Mixing in the melting pot

Imagine the scene; a young Saudi man in a normal late bar in Manchester. Now widen your definition of 'normal' to include transvestites, lesbians kissing (with tongues), and punks. As I said; a normal late bar in Manchester. Now imagine that the Saudi guy is about 21, has never left his country, and has never done more than sniff alcohol.

Result: an absolutely hammered guy who doesn't really know where to look, where to touch or indeed, what the fu** is going on, living a fantastic experience.

The point is, that on a recent work tour of the UK, involving a coach load of unlikely international companions (Algerians, Ukranians, Saudis, Qataris, Bulgarians, Israelis, Romanians, Iranians...) who we were taking to visit language schools, it was fantastic to see all sorts of people mixing, trying new things, experiencing British culture. The poor drunken Saudi is a little unfair example, since the temptation of lesbians and alcohol is clear for someone who comes from a country where the existence of both is pretty much denied and consumption (hmm) of either severely punished!

It was fantastic to see how humans get on. Admitedly the Russians were not open in arms to the two Ukranians, and I heard some rather shocking opinions from many during the week, but to discuss extremist Islamic terrorists with Muslims, to discuss Putin with Russians and Ukranians and to tour Britain while doing all this, is a truely unique experience, that leads you to wonder who it is starting all these wars around the world when people get on so well!

To hear the different opinions on the UK was also incredible; what seems like an entirely normal thing to a Brit is fascinating to others; how a curry in Manchester is the real thing, how many words we have in British English for various types of rain, the collegiate university sytem, the food (and actually most comments were entirely positive!), and even zebra crossings!

We weren't able to count the nationalities or the languages we had between the coach load of us that week, but I'm confident it was over 20 nationalities, and probably double the amount of languages; a little, smiling representation of the world in a green coach on the M25!

Lucerne Marathon 2008

I can’t remember the last time I got up at six on a Sunday - perhaps when I was about 7 to get to the airport for my first ski holiday. Anyway, today I got up at six and made porridge. Then I ran 21 kilometres. Then I came home, made a cup of tea and had a bath. Then I lay on my bed reading the Guardian weekly. I’ve had an awesome Sunday.

I’d not really been into running. I’d tried it a couple of times before – on a beach in the Vendee, France where I was working one summer, but it didn’t really fit in with the work hard, play even harder lifestyle of a kids rep. I also gave it a go while at university in Sheffield, but the town’s seven hills and grim climate aren’t exactly encouraging. Switzerland, however, with its verdant hills, snow-capped peaks and photogenic lakes is a good place to start. It helped enormously to have two running buddies who acted as motivators and that also meant that a running session felt more like a gossip fest than marathon training.

A week before my first race (and again my only experience of racing is coming third in the cross-country at school one year and then being about a lap behind the other competitors in the inter-school 1500 metres), I had to abandon a run due to knee pain. Oh, and my ankle was a little sore too. I could barely make it up the eight flights of stairs that separate my front door and my flat door. I thought my hopes were squashed.

Already on leaving my flat this morning, the ambience of the town was completely changed. Besides the usual herds of camera-clutching tourists trying to find the famous Lion monument, there were lots of fit-looking people in Lycra. The buzz as we approached the start line was pretty cool – people on mini-stages leading group warm-ups, photographers looking for a good shot, families looking for a good spot to watch the action, people queuing for a pee in a plastic box (In Switzerland, Austria and Hungary I have noticed that Portaloos as we call them in the UK are called Toi Toi (/toy/) because of their manufacturers. I think it is a funny name, and they have bizarrely chosen hearts to dot the Is.)

So, as I said, I have never completed a half-marathon before, but there are many reasons why it is fun to do such a ridiculous thing on a Sunday in Switzerland...

- You are egged on by Alpenhorns, Guggen Musik and live bands, featuring men in the Swiss equivalent of lederhosen.

- Supporters take the enormous cow bells from their chalet walls, dust them off and ring them...cow bells make a beautiful noise, and they are quite good to run to. I have had some difficulty trying to persuade someone to run alongside me whilst training ringing a cow bell, unfortunately.

- The view is (normally) rather beautiful. Sadly we were treated to the typical Luzern greyness, so saw very little of this view, but with a bit of luck, or alternatively a strong imagination, you can enjoy it!

- The generally accepted chant is ‘Hopp Hopp.’ For example during the World cup, it was ‘Hopp Schwizz’ and today it was ‘hopp hopp hopp.’ As an Anglophone I found it a little silly because it would surely not be possible to hop around a marathon, and I certainly didn’t want to try.

- You are timed to the second and sent along very specific routes and you must do very specific things at specific times. Basically the Swiss were practising their favourite hobbies – organising something and someone, and they do do it well!

All this amounts to a really awesome ambience, lots of tired happy people and a lot of fun! I did a lot better than I was expecting to, coming in at 2 hours and 7 minutes. I had a great day. I can barely walk on my left foot at the moment but I am hoping to sleep that off. Maybe I did ‘hopp’ after all!

The photos are from my training routes - and the view I should have been able to see today if there hadn't been a thick layer of fog hiding the mountains!

The Art of Travel

I have just finished reading Alain de Botton's 'The Art of Travel' which is an absolute must-read for any person who enjoys moving about around the world, or even around their own back garden. De Botton analyses why we travel, why we travel to where we travel, how we travel, why we feel the way we do when we travel and so on. He draws examples from literature (Flaubert, Pascal, Baudelaire), art (Rubens, Delacroix, Van Gogh), as well as science and his own travels.

On why we fall in love with places, referring to why he loves Amsterdam, he asks;

"Why be seduced by something as small as a front door in another country? Why fall in love with a place because it has trams and its people seldom have curtains in their homes?"

He quotes Pascal in Pensees, 68 " When I consider the small space I occupy and which I see swallowed up in the infinite immesnity of spaces of which I know nothing and which no nothing of me, I take fright and am amazed to see myself here rather than there: there is no reason for me to be here rather than there, now rather than then. Who put me here?"

De Botton mirrors Ruskin's contempt towards travellers who insist on seeing everything in record time; "No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour will make us one whit stronger, