I went to the station last night to check train times and planned to get the 9.24 to St Gallen, which I did. I was quite early because I wanted to get food before I went and I managed to spot the TGV heading for Paris, so while I was waiting, I sat on platform 2 and watched it go, before I got my train from platform 5.
Just under two hours later I was waiting in Zurich Hauptbahnhof and another hour later, I was at St Gallen. Last time I was here, on my way to Bregenz, it was freezing cold and all I wanted to do was get on the next train out of there, but this time it wasn’t just not freezing, it was actually hot. I went into the kiosk at the far end of the station, wandered out, went to the other end of the station, bought my ticket and got on the Appenzell train. I opened my bag and realised that something was missing. My jumper. I looked over at the ticket machine. It wasn’t there, and the last place I remembered having it was when I put it down in the kiosk. I leapt off that train and ran back to the shop, where I had to try to make a poor German-speaking girl understand that I had left my jumper there and had she seen it, when her English wasn’t very good and my German non-existant. But she understood and yes, they had found it. I reclaimed it, tied it around me and went back to platform thirteen very slowly, because my train had already left, within seconds of my jumping off it. I looked at the timetables, realised that the ones inside were accurate whereas the one outside was out of date and about fifteen minutes wrong, then wandered back and got on the next train.
It was fun. It was a little red train which made its way up out of St Gallen and then across green fields and hills, past chalets and along the edge of the road down into Appenzell.

It was as picture-perfect as I’d imagined. There wasn’t a lot there, just a very pretty village with some mountains in the background and some shops which sold anything vaguely Alpine that you could imagine, so I wandered around for a while, then went back to St Gallen on a little red train.

I looked at the town map and found the cathedral. It seemed no buses went anywhere near it. I decided where I wanted to go, and began to walk. At one point I caught a glimpse of a tower and so I followed that. I found myself wandering through the pedestrian shopping streets, all decorated buildings and winding roads and then out the other side, into nothing. I looked around. I looked up. I looked around the bend in the road. The guidebooks said that the twin towers of the cathedral were visible from practically anywhere in the city, so how could the thing be hiding from me?
I have no idea how I managed to find it, but I did. There was a handy map, so I could see how to get into the various buildings. I went into the cathedral. It was large and white, with gold and mint-green decorations and a painted ceiling. I took photos, as did everyone else in there. It was strange, I don’t think I’ve ever been in such a bright cathedral. Usually, they’re a bit darker and bare stone, not painted gleaming white. It was very pretty though.

I went through the cathedral and out the other side, supposedly into the enclosed Klosterhof, although I’m not sure I managed that. But I did manage to find the Stiftsbibliotek, which was the reason I went there in the first place. I went into the library and after taking a wrong turning by following a woman showing people to the Musiksalle, I found the library hidden away upstairs with a very odd view over the abbey courtyard which nowadays is a basketball/football pitch.

I went to the door and peered inside, wondering where all the slippers were, as they were supposed to be right in front of the door. Then I spotted them. They were hiding away behind me and I’d walked straight past them. I put a pair on and went in under the ψYXHΣ IATPEION sign. The slippers were far too big and I could hardly walk in them, so I went back out and put on another pair. Of course, they were all the same size – enormous. I went back in and had a proper look.
No photos are allowed inside, presumably so they can sell postcards to every single person who goes in. It’s an incredible sight though. I’ve seen a picture of it before and because of the angle of the photo and the paintings on the ceiling, it made it look very cave-like. In actual fact, it’s about a quarter of the size I thought it would be and everything is shiny brown wood, like walnut. The books are enormous and very old and it’s just spectacular. I went back out and bought some postcards and as I did, I spotted a notice on the counter about adult and child prices and year long tickets and it dawned on me that maybe you were supposed to pay to go in. I went outside and sat on the grass in front of the cathedral as so many people were doing and looked in the guide book. Yes, I was supposed to have paid CHF7 to go in there. Never mind. I lay on my back and took photos of the cathedral from below. It was the first time I’ve ever gone on a day trip and just sat on the grass and done nothing. Of course, I got bored with that fairly quickly, so I walked back towards the station and took photos of some of the bears along the way.

I got on my train and sat on there for the two and a half hour journey back to Neuchatel, no changes, and took photos of myself all the way back.

It didn’t dawn on me until about January that as a Guide, I had another home in Switzerland, Our Chalet, and that I could and should go and visit it. I found out how but for some reason, I kept putting it off. Then I had a free day today and decided that it was the perfect place to go, not too far but somewhere that would be interesting.
I had the foresight to get exact directions from the internet, but once I got there, via two trains and a bus, it wasn’t difficult to find the place. Cross the road towards the petrol station, turn left and keep walking uphill for half an hour.

