My Top Ten Swiss Experiences of 2021
Is there a statute of limitations on posting end-of-year summaries?
I’m pretty sure there is, and I’m pretty sure I’ve violated it - because it is the end of February 2022, and I’m just now pressing publish on my favorite 2021 experiences. Although, I’ve been caught wishing someone “Happy New Year” well into this month, too, so perhaps this is just par for the course. But any way you slice it, this post is tardy.
In my defense, I’ve had a busy and complicated start to the year, with things like a new job (yay!) and an injury to my right hand (boo!) thrown my way. And while year-end summaries are always more labor-intensive to create, I’m also naturally a bit long-winded in my writing. Brevity is not one of my strengths, ergo, this post took a while to write. Similar to my previous year-end posts for 2019 and 2020, this post is a lengthy one. The longest one yet, in fact - but I promise there are lots of pictures, too! It took more time than expected to put it all together. But here she is: my top ten Swiss experiences of 2021. Settle in, friends. I hope you enjoy reading.
1. Flockdown
Growing up in San Diego, I never got to experience the mythic “snow day.” Instead, us SoCal kids got “fire days:” during wildfire season, schools would close on the days when the air quality was too poor to be outside. The only similarity fire days had to snow days is that sometimes, the cars would be covered in ash that eerily looked like snow. As you can imagine, fire days were not fun.
So when “Flockdown” hit in January 2021 - the country-wide blizzard that essentially shut down the entirety of Switzerland for a day - I realized that at 34 years old, I was finally experiencing my first ever snow day! And what a first time it was.
Of course, I’ve seen Zürich in the snow before. The city becomes the most perfectly pristine snow globe at least a couple of times every winter, and it’s always beautiful. But this. This was something else. I have never seen so much snow in my life. In Zürich, all trams, buses and trains were out of commission, and people were skiing down Langstrasse and snowshoeing through Bahnhofstrasse. Parents were dragging their kids in sleds up and down the streets. Snowmen popped up on every street. It was a snow day for all, kids and adults alike.
A country-wide snow storm doesn’t come with a few downsides. Tragically, we lost the big tree that towered ever-so-beautifully outside our apartment building. It cracked in half due to the intense weight of snow, one of the hundreds of tree casualties throughout the city. Many of the city’s parks were closed for weeks, due to the danger of falling trees and branches. And I’m sure, given the blocked roads and train tracks, that it was a logistical nightmare for transit. But in my case, Flockdown was a pretty cool experience to add to my Swiss memory collection. Plus, it coincided with the day I was free from my 10-day travel quarantine. Snow tends to bring out my inner child under normal circumstances, but when record snowfall occurs on the first day I was allowed to leave my apartment after a straight 240 hours inside? Unsurpassed joy. And snowshoeing the next day in all that fresh powder is still my best snowshoe hike to date.
P.S. For those curious, Flockdown is a portmanteau of flocken (flakes) or Schneeflocken (flakes of snow) and lockdown (a word we are all too familiar with these days). Flockdown!
2. Cross-country skiing
Alert the news media: Raunaq and Alex finally strapped on skis! Albeit, they were cross-country skis, but as Raunaq says, “they are long and thin and used in snow so that’s what counts in my book.” Agreed. Which means that 2021 is the year we officially skied in Switzerland.
In a gallant effort to actually enjoy the winter season, Raunaq and I have been trying out at least one new snow sport per year to add to our winter repertoire. Our first winter, it was ice-skating (specifically, ice-skating outdoors on natural rinks!). Second year, it was snowshoeing (we loved it so much we bought snowshoes on the train ride home from our first hike). And this third winter was the year for cross-country (XC) skiing. We went to Goms, the unofficial capital of Swiss cross-country skiing, for our inaugural ski weekend (and, to celebrate our 3rd wedding anniversary!). We figured if we were taking the plunge into a new sport, we might as well go to the best place possible for it, and Goms certainly delievered. If you are looking for an exceptional place to cross-country ski, Goms is it!
