The hills are indeed alive

A forensic analysis of my previous post concluded that I recently visited Switzerland. As stated, one of my primary goals in going there was to get in a kick-ass hike through the mountains – the enchanting and fabled Swiss Alps. I love the concept and activity of hiking. You just walk. But through mountains. And you take in amazing views while getting in a great workout. I’m not a frequent hiker and my excursions to the mountains are few and far between. But I soak up every minute of the times that I do go hiking. In the words of my friend who visited the Swiss Alps a few weeks before me, “it’s the most beautiful $h!t on this planet.” Having been, I can confirm the veracity of her statement. It indeed is the most beautiful $h!t on this planet. Granted, I haven’t been to the Rockies, the Grand Canyon, the Patagonia, the fjords of Norway, or many other majestic natural wonders in this world. But in my travel experience, Iguacu Falls on the Brazil-Argentina border and the Swiss Alps are the most beautiful places I have come across.

My friend Anne-Lyse and I started from her place in Basel in the northwest tip of Switzerland on the border with France and Germany and took a train a little over an hour east to the mountain city of Lucerne. From there another 30 minute local train brought us to Engelberg situated higher up in the mountains where we started our hike. With Basel being relatively far removed from the mountains, stepping out of the train station in Lucerne was really stepping into iconic Switzerland. Snow-capped mountains in the middle of June surround the city and a pristine lake with water as clear as any beach in the South Pacific runs through the middle of town. Fancy hotels, upscale restaurants, and a casino straight out of any James Bond movie line the lake’s perimeter. The combination of beautiful mountains, crystal clear lakes, and a tranquil city atmosphere create the pervading feeling of a high quality, healthy way of life. You look around and you almost feel compelled to go for a run around the lake just to take advantage of the fresh air, or to hike up the mountain simply because it’s there. It’s an awe-inspiring landscape from afar that only gets more jaw dropping the closer you get to the mountains and the higher the views become.

During winter Engelberg is a major ski resort, by summer it’s one of many hiking trail epicenters in the Alps. You take a cable car up the mountain to get to the start of a number of trails. The train ride to Engelberg and the cable car ride up provided spectacular views. The snow topped mountains gave way to fresh green hilly landscapes dotted with an array of farmhouses. Because of the color scheme of the hills, snow, and farmhouses, I would say that if the Swiss countryside were a food, it would be a scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream with chocolate sprinkles and whip cream on top.

The hike we went on was called the Four Lakes trail which rose up 2,300 meters above sea level and wound down through some valleys wrapping around four separate lakes along the way. From beginning to end it was about a five hour hike, not counting the approximate hour break we took for lunch. The hike struck the perfect balance between steep and difficult passages, leisurely flat stretches, fresh and crisp chilliness being high up in the mountains, and bright enough sun to burn your face when the clouds gave way. Really, I couldn’t have asked for anything better.

The hardest and steepest part came at the very beginning. Right from the start the hike was straight up the mountain, deep into the clouds. Views were cut off for most of the first hour because of the cloud coverage and the scenes of green were replaced by rocky terrain and more snow the higher up we got. It was cold, but again, a crisp and fresh cold which blended well with the healthy sweat that I was working up. It was my first time hiking that substantially in so high an altitude. I was worried that I would be vulnerable to altitude sickness given the first time effect and the enduring workout, but thankfully I came away just fine. After reaching the summit it was a mild descent straight towards the second lake – sparkling blue and at the foot of a snowy mountain. The rest of the way had mild uphill stretches but it was good to get the toughest part out of the way first because it made you immune to any other inclines.

I found myself laughing at times because of how stupidly beautiful the landscape was to the point of ridiculous corniness. I came across almost every single iconic and stereotypical scene that you would imagine in the Swiss Alps. A St. Bernard hiking dog strolling faithfully next to his master? Yup. A herd of cows eating grass with loud clunking cowbells tied to their necks? Check. Freshwater streams from the snowmelt running alongside fields of dandelions before plunging down the mountain in a crashing waterfall? You bet. Probably the only thing missing was Julie Andrews or any early 30s-something woman frolicking through the grass singing that the hills are alive. I have no doubt that

such scenes exist, I probably just hiked the wrong mountain. You don’t have to go to the Swiss Alps for a beautiful getaway to reinvigorate your appreciation for nature. But if you ever find yourself remotely close to the Alps in spring or summer, you really can’t go wrong with a hike through its mountainside.