The office doesn’t open until 2, so I was planning to sit outside for 20 minutes. I’d just hiked up a hill and I wanted to take a few photos of the spectacular scenery, then I’d go in at 2. Long before that, I heard voices and a crowd of about eight little American girls came along, singing very loudly, very enthusiastically and in tune, then came their three leaders. One of them sounded American, one sounded foreign and I didn’t hear the third one. They were leaving after just two nights, which surprised me, because it seemed a long way to come for two nights.
Someone from Our Chalet came out to say goodbye to them, then all the girls had to go to the bathroom before they left, so one of the leaders came over to me. She was delighted to find that I was not only a Guide, but a Young Leader and they gave me some presents, a wool and felt necklace which I wore as a bracelet and a patch which declared them to be USA Guides Overseas from Basel, which explained both the Americanism and the foreignism. The leader, Suzanna, asked if I had anywhere to put patches and wanted to hear every detail of my camp blanket. You have a camp blanket? What does it look like? What’s it made of? Do you use it inside the sleeping bag? Her children have got blankets made from old Guide t-shirts. The sleeves wear out so she cuts them off and sews them into a blanket, then the patches go on the seams, which seems a bit weird to me, but mine apparently seemed just as weird to her.
After they left, the woman from Our Chalet, Sol, took me inside and handed me over to Annie, a volunteer from Wisconsin. She showed me around the place.

It was once one chalet, set up by a woman called Helen Storrow, but now it’s seven chalets. The original chalet was the one I spent longest in. There’s a new big one, built in 1999 because the original was getting too small for all the guests and the offices. There’s a tiny little one which belonged to Helen Storrow, called the Baby Chalet. Apparently, they put the furniture in and then built the roof over it and Annie said that if you look inside it, there’s no way you could get the furniture out again. There’s a living chalet for the staff, which can take nine, but looks like it should be able to manage a lot more. There’s the shop chalet, which has very obviously been extended – half of it’s dark wood, the other half is very light. Then there are two smaller chalets which can take a few people as well, the Squirrelhouse and the Camp House and there’s tents too.

When the Chalet was first opened in 1932, a few people had a tea party in the Baby Chalet, including Lord and Lady Baden-Powell, Helen Storrow and the woman who introduced Scouting to America. Their tea set is kept in a cabinet in the new chalet. It has the trefoil on it and each cup has the initials of one of the people there on it.
After Annie had showed me around, I was allowed to just wander around wherever I wanted. “After all, it’s Our Chalet” I went to the T Bar first, which is a room that’s supposedly soundproof although Annie doesn’t know how true that really is. It’s a small living room with TV and stereo and chairs and tables for playing games and talking and relaxing.

Then I went upstairs and had a look at the Golden Book. It’s actually a copy of the real Golden Book, which is very old and very precious and is kept in the archive. It’s brought out for special occasions and written in and the pages are copied into this version.

There’s also an internet corner here. Then there’s the dining room, which was all set out and ready, with its Trefoil plates and cups and bowls too, although they weren’t out.

I went into the Great Britain room, which is the library. There’s lots and lots of books here, mostly English stories. There is also the Guestbook which I sat down and looked all the way through. This particular one goes back to August 2003. I found a Guide pack from West Moors, and also the group I met who were leaving. As soon as each book is filled, it’s put in the archive.

In the corner of the Great Britain room is the swap corner. There are a few baskets and they’re full of badges, stickers and email addresses that people leave. It’s the most cluttered room in the place. It seems that anything people leave for the Chalet is put in here. Above it all is one of those Swiss ovens like they have in the Institute. One side is in the Great Britain room and the other is in the kitchen and it’s part of the initiation ritual of the staff to squeeze through it. I’ve been through tighter things, but it’s awkwardly high off the ground.

Then I went into the America room which is next door and is so-called because a Guide group from America furnished it. It’s full of furniture which Annie described at “antique in the 30s, so very old.” She doesn’t go in there much because she’s scared of breaking things. In the corner is a bookshelf filled with Guide things from around the world, including a miniature version of the stone at the original camp on Brownsea Island.

Back in the dining room, there’s various things around the walls, including the most intricate scissor cut from the local bus company. It’s incredible, so much detail. I’d never be able to draw it all, let alone cut it all out. The guestbook is full of smaller scale scissor cuts.
In the new building, there’s a conference room, a ski cellar, a collection of Guide badges old and new from around the world and a bomb shelter. It’s Swiss law that all public buildings must have one. It’s the first time I’ve come across that one. They use it as the archive at the moment but they’re supposed to be able to clear it out in 20 minutes. 18 people can shelter there for 18 days apparently.

I think when I’ve finished my fourth year, I’m going to come back to Switzerland and volunteer at Our Chalet.