So, first impressions? Cross-country is awesome! We were both hooked. But don’t be fooled, friends: people definitely make XC look much easier than it is. Cross-country skis are longer and narrower than traditional alpine skis, and while that might not seem like a big deal, it is surprisingly hard to balance on them. Meaning: Both Raunaq and I slipped and fell almost immediately after putting them on. Our instructor assured us that it happened to nearly everybody. Uh-huh. We each fell at least a few more times on that first XC day. I’m a reasonably coordinated person, and the movements of classic cross-country skiing are similar to running on an elliptical machine, so in theory, I should have been fine. But an elliptical machine is stationary. Cross-country skiing, of course, is not.
It felt like the second I got into a semi-graceful-yet-gangly glide, I’d suddenly fall off-stride and lose my balance, arms and poles failing in the world’s longest descent to the ground. And don’t even get me started on when we would hit a hill (😱) or an intersection (💥). But hey. Learning a new sport is always going to be awkward and humbling - that’s what can make it so fun and rewarding. And even for non-skiers like us, it’s pretty easy to pick up the basics. Every kilometer we went, we improved a little bit more, and by the end of our second day, Raunaq and I felt like seasoned pros. At least, until we watched some videos of ourselves after. My “gliding” doesn’t look nearly as smooth on camera. I don’t think the Swiss cross-country Olympic team will be recruiting me just yet. Maybe for 2026.
3. An intercontinental sandstorm
Apparently, winter was all about experiencing unexpected natural phenomenons (see number 1). Just one month after Flockdown, there was another, decidedly more unexpected, event: A Sahara dust storm…in the Alps.
That day, we happened to be snowshoeing. But instead of the forecasted clear and sunny weather, the sky was cloudy and unexpectedly…yellow? The odd color seemed to deepen as we rode the gondola up to the top of the mountain. I didn’t think much of it at first, assuming that the weird haze was just a trick of the fog and the sun. But once at the top, it got even weirder: the light cast the entire mountain plateau in this amber glow, bathing the once-white snowy landscape in its warm, sepia tones. It was eerie and apocalyptic and definitely, definitely, wasn’t just haze. But despite the fact that I was fairly certain we were experiencing a glitch in the matrix - we continued on with our snowshoe tour anyway. It might have been the beginning of the end of the world, but at least we were going to get a front-row seat. It felt like snowshoeing on Mars. The photos from this day are some of my favorite.
We actually didn’t figure out what was happening until we got home. I knew it couldn’t have been just fog. But I never, in my wildest dreams, would have guessed that the sepia sky was caused by dust from the SAHARA DESERT. Yes, that’s right - it was Saharan dust that floated thousands of miles from North Africa and got suspended in the clouds over Switzerland.
Most surprisingly, I’ve since learned that is a somewhat common occurrence in Europe (!). Intercontinental sandstorms are now added to my repertoire of bizarre natural phenomena experiences - it’s right up there with Bioluminescent algae in California and blue moonrises in the Uri Alps (see experience number 6). **
4. A week in Ticino
April in 2021. Europe was emerging from it’s latest coronavirus wave (the 2nd? 3rd? We had all lost count at that point). Bars and restaurants were still closed, international travel wasn’t encouraged, and it was still very much winter in most of the country. BUT. It was my last year as a student with a proper student “spring break”, and gosh darn it, I wasn’t going to waste it.
So, Raunaq and I figured it was the perfect opportunity to participate in the classic Swiss rite of passage: fleeing south to Ticino, the sunny Italian-speaking canton, for the Easter holiday. In a whirlwind of last-minute planning, we rented a car, managed to book a seemingly too good to be true apartment for the week - complete with a kitchen, a pool, and a patio overlooking Lake Maggiore - and headed south to Locarno. We even managed to avoid the notorious Gotthard tunnel traffic. The only thing we missed, really, was the “warm” part. It was, ehrm, colder than expected. I did not pack appropriately.
