Once upon a time in Europe – Part 2 – Zermatt

This series is getting too late, the first part was written like two weeks back; blame it on my laziness, or on my busy schedules (Yeah, even I do get busy people, im not kidding 😀 ), or blame it on all those impromptu posts !

Here we go again. Oh wait, before I start this post, I need to clarify with you guys on why I included my train, bus and tram tickets, na? See, its like this, I am planning to create a collage (a physical collage) of all those tickets, receipts, time tables, maps and then frame it. That’s going to be a good souvenir, right? You don’t think so ? Well, its my bros idea ! Do you still wanna pull legs ? 😉

 Ok now with the post :

 Continued from Part 1

 Bro : What is it that you want to see here in Swiss ?

Me : Snow ! It has always been my dream to touch snow. Any near by place ?

Bro : You are already sick. Can you travel? And that too snow?

Me : That’s ok. Cold and Cold, it will neutralize  

Bro : Snow it is, then ! Get ready, we are leaving to Zermatt tomorrow !

My brother hadn’t been to this place before, but we never have to worry when he is around. He is like an interactive GPRS; a walking google map. Honestly, my entire European trip would have been a big disaster if not for him !

The European bathrooms already got into my nerves, and because of  the issues I had with them, I didn’t want to eat that much while traveling and had just a croissant and an iced tea in the morning and too from, inside the train (Croissants are supposed to be a part of these westerners everyday breakfast. Hmmpphh !  I would’ve been ridiculed in India if I had puffs early morning). But to my surprise, the toilets inside the trains were very cooperative that I was only glad to make use of them; everything was perfect and there was enough noise around to have a peaceful ‘sitting’! I, then, took a vow to use the train toilets, whenever I travel, as it was a much better idea than using the ones that we had in our homes 😀 😀 😀

 

Took a few snaps while traveling :

 

Sight seeing through the window

 

We reached Zermatt by about noon and we all felt really really hungry. When my brother asked if we all should proceed towards the mountains or towards the restaurants, me and s-I-l opted the latter. Now don’t even ask me about European food !! They are simply hopeless !! Either they don’t how to cook or they are too lazy to add stuffs to make their food tasty. I ordered for a vegetarian dish that had potatoes in it (couldn’t understand the menu except for the word potato) and guess what I got! A plate full of small potato lumps soaked in some kind of disgusting cheese, which I am sure even our dog Snowy wouldn’t even sniff. My sis in law got an equally disgusting stuff, but my brother, the clever one, ordered a pizza and had a good time smiling at us, each time he had a slice. I had to gobble all those potato, one, because the food was expensive and two, because I had to reduce the volume of my growling stomach. For the first time in my life, I had to eat to satisfy my stomach without satisfying my mouth.

Thats the bloody restaurant !

Seriously, I wonder how pure vegetarians survive in all these places. Any restaurant that I had been to had only one or two vegetarian dishes. Even for strict chicken-atarians like me, it was difficult. They would have just two chicken dishes ( poulet or polloh as they call in in switzerland) and the rest of them would be food made out of one of those four legged animals. During my entire European trip, I survived on sandwiches and juices/soft drinks. After the bathrooms, it was the European restaurants that I was scared of. But if you see, in a way, they are related too. No input = No output; and the policy also helped me to reduce a little more weight during this trip 😀 😀 (Btw, all those intput and output reminds me of kuttiputtu now. Sigh!)

After the so-called lunch, we walked for a few minutes and did some window-shopping. I bought a jerkin for myself, and a toy for Dhwani. We proceeded towards the cable car and noticed a Mcdonalds on the way. Tan ta daaan ! S-I-l and myself looked at each other and we knew where we had to go after getting down from the mountains. My brother was looking so disinterested and both of us knew what he was thinking, “How much would these two eat?”; but we didn’t care much for his thoughts. Buhahahahahaha !!!

Theres my bro, sis-in-law and Dhwani

 

In sometime, we got our cable car tickets scanned and up we went.

Front and back of the same ticket 😀

 

In and Out of the Cable Car

 

There were four levels for the cable car to reach the highest altitude, and, for each level we had to board a different cable car. 

 

Dream come true

Looks like Chocobar, na?

Glacierrrrrr......

 

It was an awesome experience, indeed a dream come true. But I guess, I dreamt this whole snow dream a little too much. The weather was bad; there was a snowstorm that day and my brother kept cursing himself for not checking how the weather was. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it; something snow better than nothing snow. We didn’t want to go after level three because of the bad weather; actually there wasn’t any use going further up because the visibility was very poor already in level three and there is no way that we can take good pictures too. Apparently, babies are not allowed after a certain altitude and so S-I-l could not join us after level two. She waited for us below and that was another reason for us to go back soon.

Some of the snaps taken on the way back :

While I was sleeping .....

 

The following two days, I was bed ridden; had some kind of viral fever along with a horrible cold. I got some tablets for my bro from India and I started having those tablets myself. This is the worst that can happen to any tourist; fall sick and not go anywhere !

One day, when I looked pretty healthy, my bro asked me if I wanted to go somewhere, because in two days, I was flying to UK to visit my friend. He also mentioned that he had to report at work and asked me if I had the guts to go all alone. I already spoiled a few days of my vacation sitting at home. Fever or no fever, I wanted to go somewhere and said yes. Poor guy then switched on his laptop and kept searching for tourist destinations in Switzerland that wouldn’t challenge my knowledge in geography.

No google; no life !

 

 He got fed up searching and asked me if there was anything specific that I wanted to see :

Me : I would love to see a castle, you know like one of those that come in the Lord of the Rings. That’s one of my dreams too !

Bro : Sigh ! How many such dreams do you have? Well, there wont be any Lord of the Rings kinda castle nearby. Lets see. But are you sure, you can go alone?

S-i-l : I don’t think it’s a nice idea. He might miss the UK flight day after tomorrow !

Bro : He should learn all this one day, right? How long would he be spoon fed ? Tomorrow, if he needs to go for a honey moon, what would he do?

Me : I would either come to Switzerland, or wherever you are, or go nowhere at all ! Wait, I could show her in and around Chennai if she wants.

Bro : Sigh !!!

 (please note :  those days, I was pretty much single.)

 He searched for a few castles in and around Basel and gave me a few options. And I chose this :

 

Chateau de Chillon – Switzerlands most visited historic monument. Check out their official website here.

 
Next part in this series : Chateau de Chillon

Next post : Song : Sau Janam ; Movie : Whats your raashee (Hindi 2009)