Seven hours later I ended up back in Lucerne having dinner with a friend who I met in Australia two months earlier – another reminder of how small the world can be. In a weird, ironic, unexpected way, the nighttime view of Lucerne that I took in from a church plaza reminded me somewhat of Rio de Janeiro. It’s very whacky in a sense to compare pristine and tranquil Switzerland with Rio-bursting from the seams with energy-de Janeiro, but the landscape of hills scattered against water in Lucerne is similar to the view of Rio’s bay from atop the Corcovado. A rich country like Switzerland doesn’t necessarily need the money from tourism, but to wrap up with a message befitting of a typical tourism or investment promotion agency: stunning and stylish, Switzerland doesn’t disappoint.

A country by any name is just as sweet

Perhaps it is the Australia syndrome of having lived for a while in a distant land that is disconnected from major cities and countries, but I have been maximizing my time back in Europe to travel around to other countries much more than my previous stints in the “old world.” Wherever I go I am always an advocate of first getting to know the city, then the country, and finally neighboring countries. Based on that assessment there would really be no reason to ever leave Paris each time I visit here because of the never-ending selection of things to do. Nevertheless, wanting to branch outside of Paris Paris, I’ve managed to get in some international weekends trips over the past month. A few weekends ago I visited friends in London (at least I think it was London cuz I really only saw the inside of pubs and clubs) and last weekend was my first foray into Switzerland.

Landlocked smack in the middle of the typical household name European countries – France, Germany, and Italy – ironically, Switzerland to me was always a country that I overlooked. It was precisely those three countries, plus Spain, England, and The Netherlands, that I would instinctively think to visit whenever planning travel anywhere from Paris. Yet the invitation of a former coworker who recently moved there and a strong recommendation from a friend who just visited, convinced me that a trip to Switzerland was well worth my time. It was. Best decision I’ve made in a while. That and ordering the beef tartare I had a few nights ago. But that’s another story.

Just as my objective when visiting London several weeks ago was to kick back, catch up with friends, and party, my goal for Switzerland was to see a friend AND to get a Class A, physically enduring, and scenically beautiful hike in through the Swiss Alps. All objectives were met, and then some!

A three hour train ride from Paris practically put me in another world. The busy, chaotic, sensory overload buzz of Paris was replaced by the serene, orderly, tranquil streets of Basel. The city is located right at the intersection of Switzerland, Germany, and France. You can actually walk just 15 minutes to France and 20 minutes to Germany. Despite its proximity to France, Basel is a Swiss German speaking city. The city is very quaint, very boutique. The Saturday market in the center of town is in the main square directly under the old town hall whose façade resembles as much a modest castle as it does a present day public administration building. The market, chock full of Swiss cheese (literally) and flowers plucked straight from the nearby mountains, gave way to cobblestone streets lined with chocolate shops, antique silverware, and the outdoor café reminding you that you are in Europe after all.

Admittedly, the scene was very similar to Germany where I lived for three months in 2009, but to another level. In a previous post several years back I hailed the Germans for their degree of urban organization and efficiency. The props still remain but I have to applaud the Swiss for more (and better?) of the same. Walking through the streets of Switzerland’s cities you can’t help but think that it’s what every city in the world strives for. Traffic is minimal; the noise pollution of honking horns and sirens is a non-issue; there’s a pleasant mix of bikers, buses, trams, and cars; clean air; wide streets with pretty architecture; a diverse, eclectic fusion of ethnicities; and the safety of being able to leave your biked locked up with merely a thin cord wrapping the frame to the back tire. Some things might have been a little too much, such as the taboo of crossing the street anywhere outside the designated walk zone, and the profundity of dirty looks if even a trace of your banana peel falls on the ground. It’s also quite an interesting sight to see a car noticeably slow down from 100 feet away the second you put your toe into the cross walk. But hey, it all makes for an orderly and organized atmosphere. When a bus pulls up to the bus stop to the exact, very same minute as the printed schedule says it would, and the ride lasts not a second longer than the 12 minute estimated travel time, you can’t help but be impressed. Coincidence? Maybe. Quintessentially Swiss? Most likely. With such timing it is befitting that this country mastered the trade of luxury watches.

