Page:
1
| 2
So I’m careening to the airport in Los Angeles, dying for a breath of Alpine calm in Switzerland. It’s quite possible that the Swiss are lunatics behind closed doors, but I don’t think so. This country is blessed with drop-dead scenery in all directions, plus an old-fashioned politesse that seems to blanket the landscape like new-fallen snow. I get the feeling that everything in Switzerland works. “Es stimmt,” they say. “It goes; it fits.” When “it” fits, so do I.
I was here once before, with a rollicking band of gay travel writers, and it was a blast. This time I’ll be following the other path I’m queer for: art and architecture. I’ve also challenged my hosts at Switzerland Tourism: Where are the lesbians in Switzerland anyway? On my last trip with a dozen adorable gay guys, I heard plenty about the hunky Swiss boys. Swiss misses, not so much. But more about that later.
Right now, board Swiss International Airlines Flight 41 with me. My idyll in business class starts with dinner -- gravlax to start, then sea bass and bok choy, coffee and cheeses, and a Swiss truffle as a final touch. Wines and liquors flow throughout. What’s more, the biz-class seats on the Airbus 350 let me straighten all the way out and go to sleep. I recline on a slant, like Billie Burke on her lunch break in The Wizard of Oz. But I hit the Continent practically free of jet lag.
Zurich and La Chaux-de-Fonds, Thursday
Landing at Zurich, I take the train to La Chaux-de-Fonds, in the French-speaking region of Switzerland. (In other regions, German and Italian dominate.) It’s our first art and architecture stop. My first-class Swiss Pass is easy to validate, and shortly I’m ensconced in a comfortable, quiet railway car.
Arriving is not challenge-free. I basically know only two French words: merci and beaucoup. And for the first time in this country, there aren’t English speakers everywhere. (I’m not complaining. I sharpened up my charades game.) At La Chaux-de-Fonds’ tiny train station, I say “Hotel Athmos” to a cab driver outside. I know he’s trying to tell me it’s an easy walk from the station, but I can’t decipher his directions. In the end I ride the two blocks in grandeur, arriving just as our Switzerland Tourism guide, Evelyne Mock, is heading out to dinner with the rest of my crew. Over Swiss cuisine at a local restaurant, our group begins to bubble with what will become a most enjoyable chemistry.
My room at the Hotel Athmos is charming and old fashioned -- small, but with a lovely duvet, a capacious closet, and a full-size bed cozied up to one wall. Outside, amber leaves drift past the window, and I fall into unconsciousness.
La Chaux-de-Fonds & Neuchâtel, Friday
Downstairs at the Athmos, there’s an abundant buffet breakfast. Can I just say here that bread in Switzerland is a thrill? Add Swiss butter and jam, and the earth moves. A cup of coffee later, we head out.
La Maison Blanche
is the first stop on our tour. Built in 1912, this
residence on a wooded hill was the first independent project
of hometown architect Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, later
known to all of us as Le Corbusier. The house had
fallen into disrepair over the years, but a coalition
of citizens and professionals from La Chaux-de-Fonds have
managed to renovate the house according to its
designer’s original plan. We’re there at
the ribbon-cutting, and even without understanding the
language, I get the civic pride.
Stockwell at La Maison Blanche under the cobalt
blue arches
Jeanneret built the house for his parents, but he was also testing out ideas for himself. He’d studied art before architecture, and at 25 he was already rejecting the sentimental swoops and curls of art nouveau. His passion: clean lines and light. He had ideas about color too. He mixed up the whites and grays outside with arches of eye-crossing cobalt blue. White was good to eat by, he thought; blue, to sleep in. His own bedroom at the Maison he painted yellow: Like Rosie O’Donnell, Jeanneret saw it as the color of creativity.
Now we’re off to a fondue lunch at the local restaurant Auberge du Mont-Cornu, a postcard chalet with great overhanging eaves and nodding red flowers in the window boxes. The fondue pots come out amid a grave debate among our Swiss hosts. What can one drink with fondue? Our local tour guide insists that only wine or hot tea are acceptable. It’s dangerous to drink anything bubbly with the dense melted cheese-and-bread dish. Why? Our guide mimes regurgitating a brick. Um, point taken. “Dangerous fondue” becomes the watchword of the tour.
Our sight-seeing
climaxes with one of Jeanneret’s first big jobs.
Built during 1916 and 1917, the Villa Turque, or
Turkish Villa, now the public relations headquarters
of the luxury watchmaking company Ebel, was
commissioned as a family residence. An inscrutable brick
wall faces the street, pierced only by little round
windows. Yet inside, the towering structure becomes a
generous chamber flooded with light. I can hardly
imagine how radical this soaring retreat would have been in
the teen years of the 20th century.
Our hotel room floating over Lac Neuchâtel
Le Corbusier -- and incidentally, every gay boy I know -- would flip over our destination for tonight, the five-star Hotel Palafitte in neighboring Neuchâtel. Built out on pilings over Lac Neuchâtel, it has long, rectangular rooms that are almost like separate little studio apartments -- but nicer. There’s a big flat-screen TV; a Bose sound system with six speaker installations. A spa tub set in a bathroom that’s all warm wood planking, like a Finnish sauna. On your sundeck is the lake, and you’ve got your own private ladder down to the water if you want to tie up your rental kayak or just jump in. On the horizon is the Eiger mountain, muscling in on the Jungfrau.
Dinner is gorgeous, served at the Hôtel DuPeyrou, a restaurant housed in an exquisitely repurposed château. Surrounded by tapestries, silks, and parquet, we devour venison, vegetables, and spaetzle, and more of that brown Swiss bread.
Then it’s back to the Palafitte, with its massive king-size bed and steel privacy shutters that clank down at the push of a button (to repel boarders, I guess). Sprawled under the weightless eiderdown, I hear the honk of a duck flying over the lake. Beethoven plays softly on the Bose, and it’s lights out.
These comments are reproduced as written by visitors to this Web site. They have not been edited for content, grammar, or spelling. The viewpoints appearing here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of advocate.com, The Advocate, or its affiliates.
Be the first to comment on this story.
If you would like to submit a comment for posting, please fill out the form above.
All comments submitted via this form are subject to posting or publication. (To send a private letter to an Advocate editor or writer, please use the e-mail button at the top of the page, or use snail mail.) If you would like your comment considered for publication in The Advocate magazine, please include your full name, your city of residence, and a phone number where you can be reached during business hours so that we can confirm your identity. Your e-mail address and telephone number are strictly confidential and will not be shared or used for any purpose other than to contact you about your comment.
See the Contact page for sending comments for reasons other than responding to Advocate editorial and news stories.
Please note that comments sent by fax or snail mail are unlikely to be posted, although they will be considered for publication along with all letters received via e-mail or via this Web page. Comments that chiefly concern Advocate.com content will be considered for posting only on the Web site. The Advocate reserves the right to edit submitted comments for grammar, spelling, obscenities, or libel; we will, however, do our best to preserve the original comment's style and intent. Comments considered for publication in The Advocate magazine may also be edited for length.
Home | Contact | Current Issue | LGBT Community Partners | Staff
Career Opportunities | Help
Subscribe: Print Edition Digital Edition | Subscriber Services: Print Edition Digital Edition
Visit our Websites
Out.com | OutTraveler.com | HIVPlusMag.com | Alyson.com | HereTV.com | GayWired.com | SheWired.com
Privacy Policy | User Agreement | Community Guidelines | Legal Notice
Advocate.com © 2009 Regent Entertainment Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.
