Solo in Switzerland

I highly recommend making your dreams come true.

“I hope I make it back okay,” I say to Angelo at the other end of the phone. “It all relies on a delicate chain of travel events playing out exactly to schedule and with no surprises. If I miss one train, I miss them all, and likely my flight home.”
If an eye roll was audible, I would have heard it then. “I don’t think that needs to be of concern,” my brother replies. “The phrase is not “works like a Swiss clock” for nothing.”

But as I sat on my EasyJet flight waiting to set out to Zurich, I realise the return journey was not the one I needed to feel anxious about. The Swiss pilot tells us over the speaker that we would be waiting for another two hours before we took off. He sounded handsome (some people do) and delivered the news as though we were inconveniencing him for having arrived to the flight on time. Maybe this was the trick to the Swiss timekeeping. I watched the minutes tick by and with them, my economically-savvy pre-booked train to Wengen whoosh past me.

Switzerland had been on my travel plans for a while. I had a strong impulse to see mountains so vast, so sheer, that they took my breath away. In particular, I wanted to see snow-capped peaks shining under a full moon just once in my lifetime, before climate change made that impossible. The Swiss Alps seemed as good a place as any to do that.
My grandmother had loved Switzerland. As I boarded my first of four trains to the Alps (rebooked on the day, very expensive) I realised why. She was a very precise and very clean woman. She had perfectly coiffed white-blonde hair and immaculately manicured nails, right up until the day she died. She was clever and often mean, but in a way that became endearingly quirky the older she got. The Swiss penchant for precision, beauty and order would have pleased her. It was family lore that she had a Swiss lover named Franz who she had met whilst working as a young travel agent. They kept up correspondence for their whole lives and when she passed, we wrote to tell him. He sent back a photograph of himself as a young man standing before a magnificent mountain range. He was smooth and tanned with a nice smile. Imagining my grandmother falling for this suave, kind-looking man made me like her more.

My grandmother and I respected one another but often disagreed. I think she liked that I challenged her. And I liked that she never treated me like a child, even when I was one. When I visited her beachfront apartment as a kid, she would let me try on all of her jewellery which she kept in meticulously ordered little boxes in her dressing table. Her flat smelled like potpourri and sweet floor polish. So did she. She had a box of chocolates which she kept on top of her kitchen cabinet, out of reach, and if we were good, we could have one. She always gave me two.

When I wake in the snow-covered town of Wengen on the 16^th of March 2025, I think of her. I picture her walking through the village, tall and slender and formidable, sending back her cappuccino at the little cafe for being too cold, or cackling alongside her lover who has stolen away to meet her for the weekend. There is not much I can do on this snow-laden Sunday, really, save for read and write in my little pension bedroom. The clouds are thick and low, and, being exclusively a summer traveller, I don’t know how to ski. As I shuffle through the snow in search of food, I learn that it is far easier to feel lonely in the cold than the warmth.

Wengen feels stuck in a time warp. It has been visited by mountain lovers as a holiday resort since the 1870s, and grand old hotels, now fading and outdated, populate the little village. Nowadays, you can reach it via a very beautiful little train from Lauterbrunnen, but for years guests would have had to ascend from the valley by foot or horse. I imagine it must have been extremely charming in its original conception.
I have dinner at an old hotel straight out of the 70s, complete with a waiter in a bowtie who flourishes my napkin for me when I sit down. A couple beside me asks for water for their poodle and he brings out a dog bowl on a silver platter. I half expect him to pull a coin out from behind the ear of the little girl at the other table beside me - he has us all in the palm of his hand. When he brings my “special amuse bouche” from the chef, I giggle with delight. Old world hospitality still has its charms. He shakes my hand when I leave and says he is happy to have met me, and I believe him.

The next day, the clouds part, and I am finally struck with the awe I travelled miles to experience. The Jungfrau region is unlike anything I have ever seen before: a valley hugged by enormous, sheer mountains towering up into a bright blue sky. High forests are dressed in snow and crows lazily circle above their white tips. I dress up warm and begin to hike to Kleine Scheidegg. I ask the woman at the front desk if the path will be ok. She tells me she did it yesterday in running shoes with her dog, so I take that as a yes.
But an hour outside of the village and I am trudging through knee-deep snow, wondering how the hell anyone could do this in running shoes. I climb onto the train at the next station and enjoy a far more civilised commute alongside expensive looking families wielding skis and cashmere jumpers.

The view at the top is simply extraordinary. It is true that snow in this volume sparkles diamond-like under the sun. Thin clouds magically dance above us off the mountain tops, occasionally blowing over the ridge in wisps. The ski base is quiet – it is the end of the season – and the one old hotel at the top is deserted, save for a grumpy member of staff shovelling snow off its terrace. You can take another train even higher up in the mountains, but I am quite content to marvel from where I am. I lose track of how much time I spend, jaw agape, taking it all in. My mission feels complete.

The next morning, however, when I wake up early to begin my precariously timed return to London, I am rewarded with an even better sight: a recently full moon beaming over the valley and mountains, snowcapped peaks magically glinting in its light. It makes me want to write a symphony, or believe in God, or both. I think that missing a few trains and having to stay here wouldn’t be so bad, after all.

But, as it turns out, the trains do run on those Swiss clocks, as do EasyJet flights in this country code. Next time, I should take a leaf out of my grandmother’s playbook and take a kindly lover to give me a reason to stick around for a little longer.