June seems like as good a time as any to take a trip to Switzerland. I had other reasons too, which might not be a good idea to detail on a public blog just yet. Nonetheless, I headed over to scout out the place.
Gstaad is a pretty small ski resort town up in the Alps. Unfortunately, there’s not much skiing in June in Gstaad and the place is pretty deserted in the off season. It’s in the German part of Switzerland, but they all speak Swiss German, which is not only completely different from German German, but it even differs from canton to canton in Switzerland. In short, nobody can understand anybody as far as Swiss German is concerned. I saw Ocean’s 13 while I was there, which was English audio but with German subtitles. There was one scene where they were in Mexico speaking Spanish, and I suppose normally the subtitles would have been English but they were still in German so for a small 3 or 4 minute scene I had no idea what was going on.
On the way back, I was flying out of Geneva but the plane was delayed which meant I would miss my connection in London. I decided to spend the night in Geneva and try again the next day. British Airways put me up in a pretty swank hotel in Geneva and actually paid for all of it, which rocked. Geneva is quite the opposite of Gstaad, it’s a huge city right on the water and there always seemed to be something going on. I got to check out some of the touristy stuff and I’d definitely like to back for longer. I wish I had gotten a chance to make it to Zurich this trip, but there’s always next time…