This past week I have embarked on a walking journey. For 6 days in a row I have walked for 30 minutes or more into the forest at the end of our suburb. I get to stretch my legs, look at the beautiful golden colours of autumn on the trees, breathe in fresh air and listen to music whilst I think beautiful thoughts of nothingness.
I have recently completed the novel Disgrace by J.M.Coetzee. Is it well written? Yes. Did I enjoy it? Not really. But I am glad that I read it. I am also reading Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, which is a slow burner; a thinkers book; a book for ponderer’s (spellcheck tells me this word doesn’t exist, care factor spellcheck, care factor!) and I enjoy it every time I plod through the pages and I am calmed by the writing.
I have discovered a band called Green Pitch and highly recommend that you listen to them.
http://www.myspace.com/greenpitchband Let me know what you think.
The Mad scientist returned from a secret mad scientist’s meeting in Chicago last week and I am now the proud owner of a Chicago Bulls coffee mug. Finally after all these years I have one!! I am also now in possession of an I love Chicago t-shirt, which is green and has a 4 leaf clover instead of a heart, but nevertheless I have one of those as well. Although having never been to Chicago I don’t know if I love it or not. Perhaps I should wear it ironically?
On Wednesday night we went to a concert with our Dutch friends, who you may remember from previous acknowledgements as the peanut butter pimps, to see Nouvelle Vague a French band that does covers of mostly new wage punk songs, hence the name Nouvelle vague, clever no? Most males in the room were both scared and mesmerised by the tall blonde French Diva and her whirling dervish dancing style and everyone was forced to boogie down, even the stoic types that refuse to dance were raising an eyebrow in time. I think the highlights were their cover of Blondie’s heart of glass, Joy Division’s Love will tear us apart and Billy Idol’s Dancing with myself. It was a fun, boogie worthy and eyebrow raising evening, a perfect combination for a concert in my opinion. http://www.myspace.com/nouvellevague
Filed under: Uncategorized
Two weekends ago we went to Gandria, which is a small car free village that is nestled on the shores of Lake Lugano in the Ticino canton of Switzerland, which is very close to Italy. It is still in Switzerland, but Italian is the main language spoken, the streets are a little grottier and the people are just that little bit more laid back, but not too much, they are Swiss Italians after all.
We travelled almost 6 hours to get there, when it should have only taken close to 4, because we missed the first train we needed to catch and the second connection never turned up. But once we made it to Lugano, the main city of Ticino and ate a delightful slice of pizza and caught the ferry to Gandria, it was all worthwhile. Once we saw our hotel and made our way to the terrace and then into the lake to cool off, we forgot how we had even got there. We whiled away the afternoon sleeping in the sun on banana lounges and swimming in the lake which was a wonderful temperature.
That night we wandered the tiny pathways of Gandria in search of decent Italian food and we were generally pleased with our discovery. Then we came back to the hotel terrace for gelato and wine on the lake shore. After a long night in a small, stuffy and not air conditioned room, accompanied by one of the residents of Gandria having a full on Italian argument with his wife, we awoke to a lovely breakfast by the lake, secretly feeding the ducks who waited below in the water for scraps of bread.
Then we swam and swam and swam and lounged and lounged and lounged in the terrace, accompanied by the scurrying of many small lizards who were also soaking up the rays of the beautiful Italian style weather, until it was time to head back to Lugano and a gelato and onto Bern by train. It was a wonderful weekend and the mad scientist still has the pink belly to show for it and the lesson learned that the shade of a beach umbrella does not preclude sunburning of very white skin.
It certainly was la dolce vita!
All morning my usual silent bliss has been accompanied by a jack hammer in the next apartment building, I am fearing that the bastard using it will soon hammer a hole through the wall into our kitchen. I am sitting here writing this with ear plugs in, because that slightly takes the edge off the high pitched, insistent tapping. I had to share this pain!
