Wine festival from behind!

After Beatenberg I went through Bern, a very nice town, on to Neuchatel. My plans were just to pass through, but hey and behold, in a few days there would be the annual grape picking festival there! Things got even better as I got to stay in a student flat through the hospitaliyclub.org. I made good friends with wonderful people who showed me how you really are supposed to do a fondue: Over a crackling bonfire in the forest overlooking the medieval town, with an assortment of wine and laughter. The festival itself wasn't all bad either (the people in the picture are offering free wine from the local produce). =)

Vipassana and coffee. Technicolour and toilets.

Coming over a few passes, and through the open air museum at Ballenberg, I go through Interlaken. A hole of a city: Way way to touristified. Looks like everything is covered in pastell plastics, people included. But the mountain view is nice enough.

Beatenberg, on the other hand, is much nicer. A nice buddhistic retreat center 600 meters over Interlaken, with a few residential bodhisattvas. Being a youth hostel from the 70's, the dorms had some really vivid colors indeed. As I spent a weekend there in a retreat, I was last to write up on the chores list, and I ended up washing toilets. But very mindfully, of course.

Unscientific interlude

Switzerland is a nice place to bike. You see lots of nice stuff like valleys and tractors. But the country has problems of a cosmic order: Some physical laws don't apply. Three postulations:


--There are more roads going uphill than ones going downhill. This I prove on a daily basis. It seems the whole of Switzerland tips sligthly when I bleedsweatingly tread uphill. I simply never get the satisfaction pummeling downhill that would counter the hours upon hours of grinding hard work pushing 30 or so kilo's up to Switzerlands cow infested road summits. By the way, my personal best going downhill is 64.1 km/h. Still working on that. Going up? Hm... 0 km/h for 45 mins?

--The shortest distance between two points is not in a straight line. It is somewhat frustrating coming to this conclusion when the map obviously tells otherwise. They say the coast of Norway actually is infinitely long when you use a small enough unit of measuring. (Imagine measuring the circumference of all grains of sand which the water encompass on a beach.) I am getting used to pushing my bike up dirt walking trails, and the wheels sometimes feel infinitesimally small.

--Thermophysics don't work. My sleeping bag is too cold.

Amden. (Insert sentimental song here)

There is a danger of superlative overuse on this blog, so I'll try to contain myself.

The center (or me) had some trouble in the start with there suddenly being someone present who couldn't follow the ordinary guest routine. As soon as we got to know each other, however, things worked out for the best.

In between the daily activities there, which among other things is simply looking out the window at the stunning scenery, I got some work done, and managed to squeeze in fixing my bike as well. (The thing seems to always have some small kink to work out.) I got known as the wire massager, and I learned how (not?) to make a plaster roof. What may the future bring?

A nice puncture

As I was cycling to Liechtenstein, boom went the tire. But out of a house, an old man and an old women popped out. "Oh, let us help you!" the woman almost shouted, and ran into the house and called bicycle shops. "Hey, it'll be ok..." I tried to say, but she insisted. All the shops were closed for the lunch siesta they have in Switzerland, so: "You are coming in here and having lunch, now!" "But..." "No buts!"

So I had to go in the house, was not allowed to take my shoes off, and ate an extraordinary good rabbit meat ball and jummy side dishes. Then we took the car and drove around to find a bike shop. "And stop saying "thank you" all the time!" was all I heard, since I obviously wasn't able to say anything else.

We fixed the bike, spoke about everything between heaven and earth, and then I biked off. Guess who'll get postcards for every country I come to! =)

Contrasts

From working with clay and quantity loads, I crossed a few geographical borders to work in a fine herb garden with the most exquisite of shrubberies. Well, not really, the shrubberies were somewhat in charmful disarray, and not better when I finished. But there were berries, cakes, wonderful vegetarian cuisine and Schwützer-Dütsch aplenty. Really lots of the latter. =)

I've spent less than a week at Haus Tao, near Bodensee, in Switzerland, and I already feel like staying here indefinitely. The contrast from a 4500 participant summer festival course to an intimate retreat of 5 people (lucky as I timed it) is astounding, and has probably sligthly leveraged my opinion. And I slept in a bed with feather cushions, instead of sleeping in a wet tent on my thin yoga mat. An important thing to note though, is that the people here are just as nice as the people in EC Immenstadt. (The latter would probably come after me with baseball bats, torches and dull spoons (yes, truly horrid) if I didn't write this.) If I continue travelling in this manner, I'll probably never be able to stop, as I have to visit all the places again.

And I've learned to say good bye the Schwützer-Dütsch way...