Reaching Zofingen

As we sat on the train from Zurich to Olten, they announced our connecting train to Zofingen, and learned that it's pronounced more like Tsoh-fingen, than Tsoff-ingen. It's a peaceful little old place, the canton capital of Aarau --- we lived on the Aare, once, in Bern, and caught a glimpse of that river this morning. We're staying for the next five nights at the Hotel Engel, which has an eponymous (golden) angel hanging over the entrance so that you can spot it from the end of the cobbled street. Most of the buildings in the old town date back to the 16th century, and the old fountains still stand in the Plätzli, the cobbled squares. One fountain has the stone statue of a Habsburg soldier with striped socks standing over it: Niklaus Thut, who, during a battle against the Old Swiss Confederates in 1386, saved the city's banner by stuffing it in his mouth "shortly before his death", as it says in the English leaflet about the Old Town Sights. He is considered a hero. I'm afraid Chris and I saw the funny side of that story.

After a sleepless night over the Atlantic, we are easy to please. It was about 24 hours ago now that we left our slush-surrounded house in Ottawa by taxi, to catch the VIA-Rail train to Dorval, as we'd done in January. I relaxed thoroughly on this ride, finishing off some grapes I'd brought and sipping the very strong VIA-Rail coffee. Again, the fields were white, this time with thick fog above them. The shuttle bus gets one to CYUL airport in good time; it was too early to drop the bags, so we wandered around for a while, wheeling our luggage, before enduring a three hour wait in the departures hall. Our plane was packed, many orthodox Jewish people coming on board speaking a mixture of Hebrew, French and Yiddish, the men wearing their distinctive hats or caps, bound for Israel I guess, changing at Zürich. Another large contingent of travellers was from India. The airport TV screen in our waiting area was showing a woman with a gratingly condescending voice giving unnecessary advice, in awful, loud Quebec-French, to mums travelling with young children: "On va flyer!"

After extensive de-icing of our wings, on a flyé all night, across the Sea of Cork and the Channel Islands, to Zürich, on a Swiss plane. The seats were better padded than Air Canada's, but smaller. The food was definitely better, with croissants for breakfast. We had paid extra for exit row seats, but this meant that our carry-on luggage had to be kept in the overhead bins all the way, so all I had to rest my feet on was my boots, and the armrests covering our tray table hinges were immovable. Swiss Air's complimentary earphones didn't fit my ears, but I watched two in-flight movies even so: On Chesil Beach (I have read this novel about a frigid young 1950s Englishwoman and the pitiable young man in love with her, and thought the film a good interpretation) and then a Dany Boon comedy La Ch'tite Famille, to cheer me up again.

We landed in the dark, with fog at this end too and had an easy walk through customs and immigration, eventually buying single rail tickets to Zofingen from the airport SBB ticket office. The ticket machine didn't accept either of my foreign VISA cards.

The Swiss have just had a referendum not unlike the Brexit one, having to vote whether to maintain their deference to International Law or have their own, independent legal system. 66% have voted against independence, but posters are still up around town referring to the Kuhhorn clause about special rights for farmers who own horned animals, goats, cattle. Switzerland is a rural land. We have already spotted some elderly gentlemen with extraordinary long white beards. When we arrived in Zurich we had to board a little train zu den Gates und Baggage Claim (sic) in which a recording of cow-bells, birdsong, Alphorn music and yodelling was played to us during the very short ride, with a synchronised video screened on the walls of its tunnel. We sat in an airport café having a second breakfast, where the walls were papered with an enlarged map of the Graubünden area with the names of the mountains and other geographical features all in Romantsch, which is similar to Portuguese.

Because it was still terrible early in the day, hardly light yet, we decided to pause our onward journey at Zürich Hbf, so that we could stretch our legs in the fresh air for a while. I could remember the walk I did the last time I was here. We walked the length of the Bahnhofstrasse to the lake (Lake Zürich), saw the swans and some moored boats, then meandered back again through the old town, all very European-looking.