Bonjour! Or should I say guten tag? Or ciao? In any case, it’s greetings from Switzerland!
How I keep surviving travel to Europe with the parental units.....I don't know. Every time we travel, it feels like a war for them, and a peace corps mission for me. And let me tell you, my role as an aide worker to prevent a civil war from erupting between/with the parental units in a foreign land is no easy task! I deserve a Nobel Peace Prize for all my humanitarian efforts.
I mostly blame the complexities of Switzerland for all the in-fighting. As a peace-loving, neutral country, Switzerland was able to avoid both WWI and WWII. Its neutrality, however, could not prevent WWIII from erupting within my household during our visit.
Firstly, as ethnocentric American travelers, I have learned our assumption that Europe speaks English is a major fallacy. I learned my lesson in Italy (see blog: How to order "non-sparkling" water in Italy). But this was Switzerland for crying out loud! Everyone here is a Roger Federer and speaks multiple languages, right?
I had read that the average Swiss national learns a minimum of three languages in school, and the country has four official languages. As a major European hub for travel, commerce, and the home to numerous international organizations — the United Nations, Red Cross, World Health Organization, etc. — surely they speak some English, no?
Of course, I don't suffer from such a severe case of ethnocentrism that I expect everyone to speak English fluently — the Swiss speak either French or German as his/her first language — but their second or third or fourth language is English, right? Right?
Wrong.
The four official languages of Switzerland are:
French
German
Italian
Romansh
English is not on the list. And boy did that throw my family into a vrille a.k.a trudeln a.k.a tailspin.
For our second Euro trip, we planned it all by ourselves again. Given the success of our first Euro mission, I mean, vacation (see blog: Eurotrip Recap) we felt confident it would similar to our last one, if not easier. After all, last time we were traveling for 21 days, visiting 3 countries — Italy, France, and U.K. This time we were on the road for only 16 days, visiting 2 countries — Switzerland and Northern Italy (Lake Como/Milan). Plus, Switzerland is a much smaller country, so how hard could it be?
Well, the first way we made it hard was thinking we could get a rental car and drive our way across Switzerland. It all made sense on paper. We would pick up a car from Geneva airport and cruise through the French region (Lausanne, Fribourg, Montreux, Murten) to the German region (Bern, Interlaken, Lucern, Zurich), before dropping off our car in the Italian region (Lugano) and then taking the bus over the border to Lake Como, Italy.
With its famed Autobahnen, we figured driving in Switzerland would be a piece of cake and it would afford us the flexibility to stop wherever and whenever we fancied. If only we could make it out of the airport Avis....
Our flight from the U.S to Switzerland was long, with a two hour layover in Amsterdam. We tried to sleep on the plane, because otherwise jet-lag would hit us like a brick as soon as we landed. However, sleeping was made impossible when we encountered the unlikely event of a water evacuation as the passengers aboard DL0258 flooded the cabin with their tears. How you ask? Well, Delta had the bright idea of offering The Fault in Our Stars as its featured in-flight movie.....to Amsterdam, no less! If you thought a crying baby was annoying on a plane, try a cabin-full of wailing passengers of all ages. The lady next to me was sobbing/sucking air so hard that I swear the oxygen masks would drop from above due to a loss of cabin pressure.