Visit Achyut play school – Vevey - 18 Sep 09

Visited the Children’s Play School in Vevey, where Ranju takes Achyut regularly from 2 pm to 6 pm on all Mondays and Tuesdays and on all Thursdays and Fridays from 9 am to 11 am. On Wednesdays when she goes to conduct Bal Vikas classes she takes him along with her. The Play School is a very interesting place where children merely come and play – no teaching and no other pressure. They have plenty of toys to play around with and absolutely no restriction on their movements!



Here in RanjBharath’s residence on the third floor, thanks to the wooden platform and the overall silence, whenever Papu runs around it can be heard very clearly by the residents living below. No wonder that the Play School is a very welcome place for Papu!



In the Play School, the guardians of the children are required to be present with the children during the entire playschool period. Mothers of children are of course there but there are cases where there are fathers babysitting with the children – maybe due to their wives going to work! The children are from a multi cultural, multi ethnic, multinational and multi racial background and it is indeed interesting to find Chinese, African, Indian, Swiss, American and children of other nationalities playing together!



The Swiss Govt runs the School. No school fees. Two lady volunteers look after the school – one speaking French and the other English. When the parents leave the Play School they contribute whatever they wish in a small box – this takes care of the expenses of coffee and biscuits etc for the Guardians of the children.

Finding a place for celebration of Achyut birthday – 17 Sep 09

Ranju is running around in circles trying to find a suitable place for celebration of Achyut’s birthday on 22 Sep 09 and she has not been able to locate a suitable place .To take permission to celebrate the birthday on the Lake side requires police permission. So went to the Police HQ of Vevey, which is within walking distance. The very well maintained lawns en route were a wonderful sight indeed.And they have created a peacock as well as an Owl through flowers alone !Took Achyut along. We also took a Commune pass for 07 Oct for roaming around anywhere in Swiss at more than half the prescribed rates on that day.





We finally located a suitable room for the birthday party.Bharath later felt that we should not celebrate in an open space as it would be difficult to control the children who would be attending the function ; so a closed door arrangement would be preferable .Also keeping in view the uncertain weather it would be preferable to stay indoors .



On the way back we stopped, as Papu started playing with a dog and the owner was indeed very obliging !

Travel to Jungfraujoch– 15 Sep 09

This was indeed a very eventful day. We traveled to Jungfraujoch (pronounced as Young fro Yokh and means literally peaks like a young Frau – a girl) - the highest snow covered mountain peak in Europe - about 300 kms away from our location. What an interesting and amazing journey it was. We got up early in the morning and got ready by 6.30 am so that we could walk across to the La Tour Peilz Railway station very close to our home.

RanjBharath had chalked out our entire journey beautifully. We were required to travel by 6 different trains to reach the summit! The meticulous details including the names of the 6 stations where we were required to change our trains, the arrival departure timings and even the platforms on which the trains would arrive and depart were a great help indeed.

We boarded the first train at La Tour de Peilz at 7.03 am sharp which took us to Platform No 9 of Lausanne Railway station at 7.26 am sharp. We got down at Lausanne and moved to Platform No1 where we boarded an Inter City Express that left Lausanne for Berne at 7.45 am sharp. The Lausanne railway station in fact all the railway stations were like so many bee hives buzzing with activity – so many passengers moving about their work – just like the Local railway stations at Mumbai – only difference being the impeccable cleanliness of theses stations and what punctuality!



The journey lasted 1 hr and 11 mts and we reached Berne (capital of Switzerland) at 8.56 am sharp on Platform No 8.During this train journey we moved to a Restaurant in the train itself and had some coffee. We left Berne at 9.04 am reaching Interlaken Ost at 9.57 am at Platform No 5! From Interlaken Ost we departed at 10.05 am from Platform No 2A. We kept referring to the Route Chart which RanjBharath had made, throughout the journey.



We arrived at Laterbrunnen the start point of the journey up the mountains, at10.25 am but here we could not catch the next train at 10.30 am as we had to buy our train tickets from Latebrunnen to Jungfraujoch via Klein Schedigg.As this was the start point of the Ghat section we put on our additional warm overcoats which RanjBharath had given to us, and began our journey upwards.



The train from Laterbrunnen to Klein Schedigg was more like a toy train – it reminded me of the train to Darjeeling – the only difference being that this was an electric train as against the conventional train of the Darjeeling Railway.



The journey however was one of the most picturesque travels, which we have ever made. We could have a fantastic view of the snow-covered mountain ranges of the Alps throughout the journey.



From Klein Schedigg to Jung Frau Joch the travel is entirely through a 6 to 7 kms long tunnel winding its way to Jungfraujoch. The Jungfraujoch Railways run the section from Laterbrunnen to Jungfraujoch.



In the train they have a closed circuit TV which gives all the details of the history of the tunnel as to who conceived it and how it was built 88 years back. Not only does it eliminate boredom travelling for almost two hours through only a tunnel but is informative as well. En route within the tunnel they have halts from where you can see the valley down below through glass panels embedded within the tunnel - a fantastic piece of engineering work.



We reached the Jungfraujoch – the top of Europe by about 1 in the afternoon. Although the temperature outside was minus 7 deg C the temperature inside is room temperature. There are a number of lifts and other passageways and also a detailed map that tells you exactly where everything is located.



Sphinx Palace is the top most spot from where you can see down below but the weather was bad outside due to a snow blizzard and visibility was almost nil. So although we had gone all the way up after nearly 6 hours of travel we could not see anything down below.



From there we decided to take a lunch break. There are a number of restaurants on JFJ from which you can choose. We were pleasantly surprised to find a place where they served excellent vegetarian Indian food – Tomato soup, Rice, Dal Makhani, a mixed vegetable, Chana, Curds and bread. This was an extension of what they call Bollywood restaurant – which was closed! A Swiss lady is running the establishment. Cooking done by a Haryanvi cook whom I met and spoke in Hindi! There were a number of other Indian tourists too who had come in groups.



After lunch we went around the Ice Palace - an amazing place where they have different sculptures made out of ice including Donald Duck! Whew was it cold! Thanks to the thermal clothing we could withstand the cold without much difficulty. Although we carried our gloves we did not use them.



There is an Exhibition too which was closed and so we could not see it. We went to what is called Plateau which is nothing else but getting into the open from the closed door environment. However thanks to the snow blizzard we could not venture out into the open!



We were back to La tour de Peilz by 8.30 pm thanks to the meticulous train system of Switzerland – one of the best railway systems in the world – after an extremely interesting journey to JFJ and back – a must visit for any tourist to Switzerland.

Sai Bhajans in Vevey – 14 Sep 09

Got ourselves a local mobile connection. Surprisingly calls to India are cheaper – 0.19 cents per minute as compared to local mobile calls at 0.45 cents per minute and local landline calls at 0.35 cents per minute and the US 0.09 cents per minute!

Attended Sai bhajans in a room at the back of a Church in Vevey. Ranju attends bhajans regularly on all Mondays here. A group of a dozen devotees are conducting bhajans here, regularly, for more then 20 years. They were all very happen to see Latha and myself – parents of Ranju – Sai as she is known. All of them sang Indian bhajans – no English or French bhajans. Latha, Ranju and myself sang one bhajan each. At the end of the bhajan session, all the devotees gathered around Swami’s photograph to observe that a few drops of Amruth had materialsised on the photograph – as if the Lord was acknowledging our presence!