Colder-than-expected weather aside, what a lovely week we had! Our little apartment was in the village of Piazzogna, high up in the hills over the lake (which meant we had to do a windy drive every day that gave me serious heart palpitations…but the views!). And with Piazzogna as our home base, we went all over Ticino. We explored Lugano and Gandria, walked the colorful promenade of Ascona, ate focaccia and gelato, and watched sunrise and sunset every day from our patio. It wasn’t warm enough to swim, but Raunaq braved the pool anyway. We got in our first mountain hikes of the season, even though we were a little too ambitious with attempting higher altitude trails and got bested by spring snow a few times. We discovered some of Ticino’s more hidden gems, my favorite being the beautiful Val Calnègia, nicknamed ‘the suspended valley.” It’s an exceptionally wild and remote place that feels stuck in time, surrounded by mountain peaks and accessible only through a hiking path up beyond the Foroglio waterfall. But above all, we just enjoyed being in Ticino for a week. It was the first time we had stayed an entire week anywhere in Switzerland, and having a whole seven days in one place felt like a long, luxurious treat.
5. Leveling up Swiss summer
Swiss summers are already in a league of their own, but this summer, things were really kicked up a notch. I’ll attribute it to three game-changing decisions:
Gamechanger #1: I got myself an inflatable SUP (stand-up paddleboard). Well, to be clear, I bought it in November during an excellent Black Friday sale. And then, the board sat deflated in its case for 7 months, before I had the courage to finally take the thing out. But I finally did, on a warm afternoon in late May. And on that maiden SUP voyage, I knew that I had just unlocked the next level of Swiss summer. I started going out for paddles in the mornings, when the water was calmer, and I loved that it was a meditative yet active way to start the day. I also took it to Walensee for the day, which is something I’ve wanted to do since we moved here. I can’t wait to SUP on more Swiss lakes this summer. Now - if I can just get Raunaq to actually stand up on the board, instead of just paddling along like he is an island castaway…
Gamechanger #2: Raunaq and I got season badi passes for the summer. You know my love of badis. Badi life is the supreme version of lake life. But this year, we upgraded to season-pass badi life. A badi pass gives you unlimited access to all 24 badis in the city, seven days a week, all summer long. It’s the dream!
I remember one morning in June, during a heat wave, when Raunaq came back from the Enge badi and was just like, “You have to go. It’s a vibe.” I’d never before been to a badi in the morning, because it didn’t seem “worth it” to pay the 8 franc entrance fee if I couldn’t stay all day. But with the badi pass, we did things like that: went to the badi in the morning for a coffee and a quick dip before work, or in the afternoon for a lunch swim, or afterwork for a drink. It just made the badi more accessible - plus, we got to skip the lines and walk through the special “sportabo” entry like ballers. Another Swiss level unlocked. And by the way, Raunaq was absolutely right: the Enge badi is a whole vibe on summer mornings.
Gamechanger #3: We finally had some wild Langstrasse summer nights. By June, the vaccine had (at long last) arrived in Switzerland, which meant that bars and clubs re-opened for those of us who were doubled-dosed. Langstrasse is the “party street” in Zurich, which Raunaq and I had intentionally avoided for most of our time here. But after 1.5 years of lockdown, we were both antsy enough to revive our inner 20-year old selves, let our hair down, and hit ze clubs. It was so fun to see a completely different side of the city, and as it turns out, I have a couple ‘party-till-sunrise’ nights left in me after all! The next morning, though, is another story…
Unfortunately, the weather didn’t get the memo that it was summertime, and the 2021 Swiss summer was the rainiest one yet. Sigh. But, these gamechangers helped us take advantage of every single sunny day we had. Which meant another Swiss summer for the books!
6. Wild Camping
It’s surprisingly hard to camp in Switzerland. To stay overnight in a cozy hut tucked somewhere deep in the Alps, with homemade soup and hot showers and cold beer at your disposal? No problem! You have your pick of hundreds of mountain huts to choose from. But if you want to wild camp (the Swiss equivalent of backcountry camping)? Things get a bit more complicated. You’ll need to find a site that is above the treeline, not on floodplains, not on wetlands, not close to mountain huts, not on a nature reserve, not in wild rest zone, not in hunting ban areas - and not on someone’s farmland (which can extend surprisingly far into the mountains). Whew. And, because rules are set by the local authorities, things can also change based on which canton you want to camp in. This all means that it takes quite a bit of research to find a decent place to camp. Which is why Raunaq and I never really got around to it for our first three summers in Switzerland. But this year, we were determined to make it happen.
