My Travelogues: Somewhere over the Rainbow

Some of the happiest moments of my life were spent in Switzerland – yet this post about the same is one of the shortest on my blog. I suppose nature, in its most elevated glory, can neither be painted, photographed nor written about. It can just be experienced.

Had the impressionists come to Switzerland to paint, not only would they have had a stroke, they also would have, eventually, abandoned their art in disillusion. They would have realized that Swiss nature can never be tamed onto a canvass; it can never ever be conquered. At least that’s how i felt when i saw the larger than life trees and mountains swirling up around me.

When we saw the Interlaken lakes, we were not impressed…no…but startled and confused. This blue…where had it come from? I don’t even know if that color can be called blue – it really merits a new name of its own. I had never seen it in any other part of the world, and never would, even if I tried to shop for it in a Saari and petticoat matching store

The tiny cottages dotting the river and hill sides, with cows wearing bells grazing in their back yards, reminded me of a world I once knew of in fairy tales.

And the people! They weren’t people, but sugar dandies walking on two legs. My friend, on exchange in Switzerland, told me of an incident he had on his first day in the country. Lost, he asked a fellow passenger on the bus for directions to his hostel. She got off on the bus stop along with him and escorted him all the way to his hostel. Once he was safe and sound, she once again caught the bus to go back home, for her actual stop was some way off from the one she had gotten off at!

And in that moment, when I first broke through the clouds, on my way up to Mt. Titlus, I decided to call this part of my life, this little part spent in Switzerland – “Somewhere over the Rainbow”!

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