Other than that the sun is shining. Although there is no interesting food to eat. I need to shower, but can’t be bothered. I should leave the house and get away from the noise, but that will require showering and as I already stated, I can’t be bothered. What a dilemma. I am sure that I will eventually overcome this impasse, when I am at breaking point and realise that as I stick my head under the water it may actually dampen the sound of the jack hammer. He stopped for 3 minutes, that is his cunning game, the bastard. He is playing with my mind, so I start thinking has he finished? Is that the end? Just when you consider taking out the ear plugs, BAM, he starts again. I am Buddha, I can overcome this worldly annoyance. Who am I kidding, I’m no Buddhist. Obviously I need to literally and metaphorically wash away the grime and escape this devil music. To the shower! Transcendence is just a shower away. There you go, that is your life lesson for the day. Away with you grasshopper.
Woke up with a sore and twisted muscle and or nerve combination in the vicinity of my shoulder slash neck area.
I’m reading a book called Yoga for people who can’t be bothered to do it! There are two things about it you should know and may have already worked out. Firstly, it has nothing what so ever to do with Yoga. Secondly, yes I did think that sounds like the type of yoga book for me, almost personally created for me in fact, so I was surprised when it had nothing to do with yoga. It is just the ramblings of a nomadic forty something writer. I read this passage today, “In Rome I lived in the grand manner of writers. I basically did nothing all day. Not a thing.” Well I read this, thought, I must be a writer and then thought I better write something today, seeing as I’m a writer and all, well I act like one apparently, plus I did just write this passage, seems close enough.
Went for a ride today, my bike, that I am borrowing from the Swiss downstairs which technically means it isn’t mine, but let’s not get into semantics, decided the other day that it wanted to be a single speed bike and hence the gear cable has gone slack and doesn’t change gears. Today the shop I went to happened to be at the top of quite a hill and then to get back home from anywhere requires riding up a hill. I am shattered. Because of course I couldn’t ride up those hills nice and slowly, no I had to fly up them as quick as possible to get them over and done with. Sick of the hiking boots ripping and chewing at my heels, so I went to an outlet store and brought a relatively cheap pair of hiking boots that will hopefully not turn out to be cannibalistic.
Better go and have a lie down, that is a big day for a writer. Ciao!
The weekend.
Saturday. Slept in to 11ish. Mad scientist watched TV, I sniffed the day and went back to bed. Later I arose and showered. Had porridge, because it is good for me. Went food shopping, took the Mad scientist with me which at least doubles the cost of the food bill and gives me a fairly clear insight into what having children will be like. Returned home and the MS made scones, all on her own and they were bloody good, with butter and strawberry and rhubard jam. Of course we had a cup of tea with them, goes without saying doesn’t it. She was so proud of them, it was cute. I love scones! Then I made a nice dinner that MS informed me had all of her favourite foods in it. We ate ice cream and watched a crappy movie.
Sunday. Slept in to 11ish, but it was a ‘like a log sleep’ until we woke up. We then went for a walk through the Forrest and to the Aare river and along its banks, MS picked her first apple straight from the tree and enjoyed the experience. We watched birds float down the river and watched butterflies floating and pollinating flowers. Then we came home and complained about our hiking boots hatred for our heels and I went back to bed. Woke up and showered, had scrambled eggs with mushrooms that the MS went wild for and then watched rubbish TV, then when bed time came….. nothing, I couldn’t sleep and only got 3 hours sleep last night. I feel less than sprightly today. That was the weekend.
P.S.
Friday. Went to a crappy Italian restaurant, think nursing home cafeteria, and paid 50 francs for a sub par pizza and a pair of beers each. Then we went to the Buskers festival and watched, along with many Swiss people, some weird and wonderful busker groups. We saw an Iranian Women’s liberation performance piece, which turned out to be performed by a French fire twirler ….. the world is indeed a strange place. We finished the night with an enjoyable performance from a jazz trio and then bid our little group of friends adieu.
So that is it, that was the weekend!
Filed under: Switzerland | Tags: Bernese Oberland, farmhouse brunch, fireworks, ice cream
Saturday the 1st of August was Swiss National day. We went into the mountains to a farmhouse and had traditional Swiss farmhouse fare and it was delightful. We accompanied the Bavarian on a 40 minute hike up the mountain to get to the farmhouse where there was a huge fry pan full of rosti, I am talking a pan that was half a metre by half a metre! We had farmhouse yogurt and Alp cheese and butterkopf and homemade jams and wonderful coffee. Then after a set back brought on by the confusion of too many cooks spoiling the broth we made off to walk up the mountain and made our way to a mountain lake, which after walking for what seemed like hours in 28 degree heat was like an oasis to a thirsty man. The water was freezing though and only allowed a short swim, although after the mad scientist stood by the waters edge for half an hour, she announced after getting in that she could stay in the water all afternoon.