Certain facets of Swiss culture have always fascinated me and were magnified with each step around the country. Let’s start with the basics. There is no single national language. The official languages are Swiss German, French, and Italian. A country like Spain has regional languages (Catalan, Basque, and Gallego) and the Philippines has hundreds of different dialects. But there is always a unifying language universally spoken by the commoner in the street at the very least and by the member of Parliament at the highest level – Castilian Spanish of course in the case of Spain, Tagalog in the Philippines. India, with a billion people and thousands of regional dialects, at least has the common unifier in English. But this isn’t the case in Switzerland where members of parliament show up to legislative meetings with earpieces and translators, and TV channels are sliced up between networks airing any one of the three main languages. The soccer team went to the World Cup last year and actually beat eventual world champs Spain in group play. What language is the coach shouting out from the touchline? By that token there is not even a common linguistic consensus on the name of the country! “Suisse” to someone in Geneva is “Schweiz” to a local in Zurich and “Svizerra” to a resident in Locarno. Perhaps one of the most basic social fabrics of a unified culture is a common language because of necessity of communication. From the base of communication and interaction spring music, art, religion, cuisine, sports, and all the things we typically we associate as forming the foundation of a shared culture and one of the pillars of the concept of country. Just think of how many calls for secession there are around the world on the basis of differing language and culture. Yet Switzerland discards that theory by proving that, regardless of linguistic fragmentation, it can not only harmoniously exist as a country, but thrive as one of the most prosperous countries in the world. Which got me to think that maybe the main element that forms the basis of a common Swiss culture is not a food, a religion, a language, or a political system of beliefs, but the notion of prosperity. Language and a shared history that shapes a common language might be different, but “what it means to be Swiss,” is probably defined by the right to a high class standard of living and, by any measure. When you think Switzerland you typically think luxury – chocolates, watches, bank accounts – and the high quality of their products trickles down to a quality life for the rest of the country. Who cares if the languages are different? Their orderly, organized, efficient, and respect for the rules system works, everyone lives a prosperous life, everyone is happy, and everyone is proud to call themselves Swiss in that regard.

Taking the language factor one step deeper, Swiss German is specifically given its dual name because of how different it is than “Germany German.” It is almost another language. I was constantly asking questions to friends while in Switzerland about the degree of difference between the two types of German. From what I understand it’s a bigger difference than British English and American English, or France French and French Canadian from Quebec. I think it would be similar to a farmer in Jamaica (the country, not Jamaica Queens) talking to a suburbanite from northern Glasgow. Both speak English, but very, very different. German friends admit they can’t understand some things Swiss Germans say. The drastic linguistic difference is fascinating considering that Germany and the German speaking part of Switzerland are next-door neighbors separated not by a mountain or canyon, but an imaginary line on a political map. The US and England, Canada and France, Spain and Argentina are all oceans apart. Language differences are expected. The Alps run east/west through a good portion of Switzerland cutting through its middle and thereby separating the northern and southern parts of the country. It naturally makes sense then for three languages to exist in Switzerland as the southern part is lumped together with Italy, the southwest with France, and the northern part with Germany. So the geographic cohesion of Germany with northern Switzerland should produce a similar language, or so you would think. After all, French Swiss is almost identical to France French and likewise for Italian in Switzerland and Italy. Not the case with Swiss German and Germany German. Moreover, Switzerland’s population is tiny; only about 8 million people. I don’t know the exact number of Swiss German speakers, but say we assume it’s 1/3 of the population then we get a little over 2 ½ million. Seems like a small number to command a language as different as Swiss German is from Germany German.

Three days in Switzerland and I found myself constantly pondering and amazing in the history that built up the social system to what it is today. And I haven’t even scratched the surface of my hiking trip through the Alps. Perhaps best to break this up into two posts with another one to come shortly. Til then….

