LAUSANNE 'Une aventure'*

Our review of A Heart Bent Out Of Shape by Emylia Hall set in Lausanne is now on our new website. You can find it here.

SWITZERLAND by train, in the company of a certain Mr Thomas Cook (oh, and Mr Diccon Bewes)

Slow Train to Switzerland by Diccon Bewes, set in Switzerland

Switzerland captured on an SBB train, book in hand

1863 and members of The Junior United Alpine Club set off in a party of 130 to Paris, headed ultimately for Switzerland, in the company of Mr Thomas Cook, entrepreneur and travel aficionado. Miss Jemima Morrell was the unofficial chronicler of the tour, this, the first package holiday abroad organised by Mr Cook (following several failed attempts at home); his travel shops still appear on many high streets across Britain today, and he is still considered to be the genius behind the package holiday! Just look where his early endeavours have now landed - mass tourism today is 5% of global GDP, so Cook was a man with huge vision.

2013, and 150 year later, Diccon Bewes, who is the accidental ex-pat expert on Switzerland, retraces the footsteps of these intrepid (and intrepid they certainly were!) explorers. Armed with his Murray guidebook from the nineteenth century, nattily entitled A Handbook for Travellers in Switzerland, and the Alps of Savoy and Piedmont (all is revealed in the book as to why Savoy and Piedmont also featured), he sets off from Newhaven crossing the Channel to Dieppe. With further guidebooks at his disposal A Handbook of Travel-Talk from 1858, he delves into gems of useful translation, which perhaps aren't altogether useful in modern day parlance, but give a wonderful insight into the mores of Victorian travel: "May I not be allowed to carry ashore my carpet-bag?" or "Sit still, the train is moving" ... and extracts from Thomas Cook's The Excursionist beautifully evoke the flavour of the bygone era, which featured ships, trains, coaches and, of course, camels...


We undertook our own mini junior tour, on the back of this book and gladly hopped on an SBB train to follow in Miss Jemima's footsteps; this is essentially what TripFiction is all about, it is seeing a place through an author's eyes (in this case both Diccon's and Miss Jemima's eyes) and gaining a new and individual perspective on locale. 

Contemporary and historical observations accompany the modern day traveller, as the hikers moved down through Paris, to Geneva and on to Chamonix, which was originally discovered by two British men in 1741. The book highlights how the British were ahead of the game in exploring the Alps: mountain peaks to be conquered, Union Jacks to be planted! The Swiss were just there, generally getting on with their lives, and living on the poverty line. This was truly the Golden Age of Alpinism. Nowadays Chamonix, for example, can boast 4.5 million overnight stays per annum, and is in so many ways removed from what Miss Jemima and her fellow travellers saw 150 years ago.

Mr Cook had been escorting the Package Pioneers, and soon came to leave the 60 remaining trekkers to their own devices. By Martigny there were only 8 hardy souls left (Martigny incidentally is the half way point between London and Rome).

Onwards from Martigny to Sion and Leuk (which is where the TriFiction team took up with the party) and up to Leukerbad, where the Victorians observed the 'unnatural' behaviour of the bathers soaking in the pools of thermal waters. Diccon however is much more of a convert to the soothing and relaxing qualities of the bubbling waters and even rates the Walliser Alpentherme amongst his top 10 Public Spa (or should it be Wellness?) destinations "Lying neck deep in hot water on a bed of bubbles and looking up at the mighty cliffs, I realise why people travelled across Europe for centuries to do exactly this. It's not necessarily the water, which can be found in many natural spas, but the location 1411m above sea level and surrounded by natural splendour."

From Leukerbad it was then off to the top of the Gemmi mountain - a 2 hour trail that was actually built by Tirolean labourers from Austria. Imagine climbing a vertical cliff, in the warmth of a June Summer in Victorian garb, crinolines and formal gear; their alacrity over the boulders and their stoicism is something we cannot perhaps appreciate in our modern day. Then a further long trek over to Kandersteg. 

On to Frutigen, where today they have tapped into the natural hot waters, sufficiently that they can grow exotic fruits (coincidence probably that the place name sounds like fruit?) - guavas, papayas, starfruit are all grown in this small backwater. The opening of the Lötschberg Tunnel in 1913, this time built by Italian labourers, changed everything for the region. From here via Spiez and on to Interlaken, the Paris of the Alps and base station for the Jungfrau, now a wonder of faded grandeur (and attracting quite a different kind of clientele from the days of Miss Jemima; but Cafe Schuh still provides a warm welcome to visitors). Finally off to Lucerne, and eventually Neuchâtel to round off the tour. The original tour group then headed back to Paris.