I meant to spend the day around Lake Constance, mostly in St Gallen and Appenzell with a tiny detour over the border to Bregenz. But as I didn’t get there until 3 in the afternoon, it turned into a day in Bregenz via St Gallen.
I left Neuchatel on the 9.24 train and got to St Gallen around midday. I had read in Peedee’s guidebook that St Gallen was the main transport hub for the north-east with regular trains to Bregenz, Konstanz and all around. I looked on the machines, the timetables and the departure boards. Not a single train to Austria.
So I sat and looked at the little map. Rorschach looked a likely place to get to Bregenz from. I got on a train, one of the little colourful Thurbo ones which I’ve wanted to try ever since I first saw them, although I have no idea where that was. I was expecting it to go more or less straight to Rorschach, but it didn’t. We stopped at about four stations, then “Rorschach Stadt” was announced. I was suspicious, because none of the signs or my map mentioned the word Stadt, but I didn’t know what the next stop would be, maybe it would be beyond Rorschach and I should get off the train. So I did.
Rorschach Stadt was a bench and a pavement between a single track and a hedge. I’d got off in completely the wrong place. The next train to Rorschach Hauptbahnhof wouldn’t be for nearly another hour. I looked at the town map and decided I could probably walk to Rorschach HB if I followed the tracks. I looked at a nearby bus stop, but the buses didn’t seem to go anywhere near the main station. I went down the road, turning towards what looked like civilisation any time I could and within about five minutes, I spotted a station. I was there already?

When I got closer, I discovered it wasn’t Rorschach Hauptbahnhof, but Rorschach Hafen. Rorschach Half-station? No, that didn’t make sense. Then I remembered seeing the word in my guidebook. Rorschach Harbour, the more central station. And right on the other side of the tracks was the harbour. I got another ticket and got the 1.16 train about 300 yards to the main station.

No international trains from here either. I looked at yet another map, decided where I had to go next and bought another ticket. Off I went on my fourth train on the day to St Margrethen.

From there, I found I could get to Bregenz. The trouble was that I couldn’t work the ticket machine. I could order the ticket, but nothing happened when I put the card in and while the screen was in English, the card machine part was in German. It did accept coins, but only Euros and I couldn’t find anywhere to get any of them. So I went inside and bought a ticket from the desk.
I decided as I was in Switzerland, I would try French, seeing as it’s the only one of the official languages that I speak.
“Parlez-vous francais?”
The man looked doubtful.
“Un petit peu. Eengleesh?”
So I bought my ticket in English. When I handed over the card, he looked at it and then said “Your mother language is English?”
Umm….
“Lucky for me, because my French is not very good,” he said.

I still had 45 minutes or so to wait for the train, so I sat in one of the waiting pods and with the help of about four timetables, worked out what was the absolute latest I could leave Bregenz if I wanted to get back to Neuchatel.

Twenty minutes before the train left, officials started arriving. Two of them at first, with guns and radios and magnifying glasses. A train came in from Munich and they checked everyone’s passports as they got off. Then another one appeared and what I took to be a soldier, but who turned out to be a military policeman. All four of them had guns and magnifying glasses and radios and belt and straps everywhere and tough boots. It was quite scary, standing on my own on a platform in the middle of nowhere, speaking no German and surrounded by armed customs officials.

The train arrived and I got on without having to show my passport. It was full, having come from Zurich on its way to Munich, so I sat on the floor at the end of one of the compartments, with all the luggage. A fat conductor came down and checked my ticket, then the customs men came down with a boy who didn’t look old enough to even buy the bottle of alcohol he was closing. Then the other two arrived and they all began to go through cases, occasionally turning around to ask the boy questions. Whatever they were looking for, they didn’t find it and they hung around at that end of the carriage until we arrived in Bregenz 15 minutes later. They didn’t check my passport there either.
I went up through the town, took out a few Euros and went hunting for three essential things.

The first I found in a bakery just up the road: eight semmels which I bought in German and which were fresh and hot.
The second I found outside a small shop further up the road: some postcards.
The third I found in a Spar: glacier sweets, which I’ve been looking for ever since I got here, but which I can only get in Austria. Also a bar of Milka.
I went down by the lake and sat on a damp bench to make semmels with butter and marmite, having packed everything I needed for that. It started to rain, but I stayed there until I’d eaten two of them. Then I wandered along the lakefront.
There was a kind of craft fair there and I stopped at the first stall as I spotted panpipes. I can’t remember how long I’ve wanted some, but something in Neuchatel made me want to get some and teach myself to play them. There were some miniature ones, so I bought them. The man there was fascinated by me and we talked in a mixture of French and English, then, just before I left, he said he had a present for me. I’m not entirely sure what it is, but it’s a symbol of luck. It looks like a seed, half bright red and half black.
I carried on along the front and soon came to a building site. It appeared you could still walk along the lake front, sort of through the middle of it, so I did. There was a bright red industrial looking something and as I got closer, it appeared that there were huge rows of either stairs or seats by it. It seemed to be seats.
Soon I emerged between the seats, as if I’d walked into some open air theatre. But what it was all overlooking was the huge red industrial something. Now I was seeing it from the front, I could see barrels floating in the lake. Floating barrels are never a good sign.
But when I saw the huge red industrial something I was horrified.

The front was piled up with barrels, which were all leaking some sort of black and luminous yellow gunk. It looked like someone had been dumping toxic waste there for decades. I immediately decided I was never so much as setting foot in that lake. This is Switzerland, where they dump that sort of stuff in their lakes?
There were a lot of people looking at it and panels on the floor which seemed to be explaining it. It was in German so I had no hope of reading it. Then I came across a panel which showed people crossing small bridges and climbing up on the gunk and I began to wonder.

