There is something special and comforting about slowly cruising across a peaceful lake. Calming, refreshing, recharging. Switzerland is the perfect place for those dreamy boat trips, with its stunning 1500 alpine lakes. That’s such an odd thought, a completely land locked country being such a water paradise. Bizarrely I also got to watch my first ever beach soccer match here as well….

Just a few days ago I was stuck in heavy motorway traffic, going nowhere fast thinking, where was my Road to Hell cd…. Sat in the car dreaming of one of those perfect lake trips. That’s travel, that’s living.

What I would give for a few water based hours this grey, uninspiring English Sunday. A drink, a fine meal, watching the world slowly turn, surrounded by The Alps.

As I’m writing this a long forgotten holiday memory has just resurfaced. A family trip on a steamer across Lake Brienz.

Hawklad’s Mum had ordered food in German to the waitress. A waitress experiencing her first morning in this job as she nervously pointed out to us as she took our order, potentially her first ever order….. Hawklad got his beloved frankfurter and chips. I received my healthy plate of chips with a cheese and calorie loaded pizza. However Hawklad’s Mum had a little surprise. A cheese salad arrived looking a lot like the full meat platter.

I’ve never seen so much meat on one plate.

It was quickly decided that we couldn’t send the wrong order back on the waitresses first morning, especially as clearly Hawklad’s Mums much vaunted PERFECT GERMAN was clearly not so PERFECT. So what to do. My idea of secretly hiding pieces of meat in our pockets was for some inexplicable reason, REJECTED. So was Hawklad’s suggesting of hiding the meat under my baseball hat. Hawklad’s Mum decided the best course of action. She would get the pizza and I gained a full plate of meat. My first meat in about 5 years following my trip down vegetarian boulevard. The things you do to maintain a peaceful lake trip 😂😂😂😂😂.

When his mum went to the toilet I whispered to Hawklad that actually my meat option was really tasty and I was rather enjoying it. For some reason I failed to mention that fact to his mum, sticking to the ‘this is a real struggle, woe is me’ narrative. I think I pulled the deception off although Hawklad might have blown my cover when he pointed out to his mum with a cheeky grin that

‘For someone struggling so much Dad has done so well to eat all the meat and leave nothing apart from the salad bits.’

BUSTED…..

38 thoughts on “Swiss Sunday”

  3. Well … first off, the pictures are absolutely delightful and brought about a bit of a peaceful feeling, despite the things I had been reading and writing about this evening. Oh how I would love to be sitting in an outdoor cafe, watching the boats glide by in the shadow of the Alps. But then, you put the whipped cream on the feeling with the fun story about your restaurant ‘mishap’ and how you got BUSTED!!! I actually laughed!!! Thanks, dear friend, for the Sunday morning treat! ☕☕

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  4. This is what I took from your post BABASP, that I’m definitely getting cards for my wallet that have symbols for vegan or at least no meat or something.
    I guess a big green V with a leaf on it is one option.
    Oh wow, you learn sommat every day, for I just found out there’s a vegan flag. It’s a blue background a white V taking up the whole space and above the V is green. I don’t like to offend and yes in the past I have done similar to you Beloved. However, I just can’t see me doing that ever again, my mind cannot do it now.
    https://veganflag.org/

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      1. There was this really hard to stomach time, when my Croatian sister-in-law had made a meal for us, it had huge bits of meat on the bone in the soup. What would I be like now? I can’t see me being rude, but not able to stomach it.

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      2. There was a part of the storyline of The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis, where the children were in the giants castle and given meat that was from a talking animal. I think that sums up how I might view things.

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  7. That’s a funny and sweet story. Hawklad was already cheeky! I am veg too but in your situation I probably could have managed. Or the seagulls would have got fed…are there seagulls in Switzerland? Lake gulls perhaps? I think I had not realised how many lakes there are up there in the Alps.

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  9. Well, I must admit I have not ate meat in we’ll going on 4 yrs. A choice I made to be a bit healthier and the fact I wasn’t much of a meat eater. Your holiday sounded so pleasant and relaxing. I so wish you could you could pack a bag or two, and you and Hawkland could just go back. Hugs Gary❤️

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  12. No meat after five years and then tucking in for the ‘ahem’ sake of appearances must have been hard, otherwise if not why on earth were you a vegetarian? I haven’t eaten meat now completely – well since giving up chicken – the very last bastion of meat heaven six months ago, and red meat was given up well over five years ago – l get cravings at times, but wow mate how could you after such a lengthy time just tuck in?

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      1. I know what you mean. I used to love kebabs, and we have one at the top of the road, l said to Suze the other day l would kill for a lamb kebab, but it was the aroma that got me, if l had lamb now with my allergy to meats it would probably keel me over hahaha 🙂

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  13. I think that after 5 years, you just needed a meat fix… to keep you going for the next 10 years😁. Yeah, you got it – I sure am not vegetarian despite the fact I love my veggies.

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