The Alps in summertime. The Matterhorn and the Eiger. Snow capped peaks ignoring borders with France and Italy. Hills and fields and farms. My oldest and dearest friend and I met over fifty years ago, navigated stages of life along the way, apart and together. For decades, we pontificated about an epic travel journey someday...in the future...when the stars align...after her son was an adult...in between life's tethers and responsibilities. But, now in our mid-sixties, TIME looms over us like a black cloud. The world doesn't seem to get kinder and gentler, but continues to amplify, not the best of the human race, but the worst of it. Wars, climate change, economics. If not soon, then when? Carpe Diem inserted itself into our wishful dreaming and found its way into NOW. Switzerland in the early summer!
We had to pick and choose our castle visits in the time frame we had. They were everywhere: many renovated (starting in the 1500's even), and those not cared about were allowed to fall apart, now just the remnants of stone walls surrounded by lichened rocks finding their way back to their roots.
Chillon Castle on Lac Léman (Geneva):
Gruyeres Castle:
Thun Castle on Lake Thun up-lake from Interlaken:
Cheese
Chocolate
It wasn’t until much later that the chocolate we know today came into existence, thanks to a legion of Swiss pioneers and chocolate tinkerers. In 1819, the first mechanised chocolate factory opened in the town of Vevey, which sits on the edge of Lac Léman.
The factory was the brainchild of François-Louis Cailler, who had worked as an apprentice with Italian chocolatiers in Ticino. Cailler’s machinery began churning out the first mass-produced Swiss chocolate. Before long, chocolate factories had sprung up across Switzerland. In 1836, the Sprüngli family set up a shop in Zurich which would later merge with Rodolphe Lindt’s Bern based factory in 1892, the basis for the Lindt brand which we know today. Nestlé and Tobler followed their lead.
Touring the Cailler factory, we were brought through the origins of cacao, and how these beans made their way into Swiss fame. Like fine wine, we were taught to look closely at the chocolate patina, sniff to allow the aroma into our nostrils, let the taste linger on our tongues.
Gondolas, and Funiculars
Medieval Aldstadts
Aldstadts (the German word for original old town city centers), draw tourists to Swiss cities and old villages, each with unique architecture refreshed and renovated for their historic values. Cobblestone streets, shops, wood and plaster, painted facades.
Caves and Ice