Finally it dawned on me. Maybe this had been something huge and industrial once, but it was now a giant floating stage set and that toxic gunk was painted on. It was the set for Der Trubadour and I was relieved to find a painted but unused section of barrel and gunk on the other side.

Getting back to the station was hard. I walked through a spa, through woods, car parks, tennis courts and finally spotted it across a car park.
By then, my back ached from all the stuff in my bag and my feet hurt, my jeans were soaked almost up to my knees because of the rain and I couldn’t figure out how to get to the station side of the tracks.
They had built some sort of bizarre tower up to the overhead walkways. Up the middle of it was stairs and curling around were ramps, which must have been about three times the distance. I found my train and waited on the platform.

German train announcements are different from Swiss German ones. “Achtung, achtung,” is at the beginning and it’s not “gleis”, it’s “Bahnsteig”, I think.
The train back was a regional one which stopped at every field on the way back to St Margrethen instead of going direct. I didn’t get my passport checked at all on the way back either. I might as well not have taken the thing.

I had ten minutes to wait at St Margrethen but this time, I skipped the whole Rorschach fiasco by getting a direct train back to St Gallen.
According to my calculations, I could afford just over two hours in St Gallen, go to visit the cathedral and the library and then get the last train back to Neuchatel. But I was tired and besides, I didn’t have time to do Appenzell, so I’d have to come back anyway. So I waited around the main square, visited the narrow gauge station out to Appenzell and Trogen and bought postcards, which was when I made an interesting discovery. At the balloon festival, I’d seen a balloon in the shape of a church. It turned out to be St Gallen Cathedral and there were postcards of it.

I got the 6.48 train back via Gossau, Wil SG, Winterthur, Zurich Flughafen, Zurich Hauptbahnhof, Aarau, Olten, Solothurn, Biel/Bienn and finally, Neuchatel. Two and a half hours direct and got back at 9.34. It was a long day.

This was one of those trips that had been on my list for a while and was just waiting for a good day to do it. Today seemed like a good day. So I got my train direct to Winterthur and wandered around there for half an hour before getting the train on to Schaffhausen. Winterthur was another place I wanted to see, and it was very nice and very pretty but it seems its main attraction is art museums, so I think I saw everything else.
The first thing I wanted to do in Schaffhausen was to see the Rheinfalls. I knew which bus I had to get and in which direction but I have never been able to work bus ticket machines in German and that’s even harder when there are no machines and you have to buy them from the driver.

I asked if he spoke French, he apparently didn’t and he sold me a ticket in a mixture of mimes and pointing. “Rheinfalls?” “Si,” I replied, forgetting French, English and German and reverting to Spanish.
He was a lovely driver. When we got to Neuhausen, a lot of tourists got off the bus and stood around outside Migros looking lost. He immediately got off the bus and even though he was speaking German, I understood that to get to the falls, we had to follow the yellow footprints on the pavement.

There isn’t all that much I can say about the falls, apart from put in a load of pictures. The water falls a grand distance of…. 23 metres, so i assume, when the guidebook says they’re the highest in Europe, that they’re the ones at the highest altitude, which surprises me a bit. They’re very vicious though. Still photos really can’t do justice to this bubbling, foaming, splashing water, so much of it!
I walked across to the other side of the big pool, where there was the usual sort of tourist stuff, restaurants, souvenir shops, benches, and sat down on a bench to eat my bread and butter and enjoy the view:
Then I went on to Schloss Wörth, which turns out not to be a castle these days, but another restaurant and the launch point for the boats that take the brave people right to the middle of the waterfalls.

Look at that big lumps of rock in the middle:
There are people on top of it. And underneath both those lumps of rock are massive leaping waves which are undercutting the platforms in a very scary way. The rock will still be ok for a few years, but those boats look scary. They bob up and down as if there’s a sea monster underneath and they go right into the big waves. I would have liked to go on them and I would have done, but they look scary.

Then I decided it was time to go back to Schaffhausen. I walked back up to the main street, following the footprints back, only to find, when the bus arrived, it was the same bus and the same man. I’d checked my guidebook and knew what to say, although pronouncing it would be harder, but when I got on the bus, he recognised me and smiled and I just said “Bahnhof” which was easy enough.

Schaffhausen is very pretty. It looks old and it looks all nicely decorated and the shops are quite well hidden. Not in all cases, but quite often. There were a lot of people there, but it didn’t have the same tourist feel as somewhere like Zurich or Lausanne.
And finally:

Because no trip is complete without the river photo.

This may have been a mistake. I left after labo and got a train to Bern at just after 4pm. I stopped off in Thun on the way to get some slightly less cloudy photos and was on my way by 6. But there were problems with the railway and I had to get a bus. A packed bus, all the way to Spiez. There are a lot of people in Thun. It seems like such a pretty, quiet place, but this is rush hour:
This was my first view of Spiez itself:
It’s another place that is just so beautiful. I think Lake Thun and around is my favourite place in this entire country. There’s that lake, surrounded by mountains, and over it all, the three giants.