When the belt and shoes come off

No, I’m not referring to the reckoning that I faced with my father when I came home with a bad report card or mouthed off as a kid. Rather, it’s a tell tale sign that you are traveling on a US bound aircraft when the belt and shoes are forced to come off when clearing security. The paramount concern when clearing security in Australia is that your laptop gets taken out and put in a separate container. “No, I don’t want to see your boarding pass nor do I care if your face matches the photo ID in your hand. But for the love of God put the laptop in a separate bin!” Oh easy Australian travel, how I will miss thee. Australia is in the rear view mirror, again. Let’s see if the forces of nature bring me back there anytime soon. And now I’m heading home for a record two times in one calendar year! Stuck in Abu Dhabi at the moment because of “technical difficulties” with the aircraft’s maintenance. We actually boarded the plane but sat at the gate for two hours. The repairs that they were doing shut down the air conditioning. So there we sat….200 people on an airplane…with no air conditioning…under the mid day sun…in the Middle East…for two hours. It got a bit ugly before the airlines came to their senses and let us disembark. They gave us free lunch vouchers for the airport food court when stepping off the plane. Funny thing was, in order to arrive at the food court to use the voucher we had to clear security again even though we had just stepped off the plane. But hey, anything for a free greasy airport lo mein meal. At least there is free wi fi in the terminal and hence the random streaming of thought blog post.

I’ve never been to the UAE before, nor the Middle East for that matter. But I had no idea that the official language here is Tagalog. I feel like everywhere I look all of the flight attendants, ticketing agents, and duty free retailers are Filipino. I’m hearing more “f’s” pronounced like “p’s” that I am boarding calls to gate 29. “This is the pinal boarding call por Plight 427 to Prankpurt, Germany departing prom gate Pipty-six.” Tongue and cheek jokes aside, it’s easy to detect from the army of Filipino service workers here, Australia, and elsewhere throughout my travels that remittances make up staggering 10% of the Philippine GDP. Fascinating desert view coming in for the landing. The clear blue skies slowly descended on an ocean of light brown sand and skyline of low level housing units. The trip back home takes me the “other way”: Northwest over the Indian Ocean and then traversing the Atlantic – rather than the more conventional route over the Pacific – for back-to-back 14 hour flights with a God knows how many hours layover in Abu Dhabi. All the travel’s worth it for my man Freddy T, however. On Saturday he and his sweet little lady Jamie will exchange nuptials and I ain’t gonna miss it for the world. Big ups Fred and Jamie!

Yankees win! THEEEEE YANKEES WIN!!

The astute US sports fan who reads this blog would have immediately picked up the baseball reference in the title. It is, after all, the phrase that NY Yankees commentator Michael Kay bellows after each Yankee win. You would then ask, “why is a Mets fan giving a Yankees shout out in the title?” I’m not. Instead, it’s a reference to a super cool event going on this entire month in Melbourne – the 25^th annual Melbourne comedy festival. (http://www.comedyfestival.com.au)

For most of April scores of comedians from all over the world (although mainly from the UK, US, Canada, and Australia) have converged on Melbourne to put on dozens of shows every night of all sorts of comedy. I love it. It could quite easily be my favorite experience in all of Australia, even going back to last year. I have to utterly commend the city of Melbourne for its organization of the festival. The streets have just the right amount of banners and posters without feeling too bombarded with paper clutter; most restaurants have some sort of information or giveaways on the festival; there are free public comedy shows in the main town square every day (good, lengthy ones too…not a quick 5 minute stand up); the venues are all sufficiently staffed to get the lines moving and people ushered in and out; and a very impressive number of bars, restaurants, and clubs are participating by hosting shows. This is no small festival folks…it’s a pretty big and elaborate one.

Another reason why I’ve been obsessed with this comedy fest is because it is actually my first foray into standup comedy. I briefly dabbled as a standup comedian in the very early 1990s. I did a killer Robin Leach impersonation at the Mendoza family Christmas in 1991 which won me a few bucks from my grandfather. But other than that, I have no stand up comedic experience…not even going to a show. Yup, before March 31 I had never been to a stand up show. I remember in my high school years a popular pre-21 hangout spot were the comedy bars up in the Rutgers area and down by the Jersey shore (the real Jersey shore, not the trash TV show). But I never made my way into that scene. Likewise for some of the comedy clubs in DC during my years there.

The shows I have been to have pleasantly varied in all shapes, sizes, and colors. I’ve seen the conventional stand-up; the group improv ala “Whose Line is it Anyway?”; the theatric comedic dance; the silent comedy; the American comedy; the Aussies comedy; the British comedy; the gay comedy; the gay Aussie comedy; the British bashing American and Aussie comedy…you name it and I have been obsessing with it over the past month. A great perk of my central location right smack in the middle of downtown Melbourne is that most of the shows are within a two block walk from my apartment. I love it. I try to catch a show at least 3 time a week. Like anything in Australia, the shows are not cheap, but all have been well worth it.

