The opportunity
Travel has always been a family ritual for us, taking opportunities to go around every place my dad was transferred to. We didn’t have the predictability or leaves during school and peak years of my dad’s career to venture outside India, probably even money for that matter. We were awed when our relatives visited often. We always made up our mind to ensure we travel enough post dad’s retirement. An opportunity came up as an exchange program at my undergraduate college where I could stay in Switzerland for a month!
Switzerland was my first country abroad, not counting stepping into the border land at Nepal near Siliguri. Our undergraduate department had recently tied up with one of the lesser-known Swiss universities. It was probably driven by Swiss Professors’ interests in partnering with countries they wanted to travel to in exchange
We had the option to choose a longer 3-month internship in Ireland or 1 month internship in Switzerland. The popularity of Switzerland from Yashraj movies tiled it in favor of Switzerland for us. It also helped in doing 2 internships, a longer one in India, in addition to shorter exchange program. Ireland was not too popular- we didn’t know too many spots beyond Giant’s Causeway, we couldn’t drive to access remote scenic spots and 3 months felt too long to be outside India just in one small country. The group interested in Ireland was dominated by boys whom I didn’t know that well, another reason to opt out.
Hindsight, I would have considered Ireland since few people end up spending long there later, after stepping into corporate life. I don’t remember if expenses were also higher for Ireland, something I might have also considered while deciding then. Given it was 3 months, it must have been higher atleast by a bit although Switzerland is much more expensive. We also had the topper from previous year batch choose Switzerland, even more reason for it to become a prestige symbol. She had described her trip to CERN, Geneva, Mt.Titlis which felt too aspirational. The thought of being able to go in large group of 10 to Switzerland vs. 6 to Ireland also tilted things into Switzerland’s favor
Passport saga
I didn’t even have a passport when I got selected for the program, and the process of getting one was an absolute nightmare. I still remember my dad hiring a taxi to visit passport centre in Mumbai, something reserved for large events while we always took an auto. The application submission took almost a day since it was close to Christmas holidays. There was 5 months before the program, so we applied for normal passport vs. tatkal which we still regret. We were exhausted waiting there and were naively relieved after the submission, without anticipating the heartburn coming ahead
I was staying in the college hostel, while my parents stayed in Mumbai, with my permanent address at hometown. Three sets of addresses confused the hell out of police, resulting in initiating verification at 3 places and a weird expectation of me being present at all 3 places when they visit. The hostel verification was relatively the easiest. The one at Mumbai was the most painful one. We have a strong feeling that it was intentionally made painful to get bribes out of us.
Mumbai police had multiple silly reasons to trouble me. First, I didn’t have a last name, something unimaginable to Marathi’s who have father’s name as middle name and a mandatory last name. My dad couldn’t handle the question and decided to bride 500 bucks to get through this. I was strongly against handing out any money, but I was ignored. Second, I didn’t live in Mumbai all the time, making it easy for them to keep calling me to trouble me more. Third, we didn’t have history or political connections, so they decided to send it to CID, who take their own sweet time across months to clear the file
I used to take unreserved trains since their call was always last minute, making it difficult to get train or reasonably priced bus tickets. When trains started getting crowded, I decided to sit up on the luggage rack to avoid pushing and pulling. I have spent entire nights sitting like a chicken on the luggage shelf, crying inside on why Lord Shani was behind me
After multiple Mumbai visits and CID clearing it, they sent the file to Udupi as third verification. I was heartbroken by then, thinking I might never be able to receive passport on time before my flight since it was only a month to go. I visited the police station near my home, and they didn’t have the physical file yet. They mentioned it was still at town office. I had to literally move files from one office to another, get signatures of neighbors, get the file processed at police station, submit it to town office across a couple of weeks
By the time I had nervous breakdown, the files got processed from each location and I was able to get my passport a couple of weeks before my flight, taking about 4 months to finish the process. I then decided that I will apply only from permanent address on tatkal mode ahead to reduce location complexity and ensure passport arrives on time
All the days during my internship prior to exchange program in Bangalore went in preparing for the trip. I bought jeans pants after a long time, thermals, few utensils to cook food, flight tickets through an agent recommended by our team member. My grandparents gave me ready to eat food which could be consumed just by adding hot water. The time before trave and after getting my passport was the most exciting part since I knew that it was happening soon
The travel
We were 10 of us in total in addition to the professor who accompanied us. I didn’t have a good phone or camera to capture photos. Some of the folks in our group had good cameras and we relied on them to click every small thing, starting from waiting for our flight, boarding, interior of the flight, food and every single move that was possible. We learnt about immigration, customs, duty-free for the first time in our lives
While most of the trip happened in the middle seats in the night from Bangalore-Mumbai-Zurich, our flight from Zurich to Geneva was one of the best I had in my life. The snowcapped Alps, yellow fields below were a scene to behold. It was a 30 min flight and felt too short. We were too excited to buy Swiss pass that would enable 3-day travel over the weekends. 20k looked like a good deal since other expenses were sponsored including flight, stay, lunch on working days and local travel pass to go to university. We were awed by the trains that we took to reach our homes
Arrival: First days during stay in Switzerland
We were put up in apartments shared by students near EPFL. They were chic, clean and fit for purpose. 5 girls were put up at one place, with 5 boys at another 2 train stops away. We spent the first day getting familiar with the surroundings, shopping for groceries at the Coop store nearby. The sticker price on all items was high enough for us to drop vegetables and survive on bread and apples. We had enough stock of Indian food that we didn’t have to shop too much for food. We tagged relatively cheap chocolates in our minds to compare with Migros and take some before our return