I walked down to the old town, through some pretty streets:
Near the bottom of the hill, I found a swimming pool and it just looked like the most incredible setting for a pool. I was desperate to swim in it, but I couldn’t.
At the bottom was a small harbour, with lots of boats and the church overlooking the lot.
I spent most of my short time in Spiez taking photos of the mountains and the lake:

And of the zebra crossing going the wrong way.

By now, the sun was getting lower, so I headed back, completely unaware…
I got my bus back to Thun. No problem. I got the train from Thun to Bern. No problem.
I arrived in Bern at 8.55. The next train back to Neuchatel was 9.39. Instead of hanging around for three quarters of an hour, I wondered about getting a train via Biel. I didn’t. Probably I should have done.
I went to Macdonalds and got some fries. That was a good way to kill some time, then I went back to platform 13.
According to all the signs on the platform, that train was going to Neuchatel. But once I got inside, it only mentioned Bumpliz Nord, Gummenen and Kerzers. I was worried, but I thought “In an hour’s time, I’ll know one way or the other”.
This is how the rest of my night proceeded.
9.55 – Arrived in Gummenen. We were tipped off the train and told that there were works and we’d have to get a replacement bus.
10.25 – Still no sign of the bus.
I was sitting on the steps at the bottom of a station I’d never heard of, with no clearer idea of where I was than “somewhere between Bern and Neuchatel”, in the middle of the countryside, where the only sounds were people muttering about the lack of bus, crickets chirping and our train, still sitting at the platform above us. Every now and then someone would go back to the station to ask when the bus was coming, but they didn’t seem to ever come back.
Finally, a station worker came out. He said something in German but it appeared that there were no German speakers among the entire trainload. They asked him to speak in French, but it took a long time for him to realise, although he seemed to be fluent in it. What he did say was that the bus was coming sometime.
I was sort of worried, but it seemed there were a lot of us, probably 50 or 60, all in the same boat, so at least I wasn’t alone, although I did wonder if I was going to get home before the morning. People were getting angry, people who had connecting trains, mostly from Neuchatel. There was an old lady going to Chaux-de-Fonds who was going to miss the last train and people going off in various directions, so me, only missing one train, seemed to be one of the lucky ones.
Then the bus turned up. A double-decked crimson coach. A lot of people got on the front doors, but soon stopped moving. When I went to the middle doors, I discovered that was because the seats were full and people were queueing up in the aisle instead of going upstairs. I went upstairs and was amazed to find no one sitting at the front, so obviously, I sat there.
That thing was scary. Its lights seemed to do nothing and it was hurtling along these narrow country lanes in almost complete blackness. Then it put its main beams on and they were incredible. Lit up the world for miles around. The driver kept speaking to us and I couldn’t figure out whether he was Francophone or Germanophone because he seemed to have trouble with both. He just kept on apologising and saying he hoped we would come back on the trains.
At 10.35, I arrived at Kerzers. There was a train waiting there to take people to Ins, Marin and Neuchatel. Anyone else was staying on the bus and going on to Morat. I think I’m glad I had to get off the train, because I have no idea whether I would have ended up at Ins or Morat. I think you have to sit in the right half of the train and I don’t think I was. Never mind. I got a fun bus ride and got back to Neuchatel just after 11pm. I now know that if I decide to go on a trip after school, to make it somewhere a bit closer to Spiez and not to go via Bern, because they don’t seem to like sending people to Neuchatel at the best of times.

This was the first Triplet trip since Chateau D’Oex. We left it a bit late in the afternoon and didn’t leave Neuchatel until around 2.30, I think. We got a spotty train to Fribourg, waited half an hour there, got a bus to Bulles, waited half an hour there, and got another bus to Gruyeres:
The Swiss believe in decorating their bus stations:

Fribourg
Bulles

There was a flap and fuss over the lack of soap in the toilets at Fribourg, I think, and then Jemma wasn’t allowed to eat her sandwiches because of germs. I’m not entirely sure what happened. What I do know is that we nearly missed the bus to Gruyeres because Peedee was at the railway station buying a bottle of soap:
Gruyeres was beautiful. A little town set on top of a hill, surrounded by mountains.

This was the main road. And the only road. That’s about all there is to Gruyeres:
To the left there is a castle:
and to the right there is a church:
and beside the church is a sort of walkway, with incredible views. We sat there, ate our picnic and took lots of photos.

But then we had to go back. It was a two and a half hour journey each way and we stayed less than an hour and a half. We sat in the car park and waited for the last bus and I took photos.
There is nothing there. That is the reflection of the car park on a plain black poster.

Jemma and Peedee:
My foot:
We got our various buses and trains back home again and all was good because we hadn’t been out together for a long time.

My first trip in a very long time was to Thun. I went out one day, got on the first train out of Neuchatel, which happened to be to Bern and decided from Bern where to go to next. I have no idea why I chose Thun, but it was great. Well….