Then we embarked on a lovely stroll over the mountains and through the fields, stopping by a farmhouse slash pub to use the toilet and talk to the swines. Walking past the most beautiful Alpine flowers and the most breathtaking views on a beautiful and warm day, it really was a day to celebrate. We sat on the side of a hill over looking mountain cows and ate a snack of sandwiches and tomatoes whilst the cows absent mindedly played their tune on the bells around their necks. There is nothing quite like eating when you have earned it, the way the food tastes and the satisfaction from knowing that you deserve to be eating is just divine. Doing this whilst looking down the green peaceful valley and up to snow covered peaks is even more pleasant. Life was good. Life was grand.
Then after about 4 hours or so of hiking through the day we made it back to the Audi, our chariot. Not even the blisters that announced themselves on my heels when the boots were thankfully removed could dampen the delightful feeling of a day spent in the Swiss mountains. Then after driving around and back and forth for a time, the Bavarian took us to a swimming spot in lake Thun, we were swimming at 8pm in the sunlight and it was the perfect way to end and refresh after a day of hiking.
Then we made our way back to Bern with a swiftly emptying petrol tank that the Bavarian refused to refill because he was convinced he could get the petrol cheaper and because he had the mad scientist in the back seat to push if the petrol ran out completely. We became hungry and then we became delusional. First the mad scientist thought out loud and pondered “imagine what it would be like to be that house over there!” The Bavarian said “I imagine what it would be like to be that castle there!” I just laughed at them. Then came the fateful ice cream sign, after which the Bavarian was obsessed with getting ice cream, he even wondered how much ice cream we would get for a Ferrari as we passed a Ferrari showroom. There was corn everywhere, but no ice cream and no diamonds! There was fireworks and fires though, but this was all useless to an ice cream obsessed Bavarian.
Finally we made it to Bern, went to an area that was a good vantage point for the official fireworks, but more importantly we found ice cream and it was very good ice cream. Then we climbed up on a wall and watched some fireworks, fearful all the time that the crazy Swiss behind us letting off fireworks would deafen us or maim us at any moment. Thankfully we dragged the mad scientist away relatively early on in the fireworks display, as fireworks really are quite boring, all the while she was waxing philosophically about the audio waves produced by the “big whoop boom” of the fireworks, which really tickles her fancy!
We made it home and bid the Bavarian a good evening and then slid into bed to the annoying symphony of every idiot in the neighbourhood letting off fireworks; it worked, as I slept like a log!
The Mad scientist is back from the wilds of our Antipodean motherland! We had a lovely movie like reunion on the platform of the Bern train station, but the details of that tryst are private, I can say that we were and still are very happy to be together again. When she left for Australia I ran along next to the train whilst she sat in her train seat laughing and smiling at me like we were in some movie from a different age.
Summer has arrived in Bern with a vengeance. The climate is quite tropical as we are experiencing hot, muggy days and early evening downpours like clockwork, everyday for the past week. The mad scientist went for her first swim in the Aare river. This is rather a surreal experience as you walk along the river bank with hundreds of other people and then you dive into the river and float ridiculously fast back down stream and to get out you must madly swim against the current to get to the left hand bank and the bright red handrails that help the hapless amongst us get out of the fast moving water. The mad scientist was grinning and screaming like a little girl once she was in the water, but as I experienced the first time, she was also scared half senseless. That river is FAST. It is so fast that if you put your head under the water you can hear the large stones knocking against each other, OR as the Bavarian told me, the teeth of all the people who have drowned in the Aare are chattering as you go past.
Then to complete our assimilation tasks for the weekend we returned home to watch Federer win Wimbledon, which as pseudo Swiss it is now our duty to support ‘the Fed’.
