Tag: Winter

Embracing Nostalgia & Innovation in Switzerland

Is Nostalgia Good?

The trip over the winter break seemed to have a fair share of nostalgia. It reminded me of this scene in Inside Out – 2 where the teenage brain is filled with a whole new range of new emotions: ennui, embarrassment, guilt, anxiety, nostalgia etc. When Nostalgia comes in, they all tell the poor emotion that the girl is perhaps too young for nostalgia and I remember laughing. So what does that say about us now that we are nostalgic?!

Switzerland

Twenty three years after we’d last visited Switzerland, we went there again. I am not sure it felt like 23 years had elapsed between the last time we’d been there and now, but the magic was still there. The US has spoilt us in the intervening years with its spots of unimaginable scenic beauty, so that the awe that I had on my first visit had subsided somewhat. After all, 23 years ago, it was the first time I was reveling in a snow covered countryside.

For someone who had only seen pictures of it, or seen the Himalayan snow from afar, the joys of freshly fallen snow cannot be described. Add a happy newly-wed husband to the mix, and there can be no higher form of magic.

“The first snow is like the first love. Do you remember your first snow?”

  • Lara Biyuts

Even so, this time around, it was still unimaginably beautiful.

There were a great many things to love in Switzerland in the winter. For instance, the rains and snowfall that swept the entire nation in one grand stroke. We are used to localized rainfall, and maybe slightly larger areas being affected at once, but it was brilliant to see it raining all across Switzerland one evening. We knew because we drove from Geneva to Spiez via Bern and Lausanne through the pouring rains and it never let up. By the time we reached Bern, it had started to snow mildly making it a beautiful ride.

“The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?”

― JB Priestley

The Magic of Snow

The feeling of getting up to a snow covered landscape, as overnight the skies worked their magic, is breath-taking.

When first you open the curtains and look out into the world outside blanketed in snow, there is a sense of the precious, the divine, and the surreal. How could a cold brown, green and gray world be transformed into one of such purity and innocence overnight? One must be lucky to witness the first heavy snowfall of the season. The transformation could lead to closed roads, snow chains and winter storms, yes, but it could also lead to an expansive imagination of our senses. Our senses, so often honed to look inwards, and be busy as we let moment after moment flit by us, suddenly seems to hold in its power the ability to remain still, quiet and the beauty to examine the infinite within and around us.

The simple pleasures of blowing smoke out your mouth, of watching the bare tree branches glitter and sparkle with the new snow, of seeing beautiful hillsides blanketed in fresh snow never gets old. That is always joyous I think.  And life, marvelous life, in these environments! It was astounding how we were standing atop the very top of the Jungfraujoch – nicknamed the Top of Europe, feeling like we can never feel warm again in the cold that was enveloping us, while ravens were enjoying the lift of the winds there to have a perfectly nice day. No thermals, jackets or socks for these birds – no sir! Just a swirl and twirl of the wind would do.

Really! Lessons of joy and resilience can be found anywhere, anytime if only we care to look.

Embracing Innovation: Automobiles in the past two decades

Automobiles have come such a long way in 23 years – ABS, automatic lane detection systems, navigational systems, Google Assistant for cars. They are game changers – we had rented an XC90, and it was truly amazing in its capabilities. 

No more fumbling with paper maps, wondering how long it would take to go from Place A to Place B etc. For those of us who hark back to the simpler times, this is one arena in which I would not. Technology companies have made navigational capabilities so fantastic, one wonders how we managed before the advent of these technologies – maybe that’s why we sat around singing sad songs lost in the countryside, or fumbling about and trying to draw rabbits out of stars to help guide us through.

Verdict:

This nostalgia is good.  The power of the infinite beauty held in each snowflake, that is able to transcend time is very good.

Weather Warnings

I peered out into the window wishing and hoping, and skipping, and sighing for the past week for one of the scariest storms of California to materialize. Really! The media when bored can really get going. The storm may be wreaking havoc in the mountains up in the mountains of Northern California, but here in the Bay Area, there was no need to send people scuttling in with flash flood warnings, gale-like wind warnings, or any warnings at all for that matter. 

It turned out to be a beautiful set of days – a bit wind-blown, but not too cold. I set out on walks with gusto hoping to brave the gusts of winds. There were no gusts or gales. Just winds. All perfectly normal.

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Atmospheric rivers indeed – I watched the sad trickle of water in the stream that masqueraded as a river next to our home, and sighed a bit. 

Even as I write this piece, I understand the true luxury of walking-weather in late November. It was amazing to see how the birds took flight and staggered a little as they got used to the thrusts of the wind. I must say watching pelicans change flight in windy weather is a marvel. Geese – so perfectly blase and arrogant in their daily demeanors, looked a little comical as they squawked to each other and determined direction for their little flocks. 