I read in the guidebook this paragraph:

“[Thun] has an odd secret, however. After World War II, the authorities decided that in the event of a future invasion, the whole of Switzerland south of Thun was to be abandoned, and the entire population was to assemble here for dispersal into mountain retreats. Switzerland’s largest hospital was hollowed out of Niesen, but despite constant upkeep, has never been used; it remains pristine and fully equipped, and there are probably dozens of other major military and civil emergency installations hidden in the mountains nearby.”

and immediately got it into my head that the world was going to end, right there in Thun, right then at that very moment. The second part of that was because of the massive black clouds that were coming over the mountain.
First, there was the bridge:
I was terrified of it, but at the same time I had to cross it.

I walked along the river, out to the lake, spotting fun things on my way.

Some sort of bike-train:
An interesting boat mooring:
Some graffiti:

This one helped my imagination along a bit.

A boat:
By the time I got to the lake, the sky was black:
It began to rain a tiny bit and I was sure I could see thunder and lightning. I didn’t like the idea of being effectively in the middle of nowhere, either in a storm, or at the end of the world, so I went back to the main town. I’m not sure what came over me at this point. Any sensible person would have gone straight back to the station. I went out into the town. It began to really rain and the English girl walked through the storm in nothing but a t-shirt. I was drenched. I was soaked. I was wearing a t-shirt! And it was wonderful. But it was also too wet for me to bothered to take many photos, so there is just one of the rain in Thun:

Now I had to go back to the station. I walked along the road, watching the buses go past, but not having any money to get on one. But never mind. I got back. I found out when my train was, but noticed that the second one to go, which was already sitting at the platform and had been for some time, was a double decker. What could I do? I got that one back to Bern:
And here is me, dripping wet, taking photos of myself in the glass panels:

We started earlyish in the morning. Not as early as we have done, but early enough. I took my hat and gloves more because of habit than because I thought it was going to be cold. The woman we met on the bus yesterday said there’s completely different weather in Geneva, Lausanne and Neuchatel and I took that as “It’s warmer in Geneva”. It wasn’t. It was freezing – really really icy cold.
We started by jumping on a number 15 tram which turned out to be going the wrong way, so we walked back to the station to start again. Geneva doesn’t seem to believe in maps, or if it does, it doesn’t believe in making them readable. We decided we wanted a 13, so we went to wait for it and Jemma noticed how many scooters there were…

We got our tram, but Geneva still doesn’t want us to be able to get around. Signs at tram stops have completely random things written on them. The first one I managed to spot had FRANCE in big letters, despite being blatantly in Switzerland. How we got to the Nations stop is anyone’s guess, but we managed. This is what we achieved in Geneva in the first two hours:

This is our next failure. We got a 15 tram back (spotting a pattern?) and went beyond the station, supposedly towards the old town. We had nowhere specific in mind, so we just got off when we felt like it, which was when I spotted a lot of sails and thought the lakeside harbour mentioned in the book would be a good place to see.

As soon as we were off the tram, I discovered my sailing boats were actually a skatepark….
Back to the station again. We got a bus this time and went to the park with the giant chess sets, which was opposite the Grand Theatre. According to my map, the Red Cross HQ, Palais de Justice, Russian Church and various other things were within walking distance, so we walked.
Eventually, we found the Palais:

Not as impressive as we were expecting. We had hot chocolate in a cafe opposite it and then walked down the hill to a market with a grand total of two stalls. Jemma bought a Hat, then discovered a bath:

We found ourselves on what looked like the main shopping street, complete with toy shop (no goats though) and when we got to the end of it, we found we were in Place de Bel Air – completely the opposite direction from where we wanted to go. We started to go back, but it was so cold and we planned to come back when the fountain was actually switched on, so we thought all that could wait a while.
While we were at Bel Air, I noticed these:

Lots of them, all along the road and I’d seen them in other parts of the city. What are they and why are they there?
Jemma decided we should go to the Jardin Botanique, so we went back to the station (again) and got a bus out there.
I took 120 photos today, 91 of them there…

This is Tibet/Himalayas. Part of the garden was divided up into gardens of mountain plants from various places in the world. We saw Himalayas, South America, Swiss Alps, Oceania and Middle East, then because it was cold, we went into the big greenhouse.
It was like a jungle:

and so hot and damp that my glasses and camera lens both went misty.
At the back of the first part, there were four or five tanks full of fish and underwater stuff. Here are some wriggly purple-tipped anemones:

and here is Dory, Marlin and Nemo:

Then there were smaller greenhouses off the side. One was full of rocks with the occasional plant among it, but the second was Mexican and full of all kinds of flowers:

We particularly liked this one because it looks like someone spray-painted it:

Outside, we found a bed full of cacti with the wonderful warning:

which means Botany. Having thick, fleshy, water-storing leaves or stems. You learn something new every day….
Then we went in the toilets and had fun posing under the UV light in there…
Next we went in the other greenhouse, a big domed thing. There were more succulents:

and a set of steps so you could walk around the top and look down on the jungle:

I liked looking up:

When we’d finished there, we went back to the station and because it was cold and baffling in Geneva, we decided to come home.

