Sean in Switzerland

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’.