For those of you who have not met Billy O'Donnell, there are a few things you need to know.
1. He loves trains. A lot. I'm pretty sure he still has model trains somewhere in his basement.
2. He mountaineers like a boss.
3. His jokes are terrible. Really, really terrible.
4. He doesn't speak English. He speaks sarcastic New Yorker.
5. He is my father, which you would figure out within two seconds of meeting him. His jokes are that bad. It's genetic.
As you might guess based on points 1 and 2, Switzerland is basically his personal Mecca. As soon as I found out I would be working in Switzerland this summer, I had a feeling my dad would be joining me for a visit, though I'm not asking myself whether it was me or the Matterhorn.
The epicness that was his visit began when he arrived by missing the right bus stop and then proceeded to hike up the Our Chalet hill with his huge pack on. He, of course, instantly became BFF with every single person working in reception, and then he decided that rather than stay in the really nice rooms in the Chalet, he would rather camp in a tent. That evening he and I tagged along on the hike to Bunderfalls. Since I wasn't feeling the trip up under the water, we split from the group and went on an adventure in search of a specific bridge.
It was on this random search through the rocks of the river that I have a revelation; Billy O'Donnell is legitimately the coolest dad ever. I point to a large rock? He races me up it. I cross the rickety bridge at a run? He goes across without holding on, eyes closed. Hardcore is a family trait, guys.
The next morning we left for Locarno, a beautiful town in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. The town is right next to the border, actually, so we passed through the Italian town of Domodossola on our train ride over, a town my father mistakenly called "Dumbledore" at least three times. Locarno is drastically different from my little mountain town in the Berner Oberland- far from the pines and chalets I'm used to, the train tracks were surrounded by palm trees and colorful concrete houses. At some point on a quiet, really beautiful part of the trip, we saw some sheep grazing across the valley from us. My dad leans over and goes, "What did one sheep say to the other sheep? I love ewe. Get it?" He proceeded to laugh really hard at his joke. So in case you were wondering, my revelation about Cool Billy was rather short-lived.
For our three days in Locarno we ate plenty of gelato, walked around by Lago Maggiore, and checked out every. Single. Bookstore. My little sister always complains when we do this, but he and I both enjoyed ourselves, so take that, Annie. We took a cable car up part of the mountain (Cimetta, I think?), and then hiked the rest of the way up, where we had a spectacular view of the lake and surrounding mountains. We were planning on spending the night at this place near the peak, but it turns out that we didn't have enough cash, so we quickly hiked down the other way in order to catch the last bus back to Locarno. We made it, and the bus ride was sort of the most terrifying experience I've ever had.
While I went back to work at the Chalet, my dad went off on train adventures around Switzerland, and I met up with him in Zermatt about a week later. Zermatt is the tourist town at the base of the Matterhorn, and the kindest thing I can say about it is that the streets reminded me of Aspen in high-tourist season. We stayed at a hotel called the Alpenrose on the very edge of town (because despite being from Long Island, my dad hates large crowds), and it was without a doubt the best place we could have stayed. As the last building on the street, we had an unobstructed view of the Matterhorn from our balcony, and it was almost too amazing to be real. During my brief two days there we did a significant amount of hiking on two different mountains, stopping only when I got some really interesting blisters.
While we hiked, my dad practiced his German with the other hikers we saw. "Hello" in Swiss-German is "grΓΌezi," though locals seem to pronounce it "GROO-suh" with a weird "r" and everything. Here is how my dad chose to pronounce it: "groosee," "gross," "goose," "goosah" and, my personal favorite, "roosta." I think we blended in really well.
I went back to Adelboden on my own, but when he arrived a few days later, there was simultaneously a scavenger hunt going on at Our Chalet. The girls apparently dubbed my dad "the bearded man in the tent" when they stumbled upon him on the Chalet grounds and thought he was a squatter, which I honestly think is a good nickname for him. I was doing a sunrise hike the following night, so we mostly hiked around the valley on the flattest bits we could find, and greeted our fellow hikers in the weirdest German they'd ever heard. Also, because he's a water maintenance engineer, we passed some sort of something that had to do with hydro-something and it was like we were discovering a new form of life. Seriously, this country was built for Billy O'Donnell.
After my hike up Bunderspitz (which was awesome, but probably a story for another time), I was too tired to do much. My dad made fun of me for napping, and then we took the bus to the Frutigen train station, where he was going to catch the train to Geneva. It's funny, but seeing my dad here made me realize how much I'm like him. The inability to judge how much I shouldn't climb things, the bad jokes, the obsession with bookstores. Next time I travel with him, I think I'm just going to film the entire experience so you can get all of the horrible puns I've refused to write down. I felt like this was the culmination of all the hiking trips he took me on as kid, and despite (because of) the linguistic issues of a New York engineer in Switzerland, it was quite an entertaining trip. Maybe next time we'll pick an English-speaking country with mountains and try again...
