One of the reasons for obtaining abonnenements demi-tarifs was the cost of an outing to the Rhine Valley in the eastern Swiss Canton of Saint Gall to see our old friends Heinz and Maria-Luisa. Clare studied eurythmy with them in Stourbridge when I was Team Rector of Halesowen in the late 1980s. Since we last visited them five years ago Heinz has retired, and they've moved from their wonderful eco-house in Grabs to a smaller modern penthouse apartment in nearby Buchs. It's not that we saved much money on the total expenditure for this trip, but rather savings on all other trips we can make in the month's duration of the abonnement which justifies the initial expenditure.
This morning there was a midweek BCP Communion service at St John's, but nobody came, apart from Clare and I, but we continued with the service anyway, so we could remember our Parish Priest back home in Cardiff, Fr Mark Preece, who's in hospital for an operation. This meant that we could leave an hour earlier for our trip across Switzerland.
First, we took the Train Regional to Lausanne, then the InterCity to Zurich in the north east of the country, to connect with another InterCity train to Coir/Chur caiptal of the the Grisons, somewhere we've never been. In each case, we had time to make the connection without difficulty, aided by the brilliant and comprehensive SBB/CFF smartphone app (or internet site, take your pick), which gives timings and platform numbers, all the detail a traveller could possibly want in your own language. It's so accurate, it's what the train conductors use. Our total journey time, four hours.
The Zurich Coir/Chur train connects with a local shuttle train to Buchs at Sargans, where Heinz met us at tea-time, and took us to a local bus from the station while he cycled home ahead of us. The bus gave us a few moments of humour, as the driver couldn't get it to start properly, and kept diving under the bonnet before he could get all the electronic on-board systems started working properly, and when we got going, he grumbled to us in Schwiezerdeutch over the tannoy.
Heinz and Maria Luisa's apartment is on the roof of a three storey block with amazing views of the mountains enclosing the Rhine Valley on all sides. The south side walls are mainly high strength insulating glass, as are the interior rooms on this side. Temperature control and room privacy is managed by the use of opaque blinds. With a series of glass doors to open, rather than windows, it's easily possible to ventilate the apartment for eight months of the year. What it's like in colder times it's hard to imagine, though it has a wood burning hearth set in among the south side windows, also, I think, underfloor heating. We had much more to talk about than domestic design, so some of my curiosities remain un-tended.
The evening was spent catching up with each others' lives, and eating outdoors on the apartment terrace as the sun set. We're in a Canton where church bells still ring at six in the morning, nine at night and at lunchtime, quite apart from church clocks ringing four times an hour. Such timekeeping is a legacy from the old days in this era of digital timekeeping, but it's likely to be bound into civil as much as ecclesiastical regulation to maintain the status quo.
Church bells are rung nowadays not by an ancient sacristan entrusted with the job, but by an electro-mechanical timing device, which is far more impersonal. No doubt many people if not most, regard this as redundant, unnecessary, if not an intrusion, in a world oppressed by many digital alarms. For me the sound of church bells, with their unique character in every place they are rung, by whatever means, for whatever purposes are a reminder of the opening words from the Paschal Vigil.
'Christ, yesterday, today and forever: all time belongs to him and all eternity, to Him be glory forever.'
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