A Week in Switzerland

The Family Vacation
The family and I have recently returned from a vacation in Switzerland. It was a bus tour through a company called Trafalgar, so our hotels were all arranged for us, as well as breakfast each day and dinner on most days. Mornings were usually spent on the bus. Lunch and the afternoons were generally on our own. The tour was competently run, but I am not sure that this is my way to see a country. It was far too much of see the sights from a bus window, especially when we were in the Alps. When I see mountains, I get an overwhelming desire to walk in them, especially when I see others doing the same. Its an automatic reflex for me. But there was almost no opportunity to do this on this trip.

This was a non-birding trip, since my non-birding wife and children were along, and the emphasis of the tour was sightseeing in cities and not getting outside, but I took my compact binocular with me and managed to see some good birds.

Pretty Girls, Ugly Noise, and a Bit of Tibet
We left Illinois on Friday afternoon, August 12 and arrived in Zurich the following morning, after a layover in Frankfurt. The tour manager picked us up at the airport and took us to the hotel. The first day was kind of slow-paced, which was fine with us since we had just had an overnight flight. There was suppose to be a tour of Zurich in the afternoon, but that was truncated by a big festival which they were having downtown closed down a lot of the streets and snarled traffic. I don’t know what the festival was called, but it involved a lot of the loud, oppressive thumping noises which some people regard as “music”, and young men and women in absurd, often skimpy costumes. The latter were funny, but the former was definitely not my idea of fun.

By the way, we had a celebrity staying at the same hotel in Zurich: the Dalai Lama. I think I saw him in the hallway when we were going to breakfast. There were some bodyguards with him as well as other monks. The hotel put up a Tibetan sand painting created by the monks in the front lobby. I love those Tibetan sand paintings, with their colorful, intricate designs, but I can’t even guess at all the symbolism which must be in them.

Into the Alps
Sunday morning was mostly on the bus. We left Zurich and rode to Vaduz in Liechtenstein where we made a short stop, and then went on to the resort town of St Moritz, up in the Alps. The scenery was awesome. In the afternoon we took a train ride through the Alps for more awesome scenery and a wine tasting near the Italian border. This was one of the only rainy days we had on the trip. Most of the days the weather was nice and clear. On the way back from the train ride, the bus stopped briefly at the top of an alpine pass and I got my first life-list bird of the trip: a Eurasian Kestrel. It was hovering, just like American Kestrels do, at the edge of a lake. I took a walk before dinner and got the second one, a Nutcracker.

Monday (8/15) got off to a nice start. I glanced out the hotel window and the bushes were full of Eurasian Blackbirds and Coal Tits, the latter my third life list bird of the trip. Then we had another morning of riding through the Alps. There was snow where we were riding for the first couple of hour, but it melted away after a couple of hours. This day was the Italian part of our trip. We crossed the Alps over into the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland and then into northern Italy in the afternoon. The climate and scenery were quite different here, still mountainous, but warmer and dryer. We stopped for the day in the town of Baveno on the shore of Lake Maggiore. The lake was beautiful. It reminded me a little of Lake Tahoe in California. On the lake and over it were Black-headed Gulls and Yellow-legged Gulls (life-list bird #4). Also on the lake, and on most of the lakes we saw that week, were Great Crested Grebes – large, very pretty water birds. We took a cruise on the lake and visited an island on the lake (Isola Bella Island) which contained the old palace of the Borrameo family, one of the three royal families which ruled northern Italy in past centuries and which still own just about everything in the area. The gardens of the palace were very impressive, and we took several pictures there.

A Fine Day at the Matterhorn
Tuesday (8/16) we rode back into Switzerland and went to the town on Zermatt. Zermatt is the town at the foot of the Matterhorn. This was my favorite day of the trip. Our hotel room was great. It was a suite with a huge balcony and a great view of the Matterhorn. Around mid-day we went for a ride on the ski-lifts high up into the mountain tops and in the afternoon we had plenty of free time to enjoy the area on our own. This was the one place on the trip where I had a couple of hours to do a little birding, which was great. I hiked up into the hills above the hotel and the woods, amid the twittering of Willow Tits (very similar to our Chickadees). I also found a Jay and a Hawfinch (#5 and #6, respectively).

Great Scenery and a Pair of Great Tits
Wednesday (8/17) morning we had some more time to enjoy Zermatt. I went for a short walk which my family was still asleep and found a Bullfinch (#7). Then the wife and I took a walk down into downtown Zermatt, before we got on the bus and rode to Geneva, with a couple of stops on the way. We briefly stopped to see Castle Chillon and later stopped in Montreux for lunch. Near the castle, my daughter found me a pair of Great Tits. (In case you don’t already know, these Great Tits are birds - see picture below.) From the bus window, I saw a Golden Eagle soaring amid the mountains, only the second one I’ve ever seen. As the bus took us into Geneva, we saw United Nations buildings and other international organizations, such as World Health Organization. We arrived in Geneva in the afternoon and walked along the Lake Front and downtown area for the remaining of the day. We saw the Brunswick Monument, Wall of the Reformation, Jet d’Eau, and St. Peter’s Cathedral.


Old Switzerland
Thursday (8/18) we had a stop at Berne and walked through the old section of the city. Albert Einstein used to live in this town and we saw where he used to live. There was an old clock tower which, if I understood the sign correctly (it was in German), dated back to 1192, and we watched the old clock chime at 11 AM. After seeing Berne, we rode to Interlaken where we stopped for lunch. Of all the awesome scenery we saw, I thing the Interlaken area was the most beautiful. The valleys we rode through reminded me of Yosemite, only not as dry. Also on this day we took a carriage ride in the country side which stopped for a little party at a barn which was built in the 1630’s. Finally, we ended up in the city of Luzern (also spelled Lucerne). Between Interlaken and Luzern, I saw a Marsh Harrier (#8) flying over a grassy field.

Prettiest City in Switzerland
Friday (8/19) we spend the day wandering the old city of Luzern. I think this was my wife’s favorite day of the trip. Of the large cities we visited, this one was probably the most interesting. We saw the famous ‘Dying Lion of Luzern’, a monument carved into a cliff, and then the Chapel Bridge, the old covered footbridge, which is shown in lots of travel brochures. At the middle of the old bridge is a large tower, and in this tower roosts a large colony of Alpine Swifts (#9). Alpine Swifts are about four times as big as the Chimney Swifts we have back home. About the time we reached the bridge, they left their roost all together with a big burst of noise. In the river which the bridge crosses were many Mute Swans, Mallards, Great Crested Grebes, and a pair Red Crested Pochards (#10). We also climbed the towers of the old city walls. We spent some time at the Jesuit Church, a grand Baroque-style church from the 17th Century with lots of pink marble and beautiful paintings. We also went to the Hof Church built in 1634.

Saturday (8/20) was the last day of our vacation. First thing in the morning the bus took us straight from our hotel in Luzern to the Zurich airport, where we boarded a flight to Copenhagen, and from there to Chicago.