One day, I took refuge in a copse of trees and listened to the winds howling just around them. Trees provide such marvelous wind barriers, and I felt a strange sense of being protected in the little clearing amidst them. 

I took my cup of coffee out at mid-day, and found the first few fat droplets of water descend. They sprinkled about a bit, and then decided that it wasn’t worth the effort. 

It was just another November Day – with a promise of rains, winds : heavy and gusty.

P.S: The rains have just started: I sat cradling my cup of tea: hesitant at first and then a little more insistent. Time to start dancing in the rain!

Magique Français

There is a charm to traveling at this time of the year. We had decided on an Europe trip with 3 countries thrown in to the mix. Which is to say that the rest of the nourish-n-cherish household of spoilt folks enjoyed a trip planned meticulously by the husband. Left with all the rest of the work, I stood in front of my bookshelf dilly-dallying on the reading material. Finally, I chose Bill Bryson’s Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe, which was an excellent read. 

The whole way to the Airbnb from the Paris airport, the radio was on and the hosts chattered on in French. Considering that I was the only passenger in the car who had ‘learnt’ French, I must say I was aghast that I remembered almost nothing of the beautiful language (except for tidbits such as – one mustn’t pronounce the last consonant, unless the next word starts with a vowel, or the river is feminine while the museum is masculine) I have always been little lost with languages that attribute a gender to everything. 

Is a croissant masculine or feminine? I don’t know. 

Both Le Croissant and La croissant sound right to me, but DuoLingo assures me that croissants are masculine and therefore Le Croissant is correct. Sigh.

I must say languages and brains are curious things. I was sincere, if not successful, in my attempts to learn French in 11th and 12th grade. I would’ve thought that some things would surface through the foggy decades as I heard the spoken language, or saw the words written in the menu cards in the little French cafes. But nothing happened. I recognized ‘avec’, ‘le’, ‘la’, ‘and words that had a passing semblance to the English language and could thus be fathomed. As I stumbled my way through the language  I realized that I had never really spoken French, though I seemed confident enough to butcher the pronunciations. For instance, I confidently addressed the Louvre as the ‘Loo-v-rrrr’. 

Apparently, I had it all wrong. 

Humbled by this revelation of my poor French, one day on the metro, I was trying my best to listen to the announcements and map the name of the stations to the pronunciation. I can understand my not getting a name like Champs-Élysées – Clemenceau or Maisons-Alfort – Les Juilliottes, but I didn’t get Grands Boulevard. That hurt. Now see, I pronounce it is Grand-ss Boo-lay-vard (so no letter is offended or feels less important). But the French pronounce it as Gron Boolevaar. With the overhead crackling that is a requirement for most metro systems,  I heard it as ‘groan bole’, and was looking around at people before the husband said it was time for us to get out and hustled us out.  I leaped out before the doors closed behind me and was rattled till the sortie (exit).

The French trip you up in more ways than one. I trust it is their way of having fun with us poor sods who haven’t a clue about the language. For instance, there were so many names that sounded like food, it was astonishing. Who wouldn’t like to get out at Madeleine station? I found myself drooling a bit about the buttery m-s and missed Grands Boulevard. 

I remember the husband telling me for an entire hour that we had to go to Rue Ravioli. I thought to myself and smiled that I had never seen this many streets named after food in any other country. I mean how often have we seen a Hamburger boulevard, or a Tomato-Bisque Road? Even in countries that enjoy their foods so much like India, I had never seen a Roti Street or Dosa Boulevard.  As I was feeling cleverer and cleverer with the inspired line of thought, I found that the husband was truly hungry was all. It was Rue-de-Ravoli, not Rue-de-Ravioli (the cheese filled pasta).

Nevertheless, the names had a marvelous ring to them. 

Liberte

Bonne Nouvelle

Strasbourg – Saint-Denis (a big hyphen followed by a small hyphen)

I found myself nodding vigorously and agreeing vociferously (making the French doubt my capabilities even more) as I read Bill Bryson’s Neither here nor there: Travels in Europe.

Bill Bryson on French:

I took 3 years of French in school, but learned next to nothing. The problem was that the textbooks were so amazingly useless. 

They never told you any of the things you would need to know in France. They were always tediously occupied with classroom activities : hanging up coats, cleaning the blackboard, opening the window, setting out the day’s lessons. Even in seventh grade I could see that this sort of thing would be of limited utility in the years ahead. How often on a visit to France do you need to tell someone you want to clean a blackboard? How frequently do you wish to say: “It is winter. Soon it was will be spring. “

In my experience, people know this already.

Bill Bryson

But language has a way of morphing and conjoining, and by the end of the day, the daughter was speaking in lilting French accents, and I was very impressed with her, and unimpressed with myself for I understood next to nothing. Then, she chuckled and told me that she was just spinning her Spanish in French accents. I tell you! The nourish-n-cherish household really knows how to capture the magique francais.