Switzerland: The Land of a Thousand Lakes

SHREWSBURY, Massachusetts. This trip represents the first time I booked international air tickets without the help of a travel agent. After all, how difficult can it be? You know the origin and destination cities, which should be more than enough information, surely? Read on, and find out why travel agents are great for trips to locations you have not visited before...

Travelocity.com provided the best deal: Boston to Geneva, with a stop at Paris. Final destination: Lausanne, the Olympic capital. The flights bore Delta Airlines numbers but were all operated by Air France through a code-sharing agreement. The itinerary stated that we would be taken to GVA (Geneva, Switzerland), prompting us to get Swiss visas. Thus equipped, we embarked on our journey.

September 2, 2006, Saturday. The flight from Boston was reasonably on time, and we arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. This has got to be the worst airport I have passed through. The confusion and lack of directing signs were worse than ever, but we still managed to locate the connecting gate number. There were no airport personnel to ask for directions, and we followed the general flow of passengers in the hope that a majority of them knew what they were doing. To our surprise, this turned out to be a good strategy. We boarded a shuttle bus that meandered along dark alleys resembling a vast, abandoned construction site. Rough concrete surfaces everywhere. The pre-dawn darkness added to the eerie feeling, and we were relieved to alight at the correct terminal.

There was a long queue at this point, which we duly joined. When we finally arrived at the head of the line, we were denied entry to the gate area! The uniformed gent informed us (in broken English) that our boarding cards were "no good", and that we would need new ones! Weary and irritated, we trudged back to an Air France desk, where the puzzle was finally unraveled.

Geneva's airport is split in two! A part of the airport is French territory, and services domestic French flights! Technically, therefore, we were not simply transiting through Paris; we had to leave the international terminal and clear immigration/customs before boarding the second flight. The lack of Schengen visas was a slight impediment to this seemingly simple step, and we were well and truly stuck in Paris.

So here is what happened: The airlines and Travelocity.com knew about the Geneva situation and the special (domestic) status of the Paris-Geneva flight, yet told us nothing. Air France staff at Boston allowed us to board the flight to Paris without checking for Schengen visas, and we were in limbo in Grand Paris (well, in its drab airport).

To their credit, Air France re-routed us to Geneva on Swiss Air, flying through Zurich. We would now reach Geneva several hours late, even assuming that we could make our extremely tight connection in Zurich. With time to kill, we parked at our allotted gate and fretted about our bad luck. Eventually, we were dumped on a bus that would take us to the plane.

The bus driver gave us the grand tour of the air side of Charles de Gaulle airport. Some passengers nervously joked if we were going to be driven all the way to Zurich. It was soon obvious that our dear driver was hopelessly lost! He had no idea about which of the many Swiss Air planes on either side of us was headed to Zurich. The road eventually ended, and we executed a U-turn to try again. This time, we stopped at each plane and asked the baggage handlers if they were loading the Zurich flight. The correct plane was thus located (eventually), and we filed in.

We missed our connection in Zurich (surprise!) The departure terminal had enormous queues that all seemed to merge at one end, and our flight was set to depart in about 10 minutes. Moreover, we had been asked to obtain boarding passes at the transfer desk, which had a queue of its own. We were promptly re-booked on a later flight (more delays!) and finally landed in Geneva, only to learn that our misadventure had not ended yet. Our checked bag did not see eye-to-eye with the rapidly changing itinerary, and decided to relax at an unknown location. About half our fellow passengers also suffered the same fate, and we formed yet another line to report lost bags. 

Tempers were clearly frayed all around. The Swissport authorities were mad as ever: they, as the final carrier, were responsible for locating, retrieving and delivering lost baggage. The Paris visa fiasco was apparently a routine occurrence, resulting in a constant stream of misplaced bags that they had to track. We gave them our hotel details in Lausanne and hoped that the bag (last seen in Zurich) would be delivered first up the next day.

September 3, Sunday. Thankfully, the long-distance trains departed right from the airport. After fiddling at an automatic ticket vending machine without success, and seeing an electronic sign proclaim that the next train to Lausanne would depart in just a few minutes, we hurriedly located a ticket counter hidden away behind many advertising boards. We jumped on the train in time, and made our way through picturesque country. Green meadows, a few small lakes, and cows of various hues dotted the landscape. This is when we also got our first glimpse of the famous Swiss Alps!


