Now I can Rest

A longtime reader asked if I was okay. I am definitely okay. It’s nice to know people think about my welfare.

My wife and I were traveling. I don’t like to blog while traveling. At least not in ways that show I’m not home. The reason should be obvious.

I should have continued to blog as though I were home, to obscure things more effectively, but the trip was exhausting. We went to Switzerland and Italy. We went up and down mountains, and then we tromped around the Vatican and sites from imperial Rome. Then, of course, we got covid, as we generally do on our expensive trips. Mexico, where a hotel suite goes for $100 per day? No problem. Lucerne, where they charge you $7 for a glass of tap water? Covid.

The virus seems to lurk in ambush in the very best destinations. Everyone in Italy was coughing, and it wasn’t merely because every Italian over the age of three smokes.

I’ll bet no one is sick in destinations like Miami and Somalia.

I failed to bring ivermectin with us. It always seems to help dramatically, but it doesn’t work from 4500 miles away. I took a big hit when I got home. Can’t hurt, and like I always say, I definitely don’t have worms.

Of course, I felt much, much, much better after about two hours. Anecdotal? Unscientific? Whatever. The difference is like day and night, whether or not it’s the ivermectin. I will keep using it, because maybe it’s actually doing something.

I am not kidding about the tap water. I think I saw it as low as two Swiss Francs in one place, and the maximum was 6.5.

TAP…water. Which is available for nothing, not just in hotel rooms, but also from numerous outdoor fountains, the safety of which is something the Swiss are very proud of.

Hooray. Your tap water isn’t full of dysentery. You’re as sophisticated as Bulgaria.

A bar where I used to hang out when I was 16 sells cheeseburger platters for 28 Swiss Francs without a drink.

I really admire the Swiss, but there is no way to explain a $33 cheeseburger or a $7 glass of tap water without mentioning greed. I don’t care how bad the exchange rate is. I suspect they have realized they will always have more tourists than they can handle well, so they are jacking prices up in order to get people who are more upscale. Maybe they’re trying to thin out the Chinese.

There are many bad tourists among the mainland Chinese. Many are rude and aggressive, they let their kids poop in public, sometimes the adults poop in public, and they do horrific things in public toilets other people have to use. Check out this sign from the train station in Wengen:

I’m not sure, but the bottom row may be for people from places like Greece, where toilet pipes are often too narrow to swallow paper.

The covid isn’t really bad. I prefer it to a cold, because covid doesn’t give me much in the way of throat problems, and I can breathe through my nose most of the time. We did feel some weakness on a day when we needed to climb steps.

My short take: Lucerne is a lot of fun, but you will pay a steep price. Also, the food in Lucern is not very good. We went to the Bernese Oberland after Lucerne, and the food was bad there, too.

I don’t mean it was so bad you wouldn’t want to eat it, although that was sometimes true. I mean it seems like the Swiss have no idea what other people mean when they say food “tastes good.” We got things that were bland, and, in some cases, a little gross.

It’s no fun paying $100 for an unappetizing meal for two. Over and over.

Our hotel in Wengen was generally good, but they priced a smallish load of laundry at 150 Swiss Francs. The owner, a very nice lady, felt sorry for us and reduced our bill to 75. It pays to dress poor. In Rome, a bigger load, in the tourist district, would cost 25 Euros, and a Euro is about the same size as a Swiss Franc right now.

The mountains in Switzerland were spectacular. You look at them and can’t believe they’re real. We went up Pilatus, Rigi, the Schilthorn, and the Jungfrau.

I eventually cut way back on shooting photos and videos. Every 10 minutes, there’s a sight that knocks you off your feet. After a while, you get tired of taking the camera out, removing the lens cover, et cetera et cetera.

If you want to see something amazing, go to Lauterbrunnen, take the train to Wengen, and look back at Lauterbrunnen as you leave. Get ready to pinch yourself.

Here is my message about Rome: go in the winter. We didn’t have that option. There is nothing in Rome you can’t enjoy in cold weather, and the crowds are much smaller. The Vatican was like the subway in Hong Kong in terms of crowding, not to mention covid transmission. The Colosseum was also pretty bad.

Another warning: don’t buy tours from outfits like Viator. We did it because we didn’t know if it was safe not to, and we thought the Swiss, who were handling our Schengen visa request, would want to see booked activities.

Tour companies buy government-issued site tickets and resell them. We paid $333 for Vatican tickets that appear to cost 40 Euros when you get them from the source.

What about the guides? They’re experts! You need a guide!

You really don’t. One of our tours had 22 people. Way too many. The guide kept getting away from us. The audio quality on the earbuds they gave us was terrible. We couldn’t stop and enjoy anything. You can find yourself a guided tour on Youtube and use it with your phone. We did this for the Forum, and it was better than having a guide.

You’re not going to become an expert on anything just by spending three hours with a human being, so don’t worry that you’re missing something by using Youtube. You’re not. Think about this: real scholars put tour videos on Youtube.

We used electronic guides at the Pantheon, and they were great.

No tips expected.

The food was really nice, except for breakfast. I enjoyed Roman-style pizza. But Italian food is all there is. We saw one Italian restaurant after another. We didn’t see much else. Obviously, you can find other kinds of food in Rome, but you have to look. It’s not like New York, where you can find 8 nationalities on one block.

I never thought I could get tired of Italian food until this trip. By the end, I was so put off I went to McDonald’s, which is really bad in Rome, unless covid just made it taste that way.

The beer was disgusting. Like mouthwash. Very harsh. No body or sweetness to balance the hops. No aroma to speak of. No complexity.

More later, I would guess. Right now I am exhausted.