Cuneo, Italy

I like writing the blog because we get to share our adventures with our friends, and we also keep a record of where we’ve been and what we’ve done. Having said all that, it is a chore that sometimes just doesn’t want to get done. Sadly, this blog entry is one of those times, but I’m going to just start writing and we will see how we go.

We are lucky to have friends in Switzerland, so we have visited certain parts of it a number of times before. However, this time, we decided that we would try and see a bit more of the country, and having driving across France, then it was easy to enter Switzerland via Geneva. Now, we’ve been to Geneva before – courtesy of a 24-hour French long-distance train strike in January 2005, so we bypassed Geneva and headed straight to Lausanne.

Our campground was down by the lake and it is an amazing view to see the sunshine, clouds and snow-capped mountains reflecting in the lake. Lausanne is the home of the International Olympic Federation and The Olympic Museum, so of course, we just had to visit.

2016 will see the Summer Olympics being held in Brazil, so there were lots of Brazilian-themed artworks and information about Brazilian sport & their Olympic history scattered around the grounds that we got to look at and read as we walked up the meandering path leading to the door of the Museum. As an alternate to the wandering path, there is a series of stairs where they have the year and location of every Olympic Games (Summer & Winter) and the name of the person who lit the Olympic Flame. So we managed to find the stairs for 1956 (Melbourne – Herb Elliott) and 2000 (Sydney – Cathy Freeman) and have a little sit down.

Inside the Museum, there is information about the history of the games (both Ancient and Modern), displays that tell you about what the host country has to do to prepare for their special year, uniforms and equipment used by some of the great Olympians, like the leotard worn by Nadia Komanec when she won her medals, the skis used by Jean-Claude Killy, the gloves used by Cassius Clay, that sort of thing. They also had a section where they gave some information about how to prepare for some sports and you could give it a try. Nick had a lot of fun to see if he would qualify for the Australian Winter Olympic Team in the sport of Biathalon (skiing & shooting). Whilst he got consistent scores for the shooting, he feels that he no longer has the oompf for the skiing part of the competition.

All in all, a lot of fun and a good museum to visit.

Have I mentioned how expensive fuel is in Switzerland? In France, we were paying around €1.05 per litre, but in Switzerland, we were paying about SFr 1.485 per litre, which is about €1.34. Ouch!

We were wanting to coordinate meeting friends in Lucerne and Zurich, so we had time to spend in between and discovered some nice camping spots. One particularly nice camp spot was in a town called Willisau, which is in the Canton of Lucerne. There was a really inexpensive Stellplatz in the parking area next to the Fire Station where, for SFr5 per day, we had power, and could fill up with water, as well as a lovely old town to explore and some nice meadows to walk through. Thankfully the weather in Willisau was glorious but then we we camped overnight near the Tülersee, it was cold and raining all afternoon and all night. We really appreciated being in the Motorhome with a good heating system.

We managed to catch up with our friends Martin & Maria who live near the Zurichsee – we met them when we were camping in St Petersburg in 2013 and have staying in touch with them ever since. We had a lovely lunch and, as always, it was great to see them.

Because one of our friends in Lucerne works full-time as a teacher, we decided to head down to Lugarno to meet Nick’s new cousins before heading back up to Lucerne to catch up with Dawn & Werner.

One thing we hadn’t done yet, was to drive through the Gottherd Tunnel, which is 17kms long! Normally, this is a two-tunnel system, with two lanes in each tunnel and the different directions (North & South) are in separate tunnels. But, this summer (2016), they have one of the tunnels closed whilst they build the longest train tunnel through the Gottherd Pass, which meant that poor Nick had to drive the full distance with the glare from the on-coming car lights for the full 17kms. Poor pet found it to be a very tense drive, which lead to the decision that when we were going back up to Lucerne, we would travel by train and then Nick could relax and enjoy the trip.

So we had a few nights in Lugarno, and met Christopher and his wife Natalia. For any members of the Hese family who might read this, Christopher is the 3^rd son of Casper Hese and was born in Aruba, which is part of the Netherlands-Antilles, off the north coast of Venezuela. Casper is the son of Theo Hese, who was the youngest brother of Nicolaas Hese (Nico), who was grandfather to Nick and the rest of the Hese family in Oz. Phew! Family history explanation ended.

Anyway, Christopher was really happy to meet some more of the Hese family, and we had a lovely meal with Christopher, Natalya and their lovely daughter, who is an absolute sweetie! When we eventually get to South America (yes, one day!), we will look forward to meeting more members of that branch of the family.

I think that there was definitely something about being in the Italian part of Switzerland, because whilst we were in Lugarno, the weather was gloriously sunny and warm. One thing that I enjoyed about driving through Switzerland, was the changeover between the languages. Apparently Switzerland has 3 official languages – French, German & Italian, and when you drive along the motorways, you can tell which part of the country you are in because of the Exit signs – Sortie, Ausfahrt or Uscito!

So our side-trip to Lucerne involved getting the train from Lugarno to Lucerne (easy), booking into our hotel (easy) and then catching the bus from Lucerne to Dawn & Werner’s place, which was a little bit more difficult. We visited them on Thursday, 5 May, which was a public holiday in the Catholic part of Switzerland (which includes Lucerne), so Dawn had a day off work – it was the Feast of the Ascension (or Hemmelfaart, in Dutch). We managed to cope with the intricacies of the Swiss bus-system on a public holiday – thank goodness, it wasn’t Brisbane because we would still be waiting for a bus! We had a wonderful time with them and as always, it was a joy to spend time with good friends.

Now it’s time to head back to Lugarno, pack up and head down to Italy, which is a main destination for this trip. But we enjoyed our dose of camping next to lakes, surrounded by mountains, hearing cow bells in the distance and seeing the snow on top of the alps.