The train arrived at Lausanne after about 40 minutes. We obtained some Swiss Francs and a map, and began walking to our hotel. The path took us up a really steep road inclined at almost 45 degrees. We trudged up, clattering our bag-on-wheels on the cobblestones, and soon arrived at Hotel des Voyageurs. We checked in, cautioned the front desk to look out for our bag delivery, and joined a few colleagues on a walk down to Lake Geneva at Ouchy.

"Down" turned out to be only partially accurate, as we trekked along hilly roads towards the lake. The 2006 Lausanne ITU Triathlon World Championships were in its final moments, the roads lined with screaming supporters. A few runners appeared from time to time, and we stopped momentarily to cheer them on. Crossing the road (on a temporary overpass constructed for the duration of the triathlon), we came to face the shimmering waters of the lake. It was a beautiful scene, calm and serene, with the Alps towering away into the evening sky. Buoys bobbed about in the wakes of the occasional boat or swan. We walked along the shore until the sun went down, and consumed a pizza for dinner. Not wanting to walk back to the hotel, we hopped a bus.

Each bus stop had an automatic ticket dispenser that took coins and spat out tickets based on the chosen destination zone. The only catch was the need for exact change. Any excess coinage would be gleefully swallowed up by the machines! There were no ticket vendors onboard the buses. We showed our tickets to the driver, who waved us in without even a cursory glance at the pieces of paper we were waving at him. The system seems to run on trust, and the penalty for violators is apparently quite stiff.

September 4, Monday. The day began in frantic fashion. I had two back-to-back talks in the first session of the morning, and wanted to rehearse my slides one more time. I also had to wait anxiously for our checked bag with essential toiletries. When it became obvious that the bag would not make it in time, I procured emergency equipment from the front desk and promptly cut myself on the super-light use-and-throw razor. In the mean time, we managed to get our return tickets changed to avoid Paris. It required many calls to Air France and Delta Airlines. The former assured us that there was still a visa problem on our way out, while the latter was adamant that everything was fine and dandy the way it was. We forced them to rebook out of Zurich (through Atlanta), though some juicy monetary penalties were thrown in to make it worth their while. Also, a train ride would now be needed to get from Lausanne to Zurich.

With my conference "duties" out of the way, we headed to Lake Geneva for a stroll and dinner. We found a nice restaurant that seemed to have vegetarian fare, and ordered a cheese fondue (a la Asterix in Switzerland  ). The dish arrived, with the waiter lighting a flame beneath to keep the cheese melted and bubbly. Seated outside on the sidewalk, we hoped that our attempts at spearing pieces of bread on a long, thin fork would not become the next tourist attraction in Lausanne. The waitress even seemed surprised at our choice, and nobody else around us had ordered the fondue. Yet, we elicited no raised eyebrows among passersby. We topped off the fondue with some excellent ice cream/sorbet and bussed back to the hotel in the darkness.

September 5, Tuesday. We began this day early, taking a train from Lausanne to Montreoux. The train chugged along the lake's shore, with clouds hanging low against the Alps. We arrived at our destination after a brief stop in Vevey (see map above). A short cab ride then brought us to the Chateau de Chillion, said to be one of the best medieval castles in Europe.

Chateau de Chillion stands on a small island separated from the mainland by a moat. We bought tickets and crossed a small bridge to enter the castle. A brochure provided detailed commentaries of the layout, history and life in the past, with a numbered route guiding us through all the points of interest. We saw dungeons and dining halls, living quarters, treasure chambers (minus any treasure), cannon and clock towers. The dungeons, cloaked in semi-darkness and eerie shadows, were particularly spooky. Its rough-hewn and narrow passages were dimly illuminated by indirect sunlight filtering in through heavily barred openings in the walls. The water lapping a few feet away was supposed to serve as a reminder of the futility of plotting a prison break.

The castle had been tastefully decorated with flowering plants providing a bright contrast to the brown stone masonry. After a few hours of roaming in the past, we called a cab from the gift shop and returned to Lausanne by the next train. The afternoon was spent walking around the lake area, and lazing on the water with a pedal boat. The sun beat down mercilessly as we bobbed up and down on the lake, and we thanked the boat's beach umbrella for its semblance of shade.

Dinner was an official conference gala at the fancy Chateau d' Ouchy on the shores of Lake Geneva, after which we turned in for a really early departure the next day.

September 6, Wednesday. We were originally scheduled to leave Lausanne in the evening. However, the airline mix-up resulted in a truncated trip and a long train ride to Zurich at 5:30 AM. Having completed all our hotel check-out formalities the day before, we half-slept on the train and made a tight rail-air transfer at Zurich airport. A good half hour was required just to get from check-in to the gate area. We barely made it, and soon found ourselves back in Boston after a really long time in the air.