Once again, I’ve managed to blow my electricity. I didn’t feel like another day of sitting on my own in the dark, so I decided to go out for the day, the entire day, and not come back until about ten, so I decided to go to Interlaken. No real reason, it just seemed to be pretty far away and was on my list of places to go.
It took fifty minutes to get to Bern, then I changed trains for Interlaken. It was a double-decker train, and obviously, I went upstairs. It felt very different from a normal train. Darker, smaller, more closed in and the weirdest thing was not being able to hear the wheels properly.
I had a ticket for Interlaken Ost but I got off at Interlaken West. There was a nice mountain view from the station, and a very odd-coloured river behind it:

I had read in my guidebook that there’s not a lot more to Interlaken than a main street with a station at each end. As soon as I came out of the station, I saw a big building, very Alpine-style, which claimed to be Migros. I hadn’t had any breakfast (I meant to get bread at the stations, but I always had to run for my next train), so I went in. It was one of those massive shopping centres, but upstairs it had the biggest Migros I’d ever seen and the entrance was right in the middle, so it was very difficult to know where to start shopping. Eventually I managed to get bread, butter, Pom bears, chocolate and a bottle of apple juice. The apple juice turned out to be fizzy, but it did at least taste of apples which is more than most fizzy apple juice seems to.
I start wandering up the road, deliberately took a side-street and walked up the road. There was a sort of park with benches, so I sat down there to eat my bread:

Nice mountain view and because the field was half-dead and all brown, it looked almost like New Zealand looking across it:

Behind me, there was a coach and it started reversing. I assumed it was going to try and turn around right there in the road and get in the way of all the cars, but it didn’t, it reversed down a tiny side-street. Ok, it was going to use that to turn around. But it didn’t! It just kept reversing down there. There was nothing there, the road would come to a dead end in about 200 yards, but the coach driver knew what he was doing. I think. I finished my bread, forgot about the coach and went on.

As I was walking down the road, I saw something that didn’t quite look right. I wasn’t entirely sure why, but when I thought about it, I realised what it was…

An English phonebox. I didn’t notice the dumpy coke machine with the chinese roof next to it until I was coming back down.
The next interesting thing I came across was a church apparently growing out of a Chinese garden (a half-frozen Chinese garden). I was in the middle of taking a photo of it when a man walked past wearing a Christmas tree hat. Obviously, I had to get a photo of that, but as my victim didn’t know, he walked away as I was taking it. Here’s my attempt – that hat is tree shaped!

And here’s what he distracted me from:

Anyway, I got to the end of the road and came to the East station. Without intending to, I had managed to walk all the way up the high street. I stood down by the river and looked at it for a long time. It was an incredible colour and I took about ten photos, just to try and capture the colour. They say the sky is blue because it reflects the sky, but it’s not true. The sky was completely grey. There was no reason that I could see for it being such an incredible colour. This one gets the colour well:

This one gets the view up the river, complete with mountains in the background:

I wandered around the station, noticed there was a Coop next to it. It seemed a very sweet little arrangement: Migros next to one station and Coop next to the other:

I walked back down.
I stopped at a shop to get some postcards for my wall and when I went inside, discovered it was a toy shop. I checked it for goats but there weren’t any. Then I spotted a rainbow koosh and couldn’t resist it. I also wanted to get a picture of something I saw on the way up, but I had been on the wrong side of the road at the time. Now I was on the other, so I could get a photo of it properly….

Half a cow sticking out of a wall!!! I followed this back road. There was nothing down there. Literally, once you’re off the main street, there’s nothing there, except a couple of pretty buildings and a big wall of mountain:

I was back at the station about fifteen minutes before my train was due and took lots of photos of the German high-speed train that came in. This is only one of about six:

The view was better now, although it might not look it in the photos:

The train that I got back to Bern was only a normal one. Disappointing. I sat opposite a man with a baby (actually, they sat opposite me, I was there first!) and honestly, although it was quite cute, the baby looked like a baby orc. It had that sort of face and ears. It could have been a horrendous hour, trapped in a train with a baby, but every time it cried, the man took it away.
I had planned to stay in Bern a while, maybe have a drink, delay coming back to Neuchatel, but it was cold and I was tired, so I decided to just come back.
Back in my dark room, I threw myself on Jemma’s mercy. Peedee’s here as well, so we’re all just sitting in Jemma’s room, playing computers.

