At about 6:30 am tomorrow, plus or minus an hour since this country just experienced the annual trauma of daylight savings, I will have been in Switzerland for a full two weeks. Yes, Switzerland, the land I once mistook for Austria at the tender age of something-or-another, when the political under/overtones of The Sound of Music swept high over my tiny head and all I could see was Maria dancing in the Alps, and all I could hear was Edelweiss. Because Switzerland was somehow a more familiar name to me than Austria during those formative years, and because I like chocolate, a blonde, rebellious Julie Andrews spinning in fields at dizzying heights was for quite some time the dominant impression of my now country of residence.
This vision was altered slightly a few years later, when my family took an overnight train from the south of France to the North of Italy, crossing through Switzerland after dark. Flashing past the window, illuminated by either the moon or well-placed spotlights, were hills, trees, tidy houses, and the clean air of the mountains. However, I was quickly distracted from all this by the discovery that the ice tea I