Reunion

Clare made an early start from Cardiff this morning with a six o'clock bus to Bristol airport. I spent most of the day waiting for her, preparing a Sunday sermon, food shopping, preparing a welcome evening meal. 

It rained most of the day. Switzerland is being assailed by storm force winds causing damage and disruption, and although some trains were late, and Clare missed one my minutes, she was only one hour later than our travel estimate. Thankfully the rain stopped an hour before Clare's train arrived in Montreux. It meant we could walk back to Church House so Clare could stretch her legs after many hours sitting on bus, plane and train. 

We walked along the lakeside promenade, and were surprised to see waves breaking over the shore retaining wall, spraying small stones and vegetation all over the path. It's not as if there was a strong wind at this end of the lake causing the water turbulence, but possibly at the other end of the lake 50km away, storm force winds generated a wave effect that travelled the length of the lake against the flow of the river Rhone. It's an amazing environment with so many surprises, not least with the weather.

After supper, we watched a recorded broadcast from Covent Garden of Verdi's opera Macbeth on a French TV channel. The singing was superb. It was a lovely relaxing conclusion to the day.

  

Montreux bank holidays

New Year's day was quieter than a Sunday. It was mild and sunny with clouds until sunset, when it began to rain. In the afternoon I walked the lakeside path as far as the Chateau de Chillon with my camera, and got a decent close up photo of a bird I couldn't identify swimming off-shore. A flock of a hundred or so Scaup were swimming together nearby. This is an aquatic bird I hadn't come across until I identified a few of them among the Coots and Mallards on the rio Aguas in Mojacar back in November. I wonder if the birds live here or are spending the winter here, or just passing through?

In the evening I watched the New Year's Day concert from Vienna, always a favourite, and even more so now we've sailed on the not so blue Danube, seen Vienna, and the Vienna Woods slipping past. It prompted me to take another look at my on-line album of cruise photos, and realise just how little of Vienna we'd seen in our packed day's visit. Hopefuly, there'll be another time.

Then I watched first episode of McMafia inspired by a novel of Misha Glenny. It's a dramatic exposée of the power struggle between different Russian criminal clans. and how this impacts upon the personal life of a second generation British banker of Russian parentage. It's a stylish portrayal of the lifestyle of the super-rich after the manner of the film of Le Carre's 'The Night Manager'. It's complex and a little slow moving, which makes me wonder if it's making sense to me. Early days, however.

Today was another 'quiet as a Sunday' sort of day, being a second Swiss public holiday in a row. It walked into town to see if anything was open, and found several restaurants, cafés and convenience stores were open, not that I needed anything, as I'd stocked up before the weekend. I walked up into the old time, and discovered several old streets and alleys I hadn't found before. I walked back past the ancient Parish Church of St Vincent Veytaux, and took another photo of it with the vineyard in the foreground, now in winter wear, denuded of leaves. The church was open, and the sanctuary was host to an unusual nativity scene.

The figures were cardboard cut-outs, which had been minimally decorated by a local artist who had also written an interpretation of the intended symbolism of the scene from his viewpoint which was displayed alongside the nativity scene in the spacious sanctuary of the church. In common with many other reformed mediaeval church buildings there's almost no furnishing in the chancel and sanctuary, just a simple Communion Table at the entrance. The simplicity of the space is enhanced by stained glass window light. It's a delightful building, with a timeless feel to it, and it's such a contrast to the glitzy cosmopolitan streets down below on the lakeside.

Later, I watched episode two of McMafia. I'm still not sure I've got a grip on the plot-lines, or if I'll have the patience to watch the third episode on Sunday next.

New Year lakeside vigil

Last night, I left Church House at ten minutes to midnight and walked along the lack promenade as far as the Market Square. The skies were clear and there was an unusually mild breeze, making it a very pleasant night time stroll. The first kilometre was almost deserted. It was only when I reached the Casino that a handful of New Year revellers were sitting out on the lakeside wall, drinking beer or bubbly, phoning home or taking selfies with their mates. Most of the socialising was taking place in hotel ball rooms, clubs and the Casino, or else in apartments, on balconies overlooking the lake.

At midnight, people high up shouted "Bonne Année" to people walking below. Few walkers greeted greeted anyone outside their circle of friends. Best of all, church bells rang out for a quarter of an hour. In some communes with older traditions they also ring daily, morning and evening, thanks to a timer and ringing mechanism which makes this automatic. But at midnight, the custodian or the pastor would need to be there and use the manual override switch. No change ringing teams here!

There was no a public countdown with musical animation and no municipal fireworks in the Market Square. It's not surprising, given that the entire area is still occupied by empty wooden chalets and stalls of the Christmas Market, waiting to be dismantled and removed. Many districts around the lake, from Vevey to Villenueve as well as the French side at St Gingolph had displays of their own.

