Return to Europa

Late December 2006 to early January 2007

I landed in Madrid early in the morning the day after Christmas, and was met at the airport by Montserrat with whom I had kept in touch since meeting her in Thailand last April. She had since moved through London, (didn't like it!), and then settled for a while in the Spanish capital.

Being in Madrid felt very familiar after Buenos Aires, and in lots of ways it felt like I had just flown 10,000 km but hadn't really gone anywhere! It is remarkable how much the Argentinians are proud of their European roots, and their culture reflects that. What made Madrid even more comfortable was being in the company of a native Spanish speaker, so I could get lazy and let Montse do all the talking!

The weather in Madrid was nice and clear, sunny but cold. It was perfect weather for just walking around the streets and parks of the city, so that was what we did, stopping for coffee or drinks when we needed to get inside for a bit. The cold was a bit of a shock again after the heat of Buenos Aires, but in a way I quite liked it as long as the sun was out. Although it doesn't have a reputation for it, Madrid is quite pretty in parts and it was really nice to just walk around with someone who lives there.

One important thing I learned about Madrid is that Barajas Airport is very, very, very big. So big, in fact, that when I flew on to Zurich after a few days in Madrid I totally misjudged how long it would take me to get to Terminal 4...... the subway, the airport bus, long walks down endless corridors, monorail which took ages to arrive, unexpected passport control with big queue, another long walk through enormous terminal..... and I got to the gate just after they had closed the flight and taken my bag off the plane!

I then found that it is quite tricky to go back "the wrong way" through an airport from the gate back towards the outside world, retrieving your bag and re-booking your flight on the way. There are no signs pointing out your unconventional route, and all the airport security systems seem to be set against you. British Airways were very good about getting me a flight for the following day, but in a fit of extreme incompetence Iberia managed to spend four hours repeatedly telling me that my bag was on its way to me, eventually admitting that they didn't actually know where it was. They then suggested that I file a missing baggage claim while they tried to work out what they had done with it, and then go away (please) until tomorrow. In retrospect, considering that this was the first time in my life that I had ever missed a flight or had my baggage lost by an airline, I have been pretty lucky over the years!

So eventually I landed in Zurich, was reunited with my bag, and was met by Barbara with whom I had travelled in India back in February. We drove to nearby Baden, where she is finishing medical school as an anaesthetist at a hospital. Baden is a nice little Swiss town with not that much to it, but it does have a little hill with a little ruined castle on top, so we climbed up that. It was cold in Switzerland, but unlike Madrid there wasn't really much sun so I was able to gradually re-aclimatise for my return to the UK, (i.e. cold, grey and sunless!).

For New Year's Eve we visited Zurich, and walked around. It was a nice day, but it being a Sunday all the city shops were closed! That seemed strange… it was so long since I had been anywhere that still did that. Of course the churches were open, so we visited one and climbed up its tower for a view of the city. Then in the evening we went to see the new James Bond film, (which I surprised myself by really quite liking, although the fact that the subtitles had to be in both French and German did tend to take up half the screen!). After dinner, we joined the crowds on the streets to see in midnight and watch the fireworks. People were drinking and having fun, but there was no hint of the drunken lairiness that often marks similar events in the UK. God bless the Swiss and their well-behaved ways!

A couple of days later we went to Flumserberg to do a little skiing. There had not been much snow in Europe so far this season, but we were fairly lucky. There were enough slopes open and there was snowfall while we were there. I hadn't skied for about eight years, and even that was only about the third time in my life, so I was naturally wondering how I would get along. However, with a little coaching from Barbara, (who, of course, owns her own skis and all that!), I soon picked it up again.

Barbara had told me that there would be baby slopes open for me. This wasn't actually true as it turned out, so I had to manage on the one-up-from-baby slopes, which was actually no bad thing as it challenged me a bit. At one point, due to some mis-reading of signposts in the snow, we managed to meander off-piste into some deep powder which meant we we had to take our skis off and walk, (i.e. struggle through thigh-deep powder!), back to the piste. However, in the end I only fell over about five times all day, and with nothing broken and much fun had, I considered the skiing to have been something of a triumph!

So a couple of days later I took a flight from Zurich back to London's Heathrow airport, exactly one year to the day after I had started my trip from that same airport with a flight to Mumbai.

And that's it!