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It was now 7pm. I was exhausted following the ten-hour hitch and getting a bit desperate as car after car passed me, despite the placard I held which read 'FRANCE: £10?' Just as the streetlights began to buzz a van screeched to a halt a couple of hundred metres down the road, I grabbed my impossibly heavy rucksack and lurched after them. "Ten Quid?" he asked, before opening the door of their small van. I was to share the back with several crates of beer that they'd just bought in the duty free...

European Tales: Switzerland 1996, a lengthy tale

Joseph Tame
2006-06-30 17:53:26

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Once inside, the door closed and a fifteen-minute countdown began on the display panel. Traditional alpine music emerged from the ceiling, and a motorised loo paper holder dispensed sheet after sheet when required. It was so entertaining that I was reluctant to leave, but the fear of being locked in when the clock reached zero persuaded me that I should.

Hedi and Heinrich finally returned, along with 'Auntie' Adelheid, my most active and unstoppable Swiss relative. She's seventy-four, but blows away any ideas one may have of a lady of that maturity. Skiing, aerobics, not to mention visiting endless numbers of friends and looking after her grandchildren -all of these are amongst her long list of hobbies. She does it all with such enthusiasm, making one feel quite exhausted just watching her! She is also very generous, and it turned out that without her my trip might have been more of a short holiday abroad rather than the eight months that it was.

We headed south towards her hometown of Biel, stopping off on the way to meet her son, Beat, and his family. Once at our destination I met Adelheid's other son, Peter, his wife Susie and their two children Urs and Rolf. I was made to feel very welcome, and by this time any feelings of homesickness had vanished.

Switzerland is an expensive country, and I didn't have enough money to live for an extended period. Having consulted Work Your Way around the World, I left for Interlaken, a tourist haven in the Bernese Oberland. I reached it fairly quickly by hitching, and spent the night in the Americanised Balmer's Hostel. There they advised that I go as high up in the mountains as possible - there would be more of a chance of finding a job there. On the maps that I had Grindelwald appeared to be a tiny cluster of chalets on a steep mountain slope. I was very surprised upon my arrival there to find the 'village' was a bustling, well-developed ski resort. Having deposited ...