Looking across at the French Alps, I couldn't help wondering what it would have been like to stand here at night in the year before I was born, to look across the lake, with the explosions and fires of battle coming across from the other side as Haute Savoie was being liberated by Savoyard partisans with Allied support. There'll be life long Montreux dwellers some years older than I who remember those times, and the impact it made on the whole lakeside region.

The noise and distant sparkle of fireworks, went on for more than half an hour, and night-time quiet returned by the time I reached Territet. I was so glad to have made the effort to go out and see in the New Year, far from home, and ate a dozen grapes, Spanish style at New Year, before going to bed.

  

Promenade sculptures

For the midweek BCP Communion this morning I anticipated tomorrow's celebration of Holy Cross Day, thinking of Ty Mawr Convent and of Amanda whose birthday it is. The American lady with a delightful small daughter were the only congregation. She told me afterwards she had five other children, ranging down from eighteen to four years old. The little one came and asked me confidently if she could help me after the service so I said yes. Not only did she put the candles out with the snuffer, but took everything from the credence table into the vestry for me, comfortable with simple sacristy duties as such a tender age! This is a side of 'godly play' you don't often see.

While in church I checked out the portable sound system to see if it could play CDs. It was a Hi-fi stack from the days when double cassette decks were all the rage. It worked fine, but there was no CD player, although there was a stereo port in the back of it through which CD audio could be passed to the system. I'd been told there was a CD player as part of the church's public address system, but I couldn't find the key for it to check. With the funeral tomorrow and no certainty of being able to find out and practice using this, I decided the best option would be to go and buy an adaptor that would enable me to connect the system to a smartphone via a headphone jack. At least, this would make it possible to stream digitised music.

I walked to the Metro Center in Montreux, bought the correct adaptor and some much needed new rechargeable batteries for the church's wireless microphone, then walk on to the small marina at Clarens which also contains lake swimming bath facilities, a lovely walk of 4km from Territet. The continuous lakeside path from Montreux to Vevey has flower bedecked lakeside walls, and through Montreux commune, there are dozens of sculptures along the lakeside, some conventional and some weird. I now have photos over five dozen of them. It's a remarkable gallery of contemporary public art works. You can find my photo album here.

Swiss train travel - a holiday from uncertainty

There was thunder and lightning in the night. We woke up to see clouds rolling in from the west into the Rhine Valley, giving the landscape a magical and mysterious countenance. Rain was promised for later, but after a memorable Swiss fruhstuck, Heinz went and collected a Renault Megane estate from the Mobilis a local car short term rental pool, to drive us to one of their favourite places in the mountain territory of nearby Lichtenstein, on the other side of the Rhine Valley.

Half an hour later we were climbing a thousand metres up a winding  mountain road to a calm and solitary place in the forest, where currently a clinic is being constructed for patients suffering from burn-out. When it's open, it is unlikely to suffer from a scarcity of clients in our insanely pressurised modern world. We parked nearby, and followed a pathway along a contour through pine trees rooted seemingly precariously, on an extremely steep mountainside. I was surprised to see two different enclosures in which donkeys were grazing and wondered why there were being raised here so remotely from the urbanised valley floor below.

Cloud was already partially obscuring the view below, but only towards the end of our walk did it envelop us. Shortly after we reached the car, it began to rain, and continued steadily until it was time for me to take my leave and return to Montreux. Clare stays another day, but I need to travel to Verbier tomorrow, an hour's journey from Montreux, for a wedding preparation ahead of Saturday's service.

The train from Buchs to Sargans was three minutes late. This left one minute to change to the mainline express train to Zurich - four minutes allowed by the phone app. Energised by the challenge, I ran to the necessary platform, arriving as the express pulled in. It then waited to collect case-lugging stragglers, while I settled into a seat and regained by breath. We left three minutes late. How kind. We arrived punctually in Zurich, where the Lausanne train was waiting. Likewise at Lausanne, the train to Montreux  arrived conveniently as I crossed the platform to wait for it. 

This took me to Montreux in time buy some bread and wine before returning to Church House, as it was a late opening night at the COOP. The only disappointment was a half hour wait for a bus to Territet to complete the journey. The scheduled bus didn't appear. The next one wasn't a full sized electric bendy bus, but smaller. It was rammed with passengers already.  If it hadn't been raining, I'd have walked back anyway, but didn't relish the thought of arriving soaked through,. So I waited instead. I might well have been back in Cardiff waiting for a bus. Timetabling post-rush hour, when services and vehicles deployed change over, rarely delivers what post rush hour bus travellers find satisfactory. 

I'd like to think that in the next quarter of a century, real-time information about travellers' needs on local public transport networks will provide services to match, in the way that rail networks across Switzerland seem to achieve as a matter of national pride.