Switzerland

After the week in Paris, Syd and Fung went back to London while Dorcas and I went to Switzerland for a week.
. 
The minute our train crossed the French/Swiss border, the train stopped. An army of workers with their buckets and mops appeared. They washed the exterior of the train thoroughly before the train was allowed to enter this super Clean country - my first taste of How the Swiss were. 

Out first stop was Zurich. An affluent City. 

There were indeed a lot of Banks - on almost every street corner.

And there were lots of Clocks, little ones, big ones, many on the outside of buildings, in clock towers. Some of them with interesting life-size moveable figures that performed on the hour every hour. A marvel of Swiss engineering.
As luck would have it, we had a hotel room not too far from one of those clocks. But then, really, you could hear the clocks almost anywhere in town. I guess the Swiss were used to hearing the clocks striking and were deaf to it. It kept Dorcas and me awake though.

Dorcas and I went to a Super Market - remember this was in 1956, London did not have the kind of super markets that they have now, except at Harrods. In Zurich, we were impressed how the displays were. No butchered half carcasses hanging on the outside of the shops like in London - in London, if you are not careful, you bump into them. 
Everything was in glass-cases, well-organized and Clean, Clean, Clean. 
Clean and Orderly.

We made some purchases of food, but we did not really know what we were buying since we did not speak the language and could not read the labels - we certainly made some mistakes. We bought buttermilk instead of regular milk, for drinking?
The chocolates were delicious though.

By now you do know that my father was always very protective of me. He alwys made sure that where-ever I went he would have someone he knew to keep an eye on me. (He missed on Paris though.) 
Well, it was no different in Switzerland, he had one of his Swiss associates to take Dorcas and me around.
I have forgotten his name now. But I was sure that the gentleman was really doing my father a big favor, taking the two girls around. He was not such a great tour guide either, if I remember correctly.  I guess that he expected us to have done some homework on the places we were visiting - but of course we did not.
I do remember, when we were traveling in the car, the weather changed suddenly. In no time at all, the ground and the car were covered by snow. We drove in the snow - not really being able to see much. Bless him!

Lucerne was much more scenic. It is on the lake, with the view of mountains around. I enjoyed it more. Dorcas wanted us to ride the Paddle- Boats, I was too prissy to do so. Now I wished that I did.  

Switzerland was so very different from Paris. Everything was proper and orderly, like the well-run Swiss watch. A good place to be pampered. but a bit too boring for me when I was young.