Peedee has been looking forward to this for months, since about May, she says.
We got up very early on Saturday morning because the train left at 7.34. Peedee was convinced she was dying and was set on flying back to American first thing Monday morning and never coming back because she hates the germs in Switzerland. We got our train to Lausanne, changed trains to Montreux, which was fine although for some reason, the entire station looked completely different. The trouble with the second train was that it was packed full of skiers and snowboarders and although we hiked the entire length of the train, there was nowhere to sit, so in the end, we stood in between the carriages, where apparently my bag kept setting off the sensors which opened the door. The soldier standing behind me got very annoyed and eventually disappeared, or so I’m told. I think I’m completely innocent of this one. When we got to Montreux, we changed trains again. I’d looked at a map of the station early in the morning, so I knew platform 3 which we arrived on and platform 5 which we were leaving from were in fact opposite sides of the same piece of concrete. It didn’t look far on the map but it would take over an hour. We found that this was because it goes very steeply uphill through the local villages and stops everywhere.
We arrived at Chateau D’Oex (pronounced day)

just before ten and bought our tickets for the day (8CHF) and were each given a yellow tag to wear, which made us feel like we were being evacuated. We walked down through the town and into the showground. It was still early and there were only a handful of balloons blown up, which gave us a chance to watch how they’re blown up. First a big fan is used to get it full of cold air, while people run around pulling it in various directions on ropes. Then they fire the hot air into it and eventually, it starts floating upwards. The basket starts off on its side on the ground, but at this point, it begins to move, so people on one side pull it and people on the other push it and eventually it’s upright. There we were, surrounded by people from all over the world, real jetsetters, photographers, reporters etc and then Peedee spotted Miss Suisse in a balloon:

I don’t know what her name is, but there were lots of people taking photos of her. This is the fire:

You can really feel it when it goes off that close to you! By now there were about twenty balloons ready to go and some of them went. They fire lots and lots of hot air into the balloon, the short blue flames, not the big pretty yellow ones like that ^ and then the balloon begins to hover and then lots of people have to push it around to make sure it doesn’t start floating off in a random direction. Once the first one was up, the others quickly followed
As far as balloons went, the most exciting bit was over. We watched them until they were out of sight and then stood up on the field watching as one or two more balloons at a time were blown up and sent away.

Then there were a handful of odd-shaped balloons:

(here a clown, a mobile phone and half an orange)
We went into the big hall which I think used to be a barn, and had lunch. Jemma and Peedee had bread and vegetables and made sandwiches and I’d bought a baguette at the station before we left. Then suddenly Peedee said “Look, there’s a flying castle.”
I’d finished eating so I ran outside to take a photo and saw when I described at the time as “a tartan penguin lying on the ground.” Five minutes later, when I went back out again, it was in the air:

Not a penguin. I ran back inside, said “You have got to see what’s in the sky out there!” and ran back out again. It was surreal standing outside, among a crowd of people with this in front of me:

listening to “Amazing Grace” played on bagpipes over the loudspeaker. Really weird.
We’d intended to go up on one of the free balloon flights but there were no balloons, so we decided instead to go for a ride in a helicopter. It was 60CHF and between, we managed to make enough money. We bought the tickets, then went and stood in the snow in the queue. Peedee took a picture of me “with the ticket in my hand!”. I never figured out why it was so incredible or funny that I was holding the ticket. Jemma was doing exactly the same thing. I was scared – I’ve never been in a helicopter before. We got in and were still trying to figure out which seatbelts went where when suddenly we were wobbling into the air.

I didn’t take any photos while we were up there, although Peedee has photos and video. It was amazing, flying around over the mountains, seeing a frozen reservoir, going over into the next valley, trying to work out where I was from up high. Was I above Chateau D’Oex or was I somewhere completely different? The pilot was a master. All too soon we were landing, coming in far too fast, then going around in a circle before hovering slowly downwards into a perfect landing. It was noisy, but not deafening like I’d expected. We turned around to take photos of it as soon as we were out but it was already taking off to refuel and spraying us with pieces of snow and ice which were falling off it as it moved.
We were going to go and have a look around the village, since everything else seemed to have finished but as we were crossing the field, I heard something about parachutists, so we waited for that:

before going into the village. Everything was closed but up by the church we got a great view of the snow:

This is the showfield:

glistening with snow in the late afternoon sun. We went down the hill and had hot chocolate and vin chaud. This is what was opposite us:

The shutters kept randomly opening and shutting and they were very pretty when they were shut. A horse and sled went past:

and eventually we went back to the station and got the train back. We were going to stop in Montreux for a proper look but it was very cold, so we had a hot chocolate each in a bar (where there was the most gorgeous golden labrador puppy!). On the platform an American man asked Jemma why there were so many people with skis and snowboards, was there somewhere nearby to ski? Jemma didn’t know but apparently I know everything so he asked me and I explained about the mountains and villages behind the town, where the trains go. Then we were approached by an American girl and an English one who wanted to know which platform they needed to be on to go to “Egg”. I was baffled, then I realised they were saying Aigle which I guessed was the other side. The English one was very English. When I said it wasn’t this one because the train was going completely the opposite direction, she said “Oh, how awful!” in a very Eton-esque accent before they ran off to the other side like I guessed.
We got the next train out of Lausanne. Peedee bought a cup of some kind of herbal tea at the station while we were waiting and we were back in Neuchatel by 7.30. That’s a record.