After scouring topo maps for literal hours, we ultimately decided on a spot in the Uri Alps that had a nice long hike up one side of a mountain, a wide open plateau at the top, and a descent down the other side. Perfect. A quick trip to Transa for some last-minute goodies and gadgets, and we were set for a wild camping trip!
It was a hard hike up. Neither Raunaq or I had properly backpacked since we moved to Switzerland, and 5 hours of hiking with 1000 meters of ascent just hits different when carrying a 30L pack. Oof. But wow, was it worth it. We finally arrived to a massive plateau at the top, which made for a truly epic campsite. It was everything we could have hoped for and more. Panoramic mountain and valley views, an incredible sunset followed by an even more spectacular moonrise (during a blue moon, nonetheless), even a UFO sighting!
We got lucky that the rain stayed away for the hike up, but not so lucky the next day. It poured in the early hours of the morning. We woke up to pooled water at the foot of our tent…conveniently where I had left my socks and puffy jacket the night before. Fun! I’m glad we enjoyed the views the night before, because our morning consisted of one goal: let’s get the heck off this mountain as quickly as possible. But really, despite the rain at the end, it was an incredible experience. I can’t believe we waited so long to do it, and I can’t wait for more trips next summer.
P.S. Our camping location is not a secret spot, and I am by no means a mega influencer…but, I’m not going to post the location or hike details here. I’m sorry, I know that’s annoying. It’s just that we were the only people at the top of this high mountain summit - and that’s what made it so special. Just us and the mountains and the marmots. It felt like we had the entire world to ourselves. If you are interested in details - message me directly :)
P.P.S. Story time! This was also the weekend that I walked into someone’s house uninvited. We came across a small hut, with two men outside drinking coffee from one of those camping coffee sets. Assuming that they were fellow hikers, and assuming that this was one of those unmanned, self-service style huts (do these even exist? Did I make this up?) I confidently strode past them and walked right inside, muddy hiking boots and all. I was literally about to open the fridge to grab the couple beers that I assumed would be there (as you can tell, there was a lot of assumption happening), when I heard one of the guys outside frantically saying something to me in Swiss German. “Er, sorry, mein Deutsch ist nicht so gut,” I responded. But I finally managed to catch one word he was saying: “Privat.” As in, this was a private house. His private house. Ah. As I looked around the house again, I started noticing a few more things I had missed before: the single bed, the framed photos, the bath towel. It slowly dawned on me - I had tramped into this poor man’s house, right in front of him, VERY MUCH UNINVITED. Oh my god, I was mortified. Mortified. I ran out of the house, apologizing in every language I knew. Luckily, our friend Mathias was able to explain to him my (very flawed) reasoning, and we all had a good laugh about it. Well, they had a good laugh. I was, and still am, and will forever remain, absolutely mortified.
7. Discovering raclette
This one can be short and sweet. 2021 was the year that raclette and I were properly introduced. And now, my life will forever be divided into two phases - before raclette (B.R), and after raclette (A.R.).
I know this may ruffle some feathers, but I’m just going to say it: raclette is the superior Swiss melted cheese dish. It is better than fondue. It just is. It’s easier to prepare, it’s more fun to eat, there are endless options for toppings and side dishes, and everyone can melt their own cheese precisely to their own preference with their own little raclette pan. Maybe this is the American in me, but there is just more freedom with raclette than fondue.
You can eat it traditionally, with potatoes, pearl onions and cornichons, which is perfectly delightful on its own. But you can also get creative, or even go a bit rogue. You can sprinkle the raclette with paprika, or even better, gunpowder (a chili salt mix from India that Raunaq smuggles here by the bagful). You can get garlic raclette, or truffle raclette, or chili raclette. We have some friends who sprinkle chopped sun-dried tomatoes and bacon on the cheese before it melts, and other friends who add kimchi or pineapple to the mix. I’m personally a fan of getting two raclette pans going at once, so you are never without a fresh serving of melty cheese! We bought our very own raclette set in November, and I’m never going back to those sad B.R. times ever again.