Daylight till 10 PM kept us up and enthusiastic. We good extend our travels everyday without deadline of twilight. It took us long to get adjusted to sleeping enough, both because of day light hours and sheer excitement of squeezing as many experiences in as possible
University life
First days at the University were spent as orientation to the city. They taught us basic French, the language of the region. Switzerland has 4 main languages- German, French, Italian and Romansch. Given the proximity to France, which was just a lake away, French was widely spoken and German well understood by locals. It was sweet for them to give us a small budget to shop from the supermarket while putting our language skills into practice. We also had another group of MBA students, including one from our institute, join us for this activity
The topics we learnt were also interesting and relevant, related to image processing and computer vision. They were practical and application oriented. Even smaller Universities in Switzerland focused had similar vision and curriculum like larger ones
We spent some days cooking together at one of the houses. The menu was lavish- from poori, chole, rice, dal to snacks we got from our homes. The group gelled well like family, sharing everything. The cooking skills came to good use when our university asked us to make a dish each for a group lunch on one of the days. I made biryani with raita. The thick yoghurt made the raita very tasty. The cut frozen vegetables from the supermarket made cooking efficient. The lunch that day was one of the best, different from the everyday lunch which we were bored of by then. The cooking spree continued during weekends later. On one of the days, we were so late by the time we finished that we missed the last train to girls’ block. We had to stay back for a few hours till the trains restarted in the morning to make our way back
Sightseeing during stay in Switzerland
We went to Rhine falls, Zurich on Day 1. We met an Indian lady during one of our train journeys. She came from a Tamil family settled in Switzerland from many years. Her husband was a professor at one of the universities. She offered to take us and show us around, and we were surprised to find her on time on Day 2. It was credit to her that we saw the royal interiors of the Golden pass Panoramic express, Lauterbrunnen and a few other hidden gems. Rain played a spoil sport and washed away our photos. On Day 3, we went to Mt.Titlis, Interlaken, Lucerne and enjoyed the views
Our local Vaud pass was still active after that. We travelled around Lausanne visiting the magnificent stalactites, stalagmites at Vallorbe caves, went on random funiculars to max out on the places to visit. It was a bit surprising that places that Vallorbe are not very famous among foreign tourists. The university folks had planned a day out at Gruyere. We saw cheese making, ate the signature fondue and raspberry cream, visited chocolate factory at Broc and enjoyed views of wine yards
We also visited Evian-les-Bains, just a lake away, famous for the expensive Evian mineral water. Technically it was France, another country added to our visited list! Although it was just like another town, we spent the entire day visiting every monument and building possible, chilled on the beach front and got back before dusk
One of the unique string of stops we wouldn’t have done if not for staying at Lausanne is series of small towns across lake Geneva
Ouchy- Home to Olympics museum. The headquarters of International Olympics Committee is in Lausanne
Pully, Cully – Nice lakefront to chill and relax
Montreux- Home to annual Jazz festival and a charming chateaux
We couldn’t get an invite to CERN unfortunately, we would have loved the idea of visiting one of the best physics labs in the world
The Tamilian lady we met also graciously invited us to her home in Bussigny. We were a little confused about what to take for their family between wine, cake, flowers. I think we settled for flowers and cookies thankfully since they were teetotalers. We had a good time with her husband, daughter and got good home cooked Indian food. It feels fascinating how Indians trust a group of other Indians in a foreign land and take all the trouble of inviting a big group and cook for us! ‘Aththi Devobhava’ true to its words
The return from our stay in Switzerland
The habit of missing trains didn’t cost us dearly due to the passes we had. Coordinating between 10 people to arrive at the planned time was almost impossible. We didn’t have Whatsapp or smart phones then. All the communication had to happen before we left our place on emails. On the last day, we had an early morning flight. We had to catch the train the previous night to make it in time. I was ready well before time, but others delayed it so much that I ditched them and took the last but one train so that I could do something to make their journey happen if they missed the last train. It was a risk for me since I could have ended up alone
Thankfully, others were able to catch the last train. We had to sleep outside the airport since airports get locked during nights! So much for the progressive European culture. Airports reopened around 5 AM and we could go in to wait after that. None of this felt like a hassle since we were filled with too much enthusiasm
We just didn’t want to come back. The reality of depleting funds and sponsorship made us return. We were also excited to meet our family and college mates back at home to share hundreds of stories we were part of. We also had to be there on time for placement season. Thankfully I got places in the first week, so that had enough time to prepare for post graduate applications like GRE, TOEFL, CAT. It was another year of prep to ensure I got admits into graduate schools and could avoid early marriage
India leg
There was a phase 2 of exchange program where we hosted the Swiss in India. That phase was not too exciting to be honest. We stayed in hostels unlike the Swiss students who stayed in apartments. We had one of the Swiss students invite us to his home and give us a taste of authentic food like raclette, while we were there. We couldn’t do any of that. We had a beach right inside campus, and limited places where we could take them to where we had not been. They went to a few temples around Udupi and chilled on the beach for rest of the time. We had to do double shifts with usual classes, so it was more of a burden. We kept our share of promises on the exchange program and treated them like our guests nevertheless. Lack of excitement of visiting a new place might have played a spoilsport this time
I am not too much in touch with any of the folks we went with, but they all still feel close to heart. We lost some of the MBA friends in an untimely manner which felt quite sad. It reinforced the belief to travel when possible and not leave it to post retirement. One of them has names her daughter after me!
This first experience outside India couldn’t have been better! The large group gave comfort of not doing it alone. The apt mix of culture, learning, food, and scenery made it unforgettable. I still remember most of the moments second by second even after almost 15 years now. Strongly recommend exploring when you are young and never tired