Switzerland - easy on the eye, hard on the nose

From our partisan support of New Zealand in the Tour we headed to the land of neutrality. Switzerland is so neutral it doesn't even have its own language, and we spent a confusing week juggling French, German and occasionally English. Those at one end of the country struggle to talk to those at the other, which seems a rather odd and highly complicated way to run a place. And the whole place stinks of cowshit, which was surprising as we saw almost no cows at all...

Geneva was our first port of call where we visited the UN for a guided tour of the highly exciting conference rooms. Perhaps the most entertaining aspect was the children under 10 on our tour asking questions such as whether a country can receive nomination twice to be on the Security Council. Answers were duly written in their UN notepads. At 10 we didn't even know the UN existed. Across the road, the Red Cross Museum provided us with a days education and we even saw the first Geneva Convention and Nobel Peace Prize which was awarded to the founder of the Red Cross.

Then it was off to Bern, via Montreux. For some reason "Smoke on the Water" has often been stuck in our heads on this trip, so a detour to Montreux where it all went down was a must. Bern is not often included in the "must-visit" list of world capitals - without any classic monuments or a particularly chequered history - but we loved it. We were there on a Sunday, when all the shops were closed and the town was left to the tourists. Fountain highlights included one with an ogre that was eating squirming children headfirst, and another that squirted randomly from between paving stones waiting to soak those that fail to notice the telltale wet patches on the ground. Buildings are uniform grey, but brightened up with flowerboxes on every single window.

Another feature of Bern is the swift river that runs through the middle, which in summer is packed with people jumping in for a quick ride down. It's hard to think of another world capital with a river through it that you would want to swim in. We too tried to float down it but it turned out all thsoe grannies had made it look deceptively easy. Claudia was so cold she couldn't breathe, and Damien slammed his knee on a rock, so we got out, bedraggled and ashamed, after 100m.

Onto Interlaken for a quick look at more famous mountains - the Eiger, Jungfrau, and the Monch. But having had quite enough of mountains for the moment we stayed firmly in the flat (ish) valley. On through the rolling rural countryside, nothing in particular to see but very nice to bike due to fantastic bike routes all over the country using back roads or dedicated bike paths. Perhaps the 'high'light was seeing a crop of dope 8 feet tall and 100m square right beside the road. No doubt someone would claim it was for hemp.

After that brief interlude it was onwards to Lake Constance, where we hit 3 countries in a day and made our entrance into Germany. We have now made our way to Heidelberg, where we are sheltering from yet another cold and rainy summer's day. Tales of Germany and baking bread in a mental institution to come...