A journey like never before - Part 1

Rolling hills, flush green meadows, snow capped peaks, turquoise lakes followed us everywhere. Switzerland just did not allow me to keep my hands from the camera.

Our first destination was Bern. A tiny city built around a ‘U’ of the Aare river, is strangely also the capital of the country. The bear seemed to be important here. It features in their flag and coat of arms and in the name of the city itself.

We sampled some chocolates at a local shop, but the price restricted us to a morsel each. It was awesome though.

Bengalis might find it interesting to know that a type of fish found in these waters is called the Aasche fish.

We went to Zurich for night stay at Eshan’s. Zurich is a normal bland city without any tourist attractions.

All morning as we went from Zurich to Engelberg through Lucern, the weather was inclined towards gloomy. It remained so, as we took the long climb up Titlis, not by foot of course, but a series of cable cars. While on the ropeway, we were surprised by a soft music playing. It took us some time to realize that it came from the random tingling of the bells around necks of cows in the meadow below.

We were excited at the prospect of getting to be in snow soon, but what took our breaths away was when the cable car exited out of a dense cloud, and we could see the bright sun, the glowing snow all around, the sea of clouds below and the snow capped mountain peaks, peeking out into the sun as if floating in the clouds. It was a sight of a lifetime.

A rotor (rotating ropeway) took us to the summit. The view was majestic and in spite of the snow it was warm- 2 degrees Celcius.

At Titlis, 60% of the tourists were Indians, the remaining ones being mongoloids. And of the Indian tourists some 60% were Bengalis.

We took a one hour-stop at Lucerne, before taking the Golden Pass route.

The Chapel Bridge (Kapellbrucke) is the oldest wooden bridge of Europe dating back from the 14th century