Three countries in one day (Tuesday 26th September 2017)

Auf Wiedersehen, Deutschland. Today we said goodbye to Germany. It’s been a wonderful 3 weeks. I’ve learned some things about Germany and the German people that I didn’t know before and I’m better for it. To be honest, my misunderstandings were founded upon ignorance and the messages that I have received throughout my life, both direct and indirect, resulting from the tumultuous events of the 20th century. I’m happy to recommend Germany as a very good travel destination. David, I can now see why Brett keeps coming back here.

We bade goodbye to our hosts Christian and Petra and headed off towards Switzerland, stopping nor far from St. Margen for the photograph below. Through Freiburg we went and onto the autobahn towards Basel. Basel is right on the border of Germany, Switzerland and France. The point where the three countries meet is actually in the middle of the Rhine, according the Google Maps, anyway.

All we saw from the autobahn was the industrial parts of the three adjacent cities, so nothing to report there. In fact, the first part of Switzerland was quite industrial, the exact opposite of one’s expectations of the Swiss landscape. To be fair though, one shouldn’t really expect there to be snow-capped peaks and pristine lakes everywhere!

 AAt a truck stop somewhere on Highway 1 we stopped for fuel and coffee. Kerry took the opportunity to get the Swiss fridge magnet out of the way, picking a magnetic cow-bell. Onwards we drove for another 20kms or so when it was time for a change of driver. Our target was to visit Montreux on Lac Léman (aka Lake Geneva) for two reason, both related to my musical upbringing. The first was to drive into Montreux playing Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water”. The song tells the story of the creation of the band’s seminal album “Machine Head” which was recorded in Montreux. The other reason was to visit the Freddie Mercury statue down by the shoreline. Queen has a recording studio in Montreux so the town became Mercury’s second home. He was always appreciative of the citizens of Montreux treating him like just another local.

The walk along the “Lake Geneva shoreline” (taken from ‘Smoke on tne Water’) is really good. All along the promenade is art and sculpture, all very interesting and thought provoking. One such piece was a giant globe on a tripod made from all the rubbish the artist collected from the lake shore to remind people to keep it clean – which it was. Another was a skeletal representation of a giant elephant. We  had a coffee while taking in the superb view of the jagged mountains that fell from a great height into the lake. After picking up a souvenir tee-shirt we motored on to Annecy in France.

Geneva was on the way to Annecy so at the last moment we took a detour. It was a bit hard to pass up the chance to visit this iconic city when we were going right past its front door. Well, once we hit the traffic we were starting to regret the decision but we were stuck in it with no where to go so we just chilled and let the traffic tale care of itself. The problem was that at one intersection, on the main road into the centre of town, the traffic lights let only six cars get through at time. Then we waited five minutes for the next six!

Anyway, we found the underground Mont Blanc car-park, parked there and went to tour the city for a couple of hours. First stop was the big Ferris wheel by the lake shore – still Lac Léman, by the way, just the other end of it. At 50m in diameter the wheel id the largest in Switzerland. The view of the lake and the old town was worth the CHF 18.00 we paid. Everywhere one looked one could see the names of the world’s most famous brands. They were all there:- Dior, Tissot, Versace, Chanel, Mont Blanc, Gucci, Prada and the list goes on. All except for Pandora – phew!

From the Ferris wheel we spied a children’s carousel. Kerry loves carousels so we found our way to it and for the princely sum of CHF 3.00 we bought our tickets and rode with the kids. Oh well, whatever the onlookers were thinking they kept their thoughts hidden and we had fun being ridiculous. Importantly, for me it was redemption after 32 years when I declined to join Kerry on the carousel in New York’s Central Park. The debt is now officially cleared!

Dodging and weaving our way through peak hour Geneva traffic was in itself like a ride at an amusement park. The car drivers are fine but the scooter riders and the cyclist are maniacal. And there were thousands of them. They seem think they belong to a special group of road users to whom rules do not apply. I was very glad to be out of there for fear of having one of them collide with me, rather than the other way around.

Once on the freeway we were quickly over the border into France. I buggered up at the péage forgetting to take my ticket. How it all worked came flooding back to me when the boom-gate went crazy because I didn’t follow the rules. Fair enough.

The hotel we are staying at for the next two nights in not far from the old town in the area called Cran-Gevrier. For some reason, GPS-girl did not recognise the address so we were stuck in the middle of the town not knowing which way to go. I pulled out my phone, fired up Google Maps, plugged in the name of the hotel and peering down that the little screen Kerry directed me to the hotel. We enjoyed a buffet dinner at the hotel, grabbed our bags from the car and hit the sack!