8. The Alpabzug
Each year, a Swiss festival makes my annual favorites list. The last two years involved exploding snowmen and devilish mountain monsters, respectively, so this year’s festival might seem somewhat tame in comparison. But what the Alpabzug may lack in sheer unexpectedness, it more than makes up for in “Swiss-ness.” The Alpabzug is the festival that celebrates the cows’ seasonal descent from the alps to their valley pastures. Swiss cows spend their summers grazing in the open mountain meadows, and thus need to be herded down before the winter snow. But the Alpabzug is not just a mundane agricultural necessity. It’s an EVENT. Every town will have slightly different customs, but they all generally involve herds of flower-crown adorned cows parading down the mountain and through the village streets to the rhythmic clanging of cowbells. You can truly feel the sense of pride and appreciation the Swiss farmers have for their animals, and I think this beloved alpine tradition is something everyone needs to experience once. Have you ever seen a cow flaunting a homemade flower crown? Don’t you feel like you need to now?
We went to one of the last Alpabzugs of the season, the Prättigauer Alpine Festival, which really pulled out all of the Swiss stops. Not only did it have flower-crowned cows (and goats with bandanas!), it had all sorts of super-Swiss spectacles, including, but not limited to: a free Alpkäse tasting where we got to sample 15 alpine cheeses and vote for the year’s best, a wood-cutting contest, a “natural full beard competition,” a yodeling mass, an alpine farmer Olympics (which involved running a course holding milk buckets), a cow beauty queen contest, and even a Swiss bachelor party! OK, I’m not sure how traditional that last one is, but I just really loved that someone chose an Alpabzug for their bachelor party. Although to be fair, the celebrations did go on until 4am, so maybe those boys were onto something after all.
9. Seeing the Engadin larches
Going to the Engadin in October to see their famous larch-meadow forests has been on my Swiss bucket list since I learned about, and subsequently became obsessed with, larch trees. We finally went for a weekend this year. And it was a weekend with the most saturated yellow and golden colors I’ve experienced in nature thus far. I know I’m wordy and long-winded, but I’m just not sure I have the right words for this transcendent experience. I’ll just let the photos speak for themselves.
**For those who live here, we based ourselves in Pontresina, and did day hikes to Morteratsch and Lago di Saoseo. But the entire region is aglow in the fall. **
10. Graduating from ETH
Before 2021, the last time I graduated was way back in 2008. I graduated from UCLA with a degree in Political Science, and a job offer as an assistant editor from the company where I was interning. In fact, I graduated early and started working right away - I had to take a day off work to go to my graduation! I figured I would work for a year or two, then go back to school and get my master’s. Grad school always seemed like a good plan, my plan. But after working for a year and realizing I wasn’t doing what I loved, I bought a one-way ticket to Guatemala instead, and spent the next year backpacking my way through Central and South America to “find myself.” I’d apply for school when (ever) I got back home. But then, once I got home, I found a job at a small-NGO based in Honduras, so I moved to Tegucigalpa for two years instead. That’s where I was introduced to the field of development work, and so when I moved back to the States yet again, I wanted to continue working for social causes that I was passionate about. Plus - the cost of higher education in the US, and with it massive debt, was discouraging to say the least. So I put off grad school and continued to work, carving a little space for myself in the education and literacy non-profit sector for the next six years.
And then, Raunaq and I moved to Zürich. And it was as if the stars finally aligned, and I saw my chance to go back to school and get the degree I’d been thinking about for 12 years. I applied, and was accepted, to ETH Zürich’s Master’s program in Political Science in 2019. And in November of 2021, I graduated.
