Serenading Switzerland

Buchs, SG, Switzerland
Quaint little town, not heard of within the country, but apparently the business visitors to Hilti AG choose to stay in this town, and so I was lodged here too.
The town is on the eastern edge of Switzerland, right next to Lichtenstein, in the state of Sankt Gallen (hence the SG).

I flew into Zurich and had to take a train to Buchs, via Sargans. Most of the signage is in German and when I was to change my train at Sargans, I had no clue which platform to go to and the ticket showed that the train was to leave in exactly 3 minutes after my arrival. So I ran helter-skelter with my luggage and asked a guy in uniform where to find my train. He helped. I also realized later that the train guys are always helpful – you just need to find one around the train or near the ticket place. And that a platform is referred to as “giesl”. The ticket foil has a giesl number.

The journey offered the most fantastic views - rolling greens, blue-green waters of lakes, slant roofed houses et al. It was rainy when I reached and everything was covered under clouds. But it was fantastic still. I even saw the evaporation from pine forests billowing over the trees, and forming white clouds immediately. More on this in another post.

The train itself was plush and I had a seat on the upper deck. A very stacked trolley of food was taken around by the pantry people. I asked for coffee and got just that – black, with milk separately. It was strong and all the milk and the sugar kept it bitter still. It was only later during my stay that I realized that if you want coffee with milk, you need to ask for a cappuccino. It may be bitter still but more palatable to my Indian taste buds.

The German word for a train-station is “bahnhof” and the one at Buchs was relatively small. The taxi road to Hotel Hirschen lasted all of 6 minutes via the Bahnhofstrasse – the train-station street literally.
Bicycle seems to be the most used mode of getting around – not just in Buchs but across the country. People do adventure biking – traversing the hills, as well as the daily getting around atop a two wheeled stead.

The hotels were all booked for the Euro 2008 and Hirschen was under renovation and the only one free to host me for 15 days. It was not so bad after all – only that it didn’t have a phone or a coffee maker. I was aghast when I first looked at it, but the rooms (yes I had a suite at a very easy CHF 69 per night, including breakfast) were neat and had a retro feel to them.

Three of the windows offered a great view of the Alps.


It was cold. It seems the Swiss shut off their heaters during summers. Though it was supposed to be summer, but since it was raining pretty hard, I was cold and had to wear my jacket around in the room. Thankfully they didn’t shut off hot water supply. The TV had only German channels apart from BBC and CNN news and BBC Primetime which proved to be saviors.

The next morning on the way to work, I thanked myself for carrying my woolen suit because that was the only piece of warm clothing I had taken along hoping to find a summery Europe.

The walk on the Bahnhofstrasse was pleasant with the rare person on the road at that hour greeting me and my colleague as they are wont to. The bus ride to Hilti office in Nendln, Liechtenstein was pleasant, scenic and short – all of 20 mins at 2.6 CHF.

Nice people at work – mostly all of them German.
The office itself has the best views of the mountains beyond lush green fields.




After a few days, when the clouds cleared, it was bright and sunny and stayed that way for the rest of my stay. The views from the bus on the way to work were awesome. Some that I took from the bus are attached here:







After ending the day’s work at the office, I would typically head out after reaching the hotel room. Being summer, the sun used to be out till 9 PM and I got to take some excellent shots while taking strolls. One part of the town is where all the new apartments are coming up.

There were fountain spouts everywhere. And they had the cleanest potable water possible. People can actually drink directly from the spouts and I did too. It was cold – icy cold.
The centre of the town had a church whose clock tower was visible from far away. It went kaput one morning and the six AM toll gonged till eternity (or atleast it seemed to). The same happened the next day too. My colleague, Partha, and I had a debate on it being an actual bell or something electronic. I thought it was electronic because I heard the gongs go down in volume as if someone was turning off a dial. His reasoning was that the kind of echoing sound we heard was possible only from a real bell. We never knew.

On one of my walks I discovered a lake and history right next to my hotel. More on that in another post.
Some of the nice looking facades in Buchs that I got to see are here:


And here are some random mountain pics. Snow was visible in some higher reaches.




The Food

Vegetarisch (vege – as in eggy, ta as in tata, risch – as in isssh) is how vegetarian food is refered to. Pronouncing it the English way got me strange looks from people across the food counters. And the lesson learnt on my trip to the US – say “no meat” – did not really help much. I also needed to ascertain there was no fish.

The office food court usually had atleast one vegetarian entrée. When theye did not I had to make do with salad (which is pronounced that same way as in Hindi, not the English way). The salad was literally ghass-phoos once and was quite bland.

Once I had an Austrian delicacy. I am not sure what was the name but it was cheese-balls stuffed with strawberry served in a sweet-sour curry. I was done in one of those balls out of a serving of four – it was super filling and had to get some salad to take away the sweetness that seemed to overtake my being.

My usual dinner used to veg burger with kasse (cheese, pronounced case, I think. Didn’t quite get the hang of it) The eatery right opposite the hotel was owned by Turkish folks. The burger with the iced tea used to be delicious and I miss it. The bread is usually hard almost everywhere and my mouth used to be scraped in places.

This same eatery, and several more serve kebaps which I thought was kebab - only spoken differently. But I guess it was a different dish all together. Anyway, since it did not come vegetarisch at all, I never got to know.

Another thing that I liked to eat was the tomato-mozzarella sandwiches available almost everywhere.

When we ate out at a decent restaurant, a glass of water was priced the same as a glass of beer. The bottled water is usually gaseous – not quite soda but gasified still and is bitter (I think). So I had to be careful while buying water – took only something that read like natural!

Buchs does not have an Indian restaurant. There is a Thai place that we never ventured into. And then there were a couple pizzerias including the one at our hotel. The pizza base is usually thin and so a large pizza is needed to satiate the meal time hunger. Buchs had a McDonald’s as well and that’s where I bit into soft bread in a very long time!

Take away: vegetarians can survive in Switzerland.