful flight, let me clarify – the soup is made of cheese (naturally) and bread crumbs and slowly solidifies as one is eating it - which is why it needs to be cracked. Hence the castration. It was probably one of the heaviest meals I have had in a long while, Fondue notwithstanding.
After a week of skiing, in which I didn't break anything, apart from my pride on my numerous falls, I moved to Geneva. I can safely claim to have seen quite a few cities / towns in Europe by now – and I can equally confidently say that Geneva is the least inspiring of all of them. It does have a lake (Lac Leman) and a river (Rhone) and the iconic Jet d'eau (which, btw, throws up 500 litres of water every second, and at any point in time more than 7000 litres of water are in the air!). But that is about it – the rest of Geneva is all about expensive jewellery, antique, and watch shops (none of which I could even think of entering). The St. Pierre Cathedral is comme-ci comme ca (as ze locals would say) and the view one gets of the city from atop (154 steps) could have been nice if there was something nice to look at. The only thing of interest in the city was the was the 'Palais des Nations'(which used to be the headquarters of the League of Nations, and now houses various offices of the UN - Some of the conference rooms were really spectacular. My big disappointment was that I was not able to go onto a guided tour of CERN (one has to book months in advance - which, obviously, I didn't have the foresight to do).
I, however, did manage to have a meal at an Indian restaurant - replete with Kingfisher beer and tasty naan. I had gone at an odd time so I was the only customer. The 3 Indian boys who were serving plied me with copious quantities of daal and questions about what I was doing there. After a while we broke into Punjabi – they were watching a Punjabi movie (with French subtitles!) that was rather amusing. When I asked them who the hero of this 'cinematic masterpiece' was – all of them looked hurt. "Tussi Baboo Mann noo naee jaande?" ('You don't know Baboo Mann?') all of them said in a rather insulted chorus. Due apologies to Mr. Mann (whoever he is!)
From Geneva I moved to Zurich, before heading back to Edinburgh. Zurich initially seemed to be as uninspiring as Geneva – a Champs-elysee type street 'Bahnofstrasse' which had all the ridiculously expensive watch and jewellery shops and the banks. But the 'old part of town' with its three churches (one of which has extremely beautiful stained glass windows, and another has Europe's largest clock face - 8.7 metres diameter) did do a lot to salvage the pride of Zurich. By the end of it, I quite liked the feel of the town. It is also situated on a lake (Zurichsee) and the river Limmat cleaves the town into 2 quaint parts. The local museum 'Kunsthaus' did have an extremely nice collection of paintings (including Monet, Renoir, and Degas). For lunch, I walked into the highly recommended 110 year-old vegetarian joint HILTL (never could figure the name out) where I got to eat an extremely tasty Indian thali along with their organic beer. I got myself a nice table by the window and watched all the frenetic, well-heeled and chic shoppers amble by, while I dug into the food and beer.