These last two years were incredibly challenging. I had enrolled in a particularly demanding program, heavy on quantitative research and inferential statistics and data analysis, and while those were the aspects that drew me to the program, they were not easy topics to pick up. Academic journal articles are tedious and almost intentionally dense, and it took time to learn how to actually read them efficiently. In order to use R, a computer software for data manipulation and modeling, I had to learn an entirely new programming language. I rediscovered my love of the art of paper-writing, and had my first (and thankfully only) oral final exam. I needed to adapt to the Swiss/European higher education systems, which unsurprisingly is quite different from the U.S. system. It was hard work.
But these two years were also incredibly rewarding. I relished being back in school. I loved being able to talk politics all day. I developed a somewhat all-consuming interest in the ethics and politics of migration, and spent my last six months writing a dissertation on the chilling effects of state-level immigration policy in the U.S. I now have a deep, deep appreciation for all the work that goes into quality research. And I was reminded time and time again how the social sciences - and what they tell us about human behavior, societies and institutions - matter now more than ever. Oh, and those student discounts didn’t hurt, either ;)
I’ll be quite honest, though: going back to school also presented an unexpected mental block I had to overcome - dealing with “my age.” I hate to admit it, but in the beginning I was really uncomfortable with being the oldest student in my cohort. I know that 35 isn’t old. I don’t feel old. I actually feel like a spry 27-year old most of the time (except for the mornings after those aforementioned Langstrasse nights) - but the reality was that I was older than most of my classmates by a decade. So much growth and change occurs in those ten years, from 25 to 35, and even though I was also a student, I was simply in a completely different life stage than the others. I found myself acting as both a mentor and a peer, and stradling those two roles meant I felt a bit out of place in both of them. Relatedly, I was often frustrated with how academia tends to diminish non-academic achievements. It was tiring to constantly feel I had to justify my own life experiences, to prove that even though I didn’t have a doctorate and a long list of journal publications by my mid-thirties, that my personal and professional accomplishments were just as valuable. The often-subtle-but-sometimes-blatant ageism really got to me sometimes.
It was a good reminder to myself that whenever you do things a little out of “society’s” order, it can be hard for anyone who hasn’t been on your path to understand. But I’m here to tell you: doing stuff later in life does not mean you have fallen behind. On the contrary: it makes you an interesting person living life on your own schedule. My return to school was a little non-traditional. I wouldn’t change one thing about my journey to get here. And I was really, really proud of myself when I got that diploma.
Honorable mentions:
Taking my first open-air “gondola” (pictured above): Calling this thing a gondola is a real stretch. It was essentially a flying wooden bucket (I actually think it is what the Swiss used to use to send milk bottles up and down the mountains back in the olden days), and I had a damn near heart attack riding it in. It’s something I would only trust in Switzerland, and even then…I’m not sure I’d ever get on this thing again.
Watching the Euro Cup: In my four years here, this was the most energetic I’ve ever seen the Swiss get about soccer. Their team was in the World Cup in 2018, and I swear, people barely batted an eye. This year, Swiss goalkeeper Yann Sommer became a national hero after bringing team to a nail-biting shoot-out victory over France. Hopp Schwiiz!!
Buying a car: I know, I wax poetically about Swiss public transportation. But, we bought a car, and it’s given us just a lot more flexibility in getting around. And Raunaq fulfilled his dream of speeding on the Autobahn in Germany.
Conclusion
In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, we are introduced to the Pensieve. For the uninitiated, the Pensieve is a magical object enchanted to recreate memories so that they become re-liveable, taking every detail stored in the subconscious and recreating it faithfully (thank you, Pottermore, for the excellent definition). I’ve always thought that this would be such a useful tool to have in real-life. An opportunity to sift through your memories, to examine them from different angles, to re-experience them over and over.
I was watching the movie with my niece and nephew over the Christmas holidays, simultaneously thinking about this blog post and what I would write about. The first Pensieve scene came on the screen, with Harry accidentally tumbling into, and subsequently experiencing, an old memory of Dumbledore’s. And I realized that I do have a Pensieve: this blog. I’ll never be able to re-live or change the past, but this practice of writing is my own personal way of making sure that there is always a door to my memories. And that I can experience them any time I want.
Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year (😉)
