Exploring Switzerland - Part One

Switzerland has been my home for the past fifteen years. Work brought me here. I chose to stay here largely because I thought it would be a wonderful place to raise a family, but also because Switzerland is a buzzing hub of international business activity—the Disney World of European capitalism.

I am a supply chain consultant by profession, and many of those companies, and many of those supply chains, stream into Switzerland the way rivers stream into the sea. I also lead a firm, Kaleidoscope International that trains business people in supply chain, and what location is more central for Europeans across the continent to come for training and study?

Both personal and business considerations brought me here, and both have been more than satisfied. However, it dawned on me this year: I have spent so many years in one of the most beautiful countries on earth and failed to really explore its outrageous landscapes and breathtaking scenery.

If any good may be said to have come out of the recent pandemic and all the current talk of war, it’s that such crises wake us up to the priceless value of living, not just surviving, not just work. So this year I decided to make a change. This year, with my wife, I decided I would visit as many corners of Switzerland as I could. Time moves at the same speed it always has, we can’t change that; but we can change the choices and experiences with which we fill those hours. I certainly would not neglect family or business, that was a given. But this year, I decided, I’d fill a few of the remaining hours with some beauty and adventure too.??

And so off we went!

To start our long weekend, we spent the night at the idyllic Ambassador Zermatt, a hotel that brings together luxury and comfort all year. With each room pulling in wooden accents and plush linens, you’ll be immediately transported away from any of the week’s stressors and feel like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders. The dining at the hotel is top notch and the service is incredible. Honestly, I could stay there for an entire week and never get tired of it.

The first trip we took was on the Glacier Express, famously known as the “slowest fast train in the world.” Our starting point was Zermatt, and we went from there to St. Moritz all in a day’s work. The trip itself was seamless, the sights so beautiful as to seem unreal. The scenery viewed from the Glacier Express was so inexpressively lovely that I pulled out my notebook at once, and tried to express it anyway, and capture the sights for use in one of my coming novels. ?Murder On The Glacier Express? Why not? Agatha Christie and the Orient Express did well enough.

But our hosts on Glacier Express would certainly never allow anything as disruptive as that. Every detail was meticulously taken care of from the start. All we had to do was show up, and a staff member showed us to our comfortable seats, allowed us to settle in, and left to prepare a glorious lunch as our heads turned toward the big windows and we gaped at the distant mountains. Before we knew it, the train was leaving the station on its nearly eight-hour journey. We passed through ninety-one tunnels and crossed two hundred and ninety-one bridges. Unfolding waves of glittering mountains and sea-green valleys cascaded by the train on all sides at every moment. It was impossible to get used to it. We gawked.

After departing from Brig, the first stop of the journey, we crossed the Rhone River and started chatting with a fellow traveler, a Polish woman who was seated not far from us. We hit it off immediately. We learned that she was traveling through Western Europe to try to find a safe haven for her eighteen-year-old son to protect him from getting drafted and swallowed up in the unravelling Russian-Ukrainian conflict. It was a sobering moment, like figures in a movie from the 1940’s caught up in the shadows of war.

Soon enough, a couple from Singapore, who were sitting opposite us joined the conversation. They were on their honeymoon trip—a trip that was delayed three years thanks to the global pandemic. Their stories of Singapore, and how they and the people there dealt with the early growing panic and the ferocious lockdowns, were nearly heroic. We were fascinated, and told a few pandemic stories of our own. Certainly we all have them. (That said, watching my wife connect with people, share stories, and exchange laughter was a highlight of the trip for me.)

Later in the ride, as we crossed through the Landwasser viaduct, I started talking with a couple from Mexico. It turned out the man worked in supply chain just like I do. We fell into “shop talk” almost at once. How were Mexican supply chain people dealing with El Coloso del Norte—the Americans? And what about CEOs in Mexico? Were they feverishly discussing Biden and Blockchain and AI and ChatGPT over brie and cheese there too? His girlfriend rolled her eyes, and turned to discuss finer matters with my wife. But even so she was a great sport, allowing us to relive old stories and workplace challenges at length.

Before we knew it, we had arrived in St. Moritz. I was surprised at how quickly the time had passed. Yes, the loveliness of the views had kept us all occupied along the way. But that was only part of it. The conversations and connections had fueled our souls as well. Their stories had become a part of our story, deepening our adventure.

Not that St. Mortiz was not an adventure in itself. We stayed at the Hotel Europa and the view out of the window was so reminiscent of the landscapes we’d been admiring all day that we felt like the train had briefly halted in the sky.

But by then we had plunged into enough scenic vistas—it was time to plunge instead into a spa! Concerning which, I cannot recommend the pool and sauna at the St. Moritz more highly. Add their massage, and your muscles will not merely relax completely but swoon.

Dinner that night? We treated ourselves to the best of the Hotel Europa’s evening menu, which is to say, to the best of St. Moritz. Fish, pasta, meat—every possible delectable was there, and everything we ate was phenomenal. We savored not just the fare but the day; we had networked, made new friends, and forged new memories, all of which are critical to living happy, healthy lives; our new experiences had added value to our very being.

St Moritz was the perfect place to look back over our trip so far, and to relive our conversations with new friends, and think about our next destination.

Interlaken!?