There is so much to cherish in this informative and charming travelogue, which for me proved to be quite an eye-opener: the determination of the Victorians to search out new places, hampered as they were by dress and manners, and limited by an array of transport possibilities, mostly of variable quality; the place the British played in bringing tourism to Switzlerand (including mention of George Stephenson who consulted on a railway project or two); and the grinding poverty of the locals at the time of the Thomas Cook trip - such a stark contrast to the booming economy of Switzerland of the present day. If you want to learn more about Switzerland then and now, in an interesting, informative and often entertaining way, then we recommend this travelogue to you. You can also pick up Diccon Bewes' first book on Switzlerland Swiss Watching on our site.

And if you fancy following in the footsteps of Miss Jemima Morrell you can do so with Inntravel who have created a self-guided walk from Leukerbad to Lucerne. And general travel in Switzerland can be arranged via the Switzerland Travel Centre

Tina and the TripFiction Team

Do come and join us on Twitter and Facebook. Help us to continue to build the TripFiction website by adding your reviews of books that are set in, and evocative of location, and help build this resource for both actual and armchair travellers.  It's an interesting way of getting to know a place (and also you get to read some pretty good books!)

Foodie fiction set in Zurich and Amsterdam

The Chef by Martin Suter

set in Zurich/St Moritz 

This is an interesting book that crossed our path recently, a kind of large novella. Maravan is living in Zurich, having left his homeland of Sri Lanka, though he can never quite sever himself from his roots and particularly from Great Aunt Nangay who inspired him to cook. Meeting up with Andrea, a waitress working at the renowned restaurant Chez Huwyler,  where he too worked for a time, they form a plan to provide sumptuous Ayurvedic meals for couples who need to stimulate their sex life. ("Ayurveda is a type of medicine which is many thousands of years old. It has eight disciplines. The eighth is called Vajikarana. It's all about aphrodisiacs. This includes certain food dishes").They encounter arms traders and prostitutes along the way, all set against the current political and economic events of the late 2000s, both in Europe, Switzerland and in Sri Lanka, whilst all the while trying to preserve their own moral values. And of course therein lies the rub!

We defy anyone reading this book not to salivate and if you feel motivated, there are some of Maravan's recipes included at the back. As a sampler from one of the menus they serve....

Cinnamon curry caviar chapattis

Baby snapper marinated in turmeric with molee curry sabayon

Frozen mango curry foam

Milk-fed lamb cutlets in jardaloo essence with dried apricot puree

Beech-smoked tandoori poussin on tomato, butter and pepper jelly

Kulfi with mango air

The storyline, the people and the food are all elements that combine together, like ingredients and feed the storyline. This is a definite read for those who like food and who are familiar with Zurich.

(PS: if you want to know what Chuchichäschtli is, mentioned in the text of The Chef, it is the Swiss German word for kitchen cupboard, and is horrific to pronounce correctly...)

To compliment this book - or in other words something to offset the starter as it were - we have chosen a second food-centric novel, this time set in Amsterdam, which was a great hit in 2012 - and interestingly from the same publisher, Atlantic.

The Dinner by Herman Koch

set in Amsterdam

A summer's evening in Amsterdam and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant. Between mouthfuls of food and over the polite scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse - the banality of work, the triviality of holidays. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened.
Each couple has a fifteen year old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act; an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable insulated worlds of their families. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children, and as civility and friendship disintegrates, each couple show just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

To our readers: what books do you recommend, where the food just wafts off the pages and where there is an evocative setting? Please let us know in the Comments Box if you were really inspired by food, place and writing...





Everything you ever wanted to know about "The Landlocked Island" (but were afraid to ask)

Courtesy blog.dark-warriors.net

The relevance of red shoes on a book blog? Read on......



Switzerland is the "The Landlocked Island", right in the heart of Europe, fiercely keeping its own identity and traditions. We were so pleased to come across Swiss Watching by Diccon Bewes (also available now in German, nattily titled Der Schweizversteher: Ein Englȁnder unter Eidgenossen). It is written with gentle humour, full of great observations, and a bit of culture, history and tradition thrown in. This is the perfect book for anyone wanting to understand this Alpine nation and gain some insight, with some fun learning along the way. If you intend to visit Switzerland you need this book!

And one of the quaint observations the author has made is that there is a preponderance among the Swiss to wear RED SHOES. He says: "If you want to look like a local, then wear a pair of red shoes. It may sound daft, but I have never seen so many red shoes as in Switzerland. Men, women, old, young, posh, scruffy, town and country - everyone seems to have a pair. It's hard to walk down the street for more than a few minutes without seeing red. It seems to be a bit of a national fetish, though having asked many Swiss people about it, none of them seems to have noticed. But I have"

So, anyone else noticed this tendency? We recently spotted some red MBTs...





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