Swiss Jesus

January 2025

I woke up at Kurt and Darina's place in St Gallen, Switzerland, and examined their world map, jam packed with pins on all the places they've been.

Incredible isn't it. If you think the number of pins is amazing, remember that each pin doesn't just represent a single place - they've explored much of the countries in those places.

Yeah, they've travelled a lot, mostly by bike, and it's super interesting to talk with them about different places, and their experiences on the road.

The Hills Are Alive

Yeah, I know that song comes from Austria, but they're alive here too.

After a massive and delicious cooked brekky, we headed out for a hike into the Swiss Alps. The lower ones.

Strolling to the tram stop.

The tram travelled up the ridge. This is Bodensee, or Lake Constance, a large lake not too far away, close to the Swiss/Austrian border, and also the German border.

We got out and started strolling through the green hills and farms.

It was stunning day, and we had a beautiful walk. Darina kept saying she was shocked at how little snow there was around. We found out later on that today was the hottest January day in St Gallen since records began.

While that was great for us, a dying planet's probably not the best thing for anyone, I suspect.

Chilling out at the top, with the mountain of Säntis In the distance, the tallest peak.

Normally this snow pole would be very necessary at this time of the year.

This poor house has shingles.

Long tram.

Sounds like a place in Vietnam.

We headed back into town and went shopping.

This is a restaurant that specialises in fondue. You and your friends can have your own private gondola.

Checking out the Dutch tulips.

Black garlic. I've never seen it before.

Cheeses!

This is just one part of the cheese section in their local supermarket. And all those wall shelves are full of cheeses too. And this is not a store that specialises in exotic cheeses. No, this is just a regular run-of-the-mill we've-got-six-million-different-types-of-cheeses-like-in-all-the-other-supermarkets type of supermarket.

Darina actually told me that the other supermarket, which is a little closer to their apartment, has even more of a cheese range.

Yeah, there's no doubt that the Swiss love their cheese.

On the right are all different flavours of Raclette, a particularly special cheese which is used in a favourite Swiss dish, called, unusually enough, Raclette. Basically the cheese is heated until it starts to melt, and then scraped over steamed potatoes, veggies, pickles, bread and other delicacies.

It's very delicious, and, like fondue, very rich.

Every single modicum of cheese Kurt and Darina served up on their table when I was there tasted divine. Blessed are the cheesemakers.

And guess what he had for dinner that night?

Yep. Fondue. The cheesiest and most delicious meal ever.

In a proper Swiss fondue you melt the cheese (which is a special and variable fondue cheese mix), add herbs, spices and a number of fluids (including alcoholic ones like wine and schnapps), bring the melted pleasure pot to the table, and then dip small chunks of bread in it with a metal skewer till they're swimming in the mix.

It's fun.

For sweets we ate dates from all over the Middle East, a gift from a friend of Darina's, and had pear Schnapps to wash it all down. Only the best will do

Not our first date.

We played a travel quiz game, which mainly involved identifying completely unidentifiable pieces of maps from all over the world. Kurt knew just about every single place, and answered every question correctly, without having to think too much about it. He won the game hands down, and seems to know pretty much everything about everything. Darina knew loads of answers too.

Kurt's humble about it though, and keeps pretending he doesn't know much.

The next day we were out hiking again, heading to another spot by train.

Again, it was a stunning day.

There are a million Wanderwegs in Switzerland, paths traversing the whole country.

Apfelling

We eventually ended up in a town down on the Bodensee called Rohrschach, and visited an exhibition of works by the famous Spanish artist Joan Miró.

It was amazing. I love his work.

The picture on the right, called 'King Rabbit,' reminds me of me, as my surname means both 'king' and 'rabbit' in Polish.

Kurt and Darina's apartment's stained glass window and staircase.

The next day we walked outside, walked across the road, and then climbed about a million steps. Whenever you walk anywhere in Switzerland you know you'll be climbing.

Suddenly we were in the outer (and upper) burbs.

We got to the world renowned St Gallen University Business School. It costs a fortune to do a one year MBA here, like about USD $60,000. It's crazy.

It looks like a high tech workspace inside.

This is the Hilti Innovation Room. I couldn't help giggling at the name.

We hit the fields then, and look what greeted us....

We rushed to get to the pot first, but some young kids beat us. They always seem to get to the pot first.

We went to the Wildpark Peter und Paul, a place where a number of animals live, including wild ibex. Ibex, or Steinbock in Swiss, used to live right through the Swiss Alps, but became extinct in the region in the 19th Century.

So some enterprising locals smuggled a few back in from Italy in 1906, and eventually they were reintroduced into the wild. Now there's an estimated 15,000 living wild in the Swiss Alps.

Now that's a nice story, as they're truly magnificent creatures.

Top left is a statue, by the way. And there were other cute varieties of deer in there.

There were wild boars up the road too.

I wouldn't wanna meet this guy up a dark valley.