Live comedy is a much different element than watching it on TV. People go to a comedy show with a certain anticipation and expectation that I don’t think applies to drama or horror. There is a physical product that people expect when going to a comedy show – laughter. You don’t necessarily go to a Broadway play or a horror flick thinking to yourself “you know, I really expect this performance to make me scream out loud in fear or gasp out loud in amazement of the actor’s rendition of Hamlet.” If you do, then you’re weird. But we all do go to comedy shows with the expectation of the guy/girl getting us to laugh our ass off. So there is a tremendous pressure that is placed on the comedian and, in a way, almost a tension between the performer and the audience. The audience waits in anticipation of a truly funny joke worthy of laughter, while the comedian gauges the energy of the audience and the sincerity in the laughter that erupts. It’s a constant back and forth interplay between the audience and comedian.

Three interesting shows that I went to were rotating stand-ups of American, British, and Australian comedians. For example, one show I went to had four American comedians who each did 15 minute performances. The next night there were 4 Brits each doing 15 minute skits. The next night the Aussies were up. It was a great opportunity for me to compare the different styles and elements of comedy from different countries. Hands down, beyond the shadow of any doubt, the Americans have the best style of comedy by a margin as wide as a football field. Call it home country bias, call it familiarity with my own ilk. But I was light years more impressed with the Americans than the Brits and Aussies. It wasn’t even a matter of me not understanding or relating to the Aussie or British jokes. Rather, it was more about style of delivery and confidence. Both the Aussies and the Brits were overly reliant on audience participation (i.e. picking on people in the first three rows) in order to generate content. They had to use the audience as a crutch and almost be bailed out by someone from the front row being bald or working at a roller skating rink to give them an easy avenue for making a joke. That’s their original content? I wanted more creativity, more originality, more substance rather than just a sarcastic exchange with where someone is coming from. That is what the Americans brought. The told stories, they made humor out of normal every day anecdotes, they engaged the audience – yes – but in a way to set up the joke rather than the end-all joke. And most especially they delivered their jokes with a degree of confidence that convinced you that what they were saying was funny. I was utterly disappointed with the British in particular. Mr. Bean, Sasha Baron Cohen…that’s some funny $h!t coming out of the British Isles. The bobos who I saw doing stand up here were not. So the Yankees win on the international comedy front.

Three guys in particular to check out if they are ever performing in an area by you:

Hannibal Buress: http://hannibalhannibal.tumblr.com/

Moshe Kasher: http://www.moshekasher.com/

Tom Segura: http://tomsegura.com/

Naki vs. Nature (and Victoria’s toll system)

As the old saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Despite the risk of shaming myself by getting lost again in the woods, and regardless of the inherent fears that a recent viewing of “127 Hours” engendered, I tested the fates a few weekends ago and went for another hike in the woods. No dramatic stories this time around (sorry to disappoint), nothing adventurous to report. Despite living smack downtown in the middle of an exciting and cosmopolitan city, I’ve felt the very frequent need to get out of town on the weekends and explore as much of the proximate countryside as I can. Australia being enormous of course and having no shortage of outdoor opportunities, the mere distances alone force you to pick and choose your battles for weekend day trips. My treks have taken me along the Great Ocean Road and the Dandenong ranges about an hour outside of Melbourne.

The Great Ocean Road, as the name suggests, is a magnificent stretch of coastline across southern Victoria that runs parallel with the Southern Ocean. The road begins about an hour and half outside of Melbourne and ends about four hours later, with most people choosing to stop at the natural wonder sight of The Twelve Apostles just outside the town of Port Campbell.

To be God honestly truthfully, and not taking anything away from the Great Ocean Road, I was more pound for pound impressed with the Pacific Coast Highway from Los Angeles to San Francisco. The layout of the PCH cuts into the mountains and out along the coast with more sporadic twists and turns. You are in the mountains one minute and greeted with a new spectacular view the next. The GOR was one continuous stretch of a stellar view. I like it…a lot. But the variety of the landscape of the PCH I think gives it a greater appeal. The cool things about the GOR are: 1) staring straight at you just a stone’s throw away is ANTARCTICA. Indeed, the waters of the Southern Ocean are pretty icy year round and according to the locals is a play pen for Great White Sharks. 2) Randomly stopping along the road and catching koalas just chilling out in the wild. Yep, they’re as fat and lazy as they people say they are.

