Summertime in (Rainy) Switzerland

(view from Lutry Beach)

Summer arrived in Switzerland in fits and starts in 2012, with teasingly warm weather early in April followed by many weeks of rain and cold in the middle of June. By July the rain was coming nearly every day but was arriving via thunderstorms instead of all day drizzles, and lasting only a few hours followed by long periods of sunshine. That made things much better, but I was still shocked by how much precipitation was coming down. It was like living in a tropical rainforest, in the middle of a northern hemisphere temperate climate, on nearly the same latitude as Montreal, Canada. This was by far the rainiest summer I'd seen yet.

In between rainstorms my friends and I attempted to have BBQs and parties down by the lake. About half the time they had to be postponed or moved indoors, and the other half of the time the ground we stood on was still wet from the previous day's rain. This was in stark contrast to 2011 when BBQs began in February and carried straight on into October with not a single cancellation due to weather.

The plus side of the stormy summer was that I got many more thunderstorms than I had heard yet in Switzerland. I normally got one semi-decent storm per year, but by July of 2012 I had already gotten at least four. including one really impressive lightning-flashes-so-bright-they-wake-you-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-with-thunder-that-shakes-the-house storm. However, there were more rainbows during 2012 than in any other year anywhere I'd lived.

Driving between Lausanne and Neuchatel

View from St. Sulpice.

View from top of hill in Neuchatel

View from Montreux just after a giant rainstorm

View from my office on one of the usual cloudy days.

View from the Beaux Rivage in Lausanne

View form Vidy Beach

Me at Vidy Beach

View from Lutry.

Round the World in 20 days

I don't often get unnerved about travel anymore. I'm always excited to go someplace, but the booking process is so routine and the destinations so familiar that I don't generally feel more than a passing wave of interest when I book a ticket and head to the airport.

But this trip was different. I was about to turn 30 years old in August of 2012, and for this birthday I wanted to do something special. Something crazy, or at least something that would make me feel crazy again, give me that giddy overwhelming excitement mixed with nausea of doing something totally out of my comfort zone, like the way you feel the first time you go somewhere by yourself, or the first time you book a one-way ticket, or the first time you move out of your country. So I decided to go all the way around the world, solo.

Of course I had many friends to visit along the way, and in fact, I had picked my cities based on where friends were living at the time. And since I had a full time job I could only escape into my adventure for 3 continents and two and a half weeks instead of 6 continents and many weeks. But it would be the first time I'd flown across the Pacific Ocean from Asia to the Americas, and my first time to fully circumnavigate the globe.

I debated this trip for about 2 months. Should I really do it by myself? Was it worth the money (I had just finished paying off my credit cards one month before)? Would it be more exhausting that it was enjoyable? The final decision came after weighing the alternatives (flying someplace exotic for a week, coming back home, flying to the US for a week, coming back home), which didn't sound that exciting, and suddenly coming into a bit of money when a distant relative passed away. It was still going to cost a lot, but when I rationalised it that with the pretty good job I had I could pay it off in 3 months, it seemed like the right choice to make to ensure 30 came around with a bang.

Therefore, armed with a speedy Mac and a speedy credit card, I booked myself from Zurich to Singapore to Seoul to Seattle to Oklahoma City and back to Switzerland in 18 days. I don't know if it was coincidence or hidden meaningful pattern that every destination except home started with the letter S. I would have to ponder that along the way.