Rest and Refrustration

Last weekend Josh and I headed to Switzerland on a quest for some peace and quite after a whirlwind of a few stressful weeks here in the Eternal (as in eternally hectic) City. Being married to an architect is tricky business or perhaps it is just being married to Josh. Somehow, anywhere we ever travel, we end up trekking somewhere odd to see a building (usually by a dead architect) that, after awhile all seem to look like the other buildings (by dead architects) that I have viewed on previous “vacations”. This trip was no different, however, hugely interesting to me. This time we were going to see a boring old building, but inside it was a thermal spa! I love architecture!

Seeking nirvana and inner peace is a tricky business and to be sure to make our rest well deserved, we decided to take TrenItalia to get to Switzerland. After hours of hard work squinting at train schedules, a few trips back and forth to the train station and lots of waiting patiently for our turn at the ticket counter we thought we had a pretty safe plan of travel. We bought tickets to take the overnight train to Milan on Saturday night, switch trains in Milan early on Sunday morning and continue on a Swiss train to Zurich. From Zurich we would take a local train to Ilans, change to an even more local train to Chur and then hop a bus to Vals…this concocted itinerary itself should have alerted us to trouble. We excitedly left the house on Saturday evening (just before both WVU and Missouri lost to secure our spot in the NC) to catch the 11:00pm train. I had never taken an overnight train before and we decided to splurge for a good nights sleep by buying tickets for the sleeper car. This was my last pleasant memory of our train ride through Italy. When we arrived at our assigned car, instead of a sleeper car, it was a 2nd class coach car, a dirty one at that. Instead of a private little cabin with a bed, there were a series of cramped cabinettes, three seats on wall with three seats facing them. When the car was full, you had to sit up perfectly straight not to knock the knees of the person across from you. Not only was this not what we envisioned, it was a disaster. Most people didn’t have seat reservations and it was already night, so people were wandering around the cars aimlessly trying to find a seat, while others in the darkened cabinettes were stretched across all three seats asleep clutching all of their belongings. Other seedy characters were pacing up and down the corridors eyeing any luggage that wasn’t being looked over or clutched for dear life. Our compartment mates consisted of a Italian man who smelled like beer (and was in fact drinking a beer). A women with a huge suitcase that wouldn’t fit in the overhead shelf, so instead she left in the middle of the already cramped compartment, a pregnant lady and her husband, who did not have seats reserved, but instead bullied their way into the compartment by speaking very quick and terse Italian to the rest of us. They were compartment squatters; ownership is 100 percent of the law in this case.

After taking a look at our tickets, we decided that we must have purchased the wrong tickets from the ticket counter the day before, something must have lost something in translation. After a few passes by the purse snatchers and a burb from the beer guy, Josh decided to try to find the conductor to see if perhaps we could upgrade to a sleeping compartment…there was still hope. After about a half hour of true terror for me, as I sat wide eyed guarding all of our bags, Josh returned with the news. Like a lot of situations in life, there was good news and bad. Good news, there were sleeping compartments available. Bad news, instead of buying an actual seat on the train, we purchased a 6Euro RESERVATION for the seats… we in fact, had no tickets for the train which was now well on its way to Milan. No wonder the tickets were so cheap! After a few bad experiences with Italian train conductors on previous trips we decided to go to the conductor immediately, pay any necessary fines for having boarded a train without a ticket and purchase tickets for a sleeper car. It is now midnight and we load up with 4 heavy bags, my purse and a bag of snacks and sway and swing while walking up about 10 cars to the front of the train where the sleep cars were located. We found the conductor, settled into the sleeper car and went to settle our bill. A lucky break, we found the only nice train staff in Italy and the head Captain was willing to only charge us for the trip to Milan from the last station the train had passed, a pretty significant discount and a heck of a nice thing to do. As Josh was working out the details of the transaction, I chatted with his junior colleague. "So you are married?" he asked, "Yep" I told him, "Five years". "So... when are you having kids?" was his reply. SERIOUSLY? Is it in the middle of the night on a train to nowhere and I am AGAIN (see below post) being interrogated by an Italian man about motherhood!? Just when it looked like sleep would be ours, the total amount for the tickets added up to a bit more than we had in cash. As both of our credit cards were denied Josh and I both were recalling a conversation we had just 3 hours ago in front of the ATM machine at the train station. “Honey, should we get more cash out for the trip”, “No, lets not, I don’t like to carry a whole lot with me on the train”, “yes dear, that is true, lets wait until we get to Switzerland so we can get SwissFrancs instead of Euros”, we’re so smart…

After a series of painful failed attempts both of us, redfaced and barely awake, dug through our wallets hopelessly trying to find enough cash to make it work. Josh found a 50 US dollar bill tucked into the back of his wallet (don’t ask me why, I have no idea) and after some negotiating and figuring of the current exchange rates, it was determined that we had enough cash to buy two seats in a four person sleeper compartment, located 6 more cars up the train. We would have to buy them there though. So we packed ourselves up again and trudged up swinging and swaying to the designated car. Finally, at a little past 1am, the conductor determined that, after all, he could not print a ticket for this and we would have to go back to our seats, some 16 cars back with the pickpockets and drunks. To tired, frustrated and astonished to argue, we took our euros, dollars and newly purchased tickets and walked sadly back to the hell that is the back of the train.

Always the girl scout and ready for anything, I found a sleeping pill in my purse and knocked myself into oblivion, sleeping most uncomfortably on top of suitcases and backpacks in the stench of human filth until we arrived in Milan the next morning at 7am. Relieved to be off the train and breathing fresh air, we headed for our connection to Zurich. This is when the conductor outside the train pointed out that our tickets were for yesterday and therefore were not valid for today. Indeed, upon closer examination, the extremely helpful woman at the ticket counter had sold us tickets for the wrong day. And indeed, in the wonderful system that is the “Italian way”, despite 45 minutes of arguing at the Milan ticket counter, these tickets were not valid and we had to purchase two new tickets to board the next train to Milan. We may be living the Italian way, but our American selves wrote a very strongly worded complaint at the customer relations office! That should show them. Finally after this disastrous night, we arrived in a heavenly place. It is called Switzerland. The trains were clean, the people nice, things ran on time! The conductors instead of being scary and sneering, actually made sure we knew how to make our connections and told us to have a nice day. It was the opposite of everything we have come to know and expect from our adopted mother country. From here the trip was wonderful enough to make up for its ominous beginnings and we ended up having a wonderful time and a relatively uneventful trip home.

The thermal spring of St. Peter is located deep in the Swiss Alps in a tiny little mountain town, Vals. Besides the bottled water facility, and goat farms, the thermal bath seemed to be the main attraction in Vals, a town of about 1000 residents (not counting the goats). Once we arrived, the trip was everything we could ask for and more. The town was a little cluster of chalets at the base of the mountain, the spa was wonderful, both inside and out. My skin is glowing from the mineral water treatments and my mind was soothed by tall glasses of red wine in the piano bar at the adjacent hotel. A snowstorm moved in on our first night and we woke up to a winter wonderland on Monday morning before gorging ourselves on an organic buffet breakfast that would make anyone forget that they were about to spend the day in a bathing suit! It continued to snow throughout the day and Josh and I experienced the wonderful feeling of swimming in the snow. The air was so cold it was breathtaking and the water so hot that you could barely see through the steam, it was in fact, the best architecture experience I have ever had!

I could have stayed the whole winter, if I didn’t prune so easily.