This is addressed to the two or three people that read this blog. I wish to update you loyal few, you happy few on the changes that have taken place over the past month or more. So we moved out of our apartment and the mad scientist timed it perfectly as we moved into our new apartment on the Saturday that she left for a mad scientist party in Tuscany. So yes, I was left with the task of moving most of the stuff by bus and by bike to the new place. I was also left to fend for myself in the wilds of IKEA and as any man knows that is not a place to be taken lightly, it almost got the best of me. So by the time she came back from working so hard for 3 hours each day in the warm Tuscan sun by the pool overlooking the Tuscan valleys below, wait sorry that was the free time they had each day, what I meant to say was after the hours and hours of serious scientific talks for the whole week and after the hours and hours in the evening sampling the Italian wines and the nighttime vistas, I had mostly moved us to the new apartment. The mad scientist arrived to our new apartment tired and hung over from the hard science of the night before and was awoken in the middle of the night with the need to vomit. Apparently the cuttlefish risotto that she had for lunch in Lucca was a little past its used by date. As I stood lovingly concerned and held her hair out of the line of fire, I pondered the definition of poetic justice. Then I dismissed that as cliched and helped her to bed. The new IKEA bed that I had constructed with my own hands!
Now the new apartment is on the top floor and is underneath the roof beams, which gives it a ski chalet feel apparently. As I have not actually been inside a Swiss ski chalet I will have to take the word of the Swiss gentleman who likened the internal ascetic as such. Very soon after we moved in there was a heat wave over a weekend that has not been seen since, as it is 12 degrees today in the middle of June, and we wondered what we had done as it was so muggy and uncomfortable in an apartment on the top floor in extreme heat. Luckily, that dispersed rather swiftly and we have been rather comfortable since.
Since moving to this new area I have developed a table tennis habit and as it happens I have quite the knack for table tennis, as my Dutch peanut butter pimp has been finding out. The scoreboard reads 2 games to him and at least 20 to me. I also beat the Swiss guy downstairs 3-0, but he has had an “elbow” injury ever since that game; the Swiss are cunning. On top of that we have had a few BBQ’s were I am expected, as the token Australian male, to know the secrets of BBQing, I just told them to pour beer on it and try not to burn it too much.
Then two and a half weeks ago the mad scientist left for Australia to do her duty as bridesmaid’s to her two best friends from Childhood. I miss her! I was left behind to water the plants and collect the mail. She still has a week and a half left before she is back from this trip. Since we don’t get much mail and I thought that if the plants die I could just buy new ones, and she wouldn’t notice anyway, I would go for a trip.
So I did. I went to Munich and Vienna and Budapest. This weekend I am going to London. I figure I should go and see these places whilst the mad scientist is away as when she gets back she will want me to cook her dinner and wash her clothes and I won’t have any time left, before she is off to her next hard working conference. I will regale you of my adventures to these delightful cities of Europe once I have processed the experiences and musings that they have produced.
We haven’t been up to much lately. We are preparing for the move to the new apartment, as we receive the keys this afternoon. Coincidentally the mad scientist is off to Italy tomorrow for a week, for a gathering of like minded mad scientists in the middle of Tuscany. She calls it a serious scientific conference, I call it a debauched club med style junket! Semantics really are interesting aren’t they? So whilst I stay in Bern with its apathetic and languid spring weather, as it seems like spring just can’t be bothered being warm, so it is just going to be cold and rain everyday; the mad scientist will be lapping up the warmth of Italy and drinking copious gallons of Italian wine and wondering to her colleagues what the poor people are doing? Well, I will be moving bloody house, whilst she reinacts ‘la dolce vita’ in the hills of Tuscany.
I had thoughts of slowly dispatching the piano man upstairs last night and I was enjoying those thoughts like a fine wine, as such, it is good that we are moving this weekend. Strangely, I will not miss him one….little….. bit!
I also get the delightful chore of going to IKEA to buy a mattress and assorted paraphernalia and then somehow transport it back to the new apartment and up the 5 flights of stairs to the new apartment. Yay for me! I hope I like the apartment as I have never actually stepped foot inside it. What was I thinking, I am not sure, because the mad scientist generally can’t be trusted when sent to the supermarket alone, so what interesting sights await me when we open the door this afternoon is anyone’s guess.
Looking around the present apartment at the amount of stuff we have to move, it is quite amazing how much we have accumulated despite the fact that the mad scientist informs everyone that we have absolutely nothing in our possession other than our clothes. She would say that as she doesn’t have to move any of it!