People love deer here, but they also shoot them and eat them. Notice the antlers.

Eventually we strolled home and had yet another delicious dinner, compliments of Kurt this time, and then we tried some Fasnachtschüechli, a traditional Swiss sweet crunchy cracker normally eaten at Fasnacht, a really fun Swiss and German festival preceding Easter where everyone wears masks and gets really pissed (the getting pissed part goes without saying at festivals in Europe).

The sweet itself is sort of like a massive icing-sugared papadam, and very more-ish.

And the drunker you get the more impossible it is to pronounce.

The next morning, instead of cooking his usual delicious omelette breakfast, Kurt got up before us all (as usual) and cooked something even more delicious, Rösti with eggs. It's raw grated potato, fried (and steamed a little by putting a lid on the pan for awhile). It's the Swissest thing in the world, up there with other things the Swiss are really good at, like making cheese, chocolate, fondus, and, of course, money laundering.

Today's outing was to the Stiftsbezirk St Gallen, the Abbey Library of St Gall, a UNESCO World Heritage listed site.

Now, you'd think visiting a library would be pretty boring, but it actually wasn't, not only because of the incredible place that it is, but also because of the unbelievable encyclopediacal brain that exists between Kort's ears. He knows the whole history of Europe, and was like my own Private Google.

Actually when Kurt can't be bothered answering he just says "GTS" (Google that shit), but since staying with him and discovering his brain power I've now coined a new acronym for everyone who knows him - "KTS" (Kurt that shit). It's way quicker.

Eventually he found a pair that fit.

Ever seen a library like this before?

And this floor only contains a fraction of their works. The library is the oldest in Switzerland, and one of the earliest and most important monastic libraries in the  world. They've got almost 160,000 volumes, 1,650 of which were printed before 1500, and 2,100 manuscripts from between the 8th and 15th Centuries. That's pretty old and pretty special innit.

The library also has one of the largest and most interesting globes from the small handful that still exist from the 1500s.

The globe is colourfully painted, and shows what was known of the world in 1571. It contains a relatively exact picture of Europe, as well as the coastal outlines of Africa. South America is mostly shown as Amazonia, and the Antarctic is painted according to the myth of the times, as a counterbalance at the bottom of the world to stop it falling over.

Of course Australia doesn’t even exist on the globe, but Asia is quite well depicted because of the trading roots to Europe. North America is mainly missing as well.

If only the US part of it went missing now (for the next four years at least).

The globe could be rotated in all directions of course.

There's some pretty amazing books in there.

The library also happens to display a real Egyptian mummy, of Shep-en-Isis, who's thought to be the daughter of an Egyptian priest who died in the 7th Century BC, around the age of 30. She's been on display in a glass coffin there for more than 200 years.

It was amazing, but sorry no pics allowed.

These are from the web.

She holds her age pretty well if you ask me.

There were original Roman coins there too. I should've grabbed them, as I'm going to Rome soon.

This is St Gall, needing a hug from God.

Left: This is the largest ivory tablet known to exist from antiquity. It was big. Imagine the size of the elephant, as they're each made from one tusk.

Centre: Swiss Jesus

Right: I'm just a chalice guy

After that incredible history lesson, and another superb lunch from my übergenerous hosts, Darina and I wandered over to the Brokki, (op shop, charity shop, second hand shop), as I was desperate for a new shirt to wear. I've been wearing my current one nearly every day for about 67 months now.

I thought of buying this Venetian mask as a visor for my bicycle helmet, as it's been shaped perfectly to fit my nose. I think it could look quite good, and may deter magpies, who, (for all you un-knowing non-Aussies out there), tend to swoop and peck your head in springtime, sometimes going for your eyes or temples.

All I'd need to do is look up and I reckon I'd scare the birdshit out of them. That could also be fraught too though I guess.

I also considered buying this, as I plan to travel to Muslim north Africa in the not-too-distant future. But it was the wrong colour. I prefer the redder, henna-ed hue, or, if push comes to shove, black.

I wanted to go to the klub for a coolie but I had a bus to catch.

Yes, alas, the time had come for another sad goodbye. As I prepared to race out their apartment door, Darina ran into the kitchen and whipped me up some sangers and snacks to take with me on my journey. So incredibly sweet and thoughtful.

I found the chocolate bars in my bag the next day.

Yeah, it was an amazing time hanging out with these two precious beings. Kurt and Darina have been the most generous, thoughtful and fun hosts ever, and I was feeling really sad to leave them.

I've been saying goodbye a lot lately.

Thank God there's hellos in there too.

Yeah, I've been travelling through northern and central Europe for a while now, and it's time to finally head to the south.

This has been my route through Europe, since I left the UK.

And yes, now I have a pretty amazing destination to go to.

Roma!

Yeah, I'm on the slow journey back to my bicycle in Turkey, and Rome is sort of on the way.

It's a city I haven't been to for about, wait for it, 40 whole years.

But it seems just like yesterday❤️

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