Capping off the GOR is the famous 12 Apostles site – large island rock formations that got chiseled off the mainland from thousands of years of erosion. Some have gotten so chiseled away that in fact there are no longer 12 of them, I think the official count now only has them down to nine. Regardless, it’s the most famous stopping point along the Great Ocean Road that most people officially deem the end of the trip, even though the coastal highway continues on for several more hours. Most recently, I got a weekend dose out of the city in the Dandenong ranges just outside of Melbourne. The local travel books describe it as “lush rainforests” but I sort of scoff at that description considering that where we are is closer to Antarctica than to the tropics. So consider my ability to not get lost in the woods this time as a victory for me. For anyone keeping score at home that is Nature: 1, Naki 1. With plenty of outdoor stuff to do in Victoria, the state has earned the nickname the “Garden State.” Yes, there is plenty of greenery, but clearly whoever thought of that nickname has never been to New Jersey – the real Garden State. With all the weekend travel I have truly mastered the art of driving on the left/wrong side of the wrong. I learned and somewhat mastered stick shift while bouncing around the Netherlands late last year; and left side of the road driving does not phase me anymore. But putting the two together – stick shift and left side of the road driving – is still unventured territory for me. The situation has never arise to force myself to do both since, much to my surprise, Australian cars are almost 95% automatic like in the US.

Melbourne does have an odd little quirk to its driving rules – two of them actually. In the 50 square block radius of Melbourne’s central business district there is a rule called the “hook-turn.” Keep in mind two things: first, Australians drive on the left/wrong side of the road, remember? Second, outside of Europe, Melbourne has the largest network of trams in the world (tram cars as in public transportation…not trans as in transvestites). True story, look it up. OK, so those two things are necessary in order to understand the hook turn. In the US and the normal driving world, “left yields to right” so when making a left turn at an intersection you wait for thru traffic to pass and then make the left turn, often just as the light is turning red. Flip it around obviously in Australia – “right yield to left” so you wait for thru traffic to pass and then make the right turn often when the light turns red. The “hook turn” in the central business district of Melbourne is, when making a right turn at an intersection, rather than going to the center of the street and creeping your way to the right as you wait for thru traffic to pass, you have to go as far to the left lane as possible (almost to the pedestrian lane)….and then once the light turns red you turn right. So it’s basically going to the far left lane in order to turn right. In the US the equivalent would be going to the far right lane in order to make a left turn. The point is to not block the traffic behind you and to let the tram cars pass. So once the light turns green, you go to the far left lane and are only allowed to turn right once your light goes red. It’s an odd little rule but it seems to work well to unblock traffic. And what makes it unique is that in all of Australia this rule only applies in the central business district of Melbourne.

A second, this time aggravating, thing about driving in Victoria is the toll system. There are three toll roads in the entire state of Victoria and unless you are an everyday driver with a toll account, payment is done through a glorified but punitive honesty policy. Instead of toll booths on the highway, when you get to a toll point a camera takes a photo of your license plate and you have two days to pay the toll either online or on the phone or else you get a $45 fine deducted from your card. In a previous blog entry I wrote about the honesty policy when riding the trams in Germany. You get on and are entrusted with paying the ticket with no authority to regulate. I feel that Australia’s toll system is a bastardized version of the honesty policy. “You get a two day free pass, then we hit you up for $45 if you don’t pay up.” I find it to be a huge inconvenience as an infrequent driver to have to sit and wait on the phone to pay my toll. But that is certainly where the state makes its money on tolls – from the absent minded tourist or driver from a different Australian state who is not accustomed to the state’s local toll system. A similar set up exists in Singapore for metro cards. You know that you put a deposit down on your Singapore metro card and get the money back when you exit the station? For the millions of tourists visiting Singapore each year who don’t know that, well, it’s pay day for the state. Very clever of you, Victorian Government. I’m on to you, you’re getting my phone time….but not my extra money…..