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Across Switzerland at Night
Posted on October 1, 2003 in Book of Days Travels - Past
Note: This is part of a series based on exercises from A Writer’s Book of Days. It’s something of a rebellion against the Friday Five and similar tupperware content memes.
Today’s topic: On the night train to Basel..
I arrived at the Milan railroad station twenty minutes too late to catch the direct train to Paris, so I checked the schedule and a map for an alternate route from Italy to France. I chose Basel, a target on the narrow arm of Switzerland that juts up between France and Italy. I got on the train and found a cabin for myself where I could stretch out and sleep. I was cheap and never bought a couchette during that winter of travelling in 1979 to 1980. I became a slave to a bad back and puffs of grayness in my temples that fell just short of a headache on those nights when I travelled between the big cities.
I slept for some hours, waking only when my bladder burned. Somewhere in the middle of Switzerland, a short man stumbled into my compartment. A curly strawberry blonde beard dribbled from his chin. The man wore the classic lederhosen with a white shirt and brightly ornamented suspenders. He stared at me stupidly for a moment. I spoke a modicum of German, so I asked him what he was doing on the train in this hour between midnight and dawn. “Alpine Festival” was all he said before collapsing on the opposite bunk and sleeping well past the first light that came between six and seven.
The train started up again, so I watched the landscape. In the moon-dark distance, I saw a sawtooth mountain range. A lengthy white bed of snow covered the foreground — there was far more flatness than I had expected to see in Switzerland. The train lurched along. Every now and then a house broke the continuity of the snow and the firmness of the pale indigo darkness with a roof and a light.
I never determined the route the train took. All I know is that when morning came, we arrived in Basel where there was a long concrete walkway next to the train and red signs that pointed to France. I walked to France: it wasn’t very far and got on the next train for Paris. I shared my compartment with a man who had a large woodchopping ax all wrapped up in brown paper. I never found out the story behind that. This younger, clean-shaven fellow had a sad look. France was flat, too. Fields interrupted by poplars and the occasional village. All the way to Paris.
To this day, except for the few steps I took across the Basel railway station, I have never seen Switzerland by daylight.
Note: I will be going on vacation. My house will be in the control of a housesitter and my blog of four good friends who will keep posting. On Friday, I will post all the topics scheduled for my absence.
Want to participate? First either get yourself a copy of A Writer’s Book of Days by Judy Reeves or read these guidelines. Then either check in to see what the prompt for the day is or read along in the book.
Tomorrow’ topic/prompt: Write about never and always.