Bitter. Moi? No! I am actually very glad that the time has come for us to move, as the new apartment is in a much more vibrant area than our current abode and will provide us with a much more enjoyable and social lifestyle, as it is nearer to our new friends and the university and little cafes and bars. Plus there is the permanent table tennis table that I must become master and commander of this summer! Muha Muha!
Filed under: Insane rantings, Switzerland | Tags: Books, Rubbish book reviews, Spring
Spring came to Bern last Thursday, but looking out my window sipping on my morning tea I am hard pressed to find any signs of spring today. Thursday sizzled to 25 degrees, then Friday was similar again, Saturday a little less hot, but it came complete with an afternoon storm that was impressive and swift. Sunday was again a little cooler, but still nice until it stormed longer and more stubbornly than Saturday’s storm clouds.
Life here at the moment has really taken on the colour and hue of the mundane as we budget and scrimp and save to afford the move to our new apartment and as such we haven’t left Bern or had any real adventures for several weeks now. We are excited to be moving and are actually in a state of heightened frustration as we have had to wait 3 weeks before being able to move and it is driving us crazy! But we have been amazed at the generosity of people here who have donated everything from a wedgewood dinner service to a couch, a dining room table and even down to two egg cups. Others have donated an old TV and coffee table, along with a lamp and others have offered their might to help us move. It has been an extremely nice example, that despite Christianity’s dominance in the Western world, that people are good and kind after all.
We have collected around us a nice little United Nations group that are all great people. We have the Two Dutch, a Canadian, Three Swiss, a Bavarian and a Swiss Gran mother and Gran father. Last night we had a BBQ at the Swiss couple who live in our new apartment building, which is a weird coincidence isn’t it? She is a mad scientist is training and they live 2 floors below our new apartment. The Dutchies came and some Germans as well and we BBQ’d and played table tennis on the permanent cement table tennis table that is set up in the street. We played in the rain and played a group form of table tennis, with 10 people, that involves running around the table and taking your shot in turn. It was chaos and people were slipping and hitting the road in their haste to hit the ball, some of us were using small wooden chopping boards as bats as we didn’t have enough bats and it was mad and funny and best not done in the rain.
Since Thursday I have been in a reading frenzy. I have read Stephen Fry’s ‘The Liar’, Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘A man without a country’ and Voltaire’s ‘Candide’. Perhaps with the warm spring weather my reading frenzy was like a spring cleaning of the mind, getting it supple and clean after a winter of inactivity and sloth. Or perhaps it is an example of taking the time to slow down on a nice spring day and sit in the sun and do the things that you enjoy, rather than what you think you should be doing. Either way, I enjoyed the verbosity and wit of Fry’s first novel and was devouring it with joy and inner delight, even though I was becoming more and more aware that I know so little about so much as he dropped subtle and not so subtle allusions to literature and art and language that I am not equipped to translate, but it was still enjoyable. Vonnegut’s book is a collection of short, well not stories but comments or memos about what it was like for him as an 82 year old man living in the America of 2004. He writes so simply but he gives the sense that he knows what life is really like and doesn’t try to give it special meaning, he just tells it how it is and then shrugs his shoulders and mumbles “So it goes!” The best page from this collection was when he wrote in bright blue, on one page “We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.” Words to live by I think, I wish I could write like The big K. He died in 2007 at the age of 84, so it goes.
Voltaire’s masterpiece Candide, apparently it is his masterpiece, I have not read anything else that he wrote, but it does come across as pretty well written. Again, reading this book just made me feel like I know so little and that I was missing the joke so many times, like I was watching the world from the surface of the water, when so much more was going on beneath the surface. “I think I understood it, it’s about girls right?” See how I just threw in a reference to popular culture that I know exactly what it is from and I know exactly why I wrote it there. I wish you could read these lines Voltaire, then you would be scratching your head saying “Ooh la la, what does this mean, what great philosophical point is he proving?” Nothing at all you pompous French git, just that life is pretty simple and really that for men things mostly always boil down to girls. Having said all of this, Candide was a rollicking good read, and I understand that it is great satire, it is just that I missed about 80 % of it and feel more stupid than when I picked the slim volume up.
Having rambled and ranted for too long now, I will sign off and wish you good day, whether you are reading this in the frustrating climes of the Swiss spring, the increasingly cold autumn of the Great Southern land or the hopefully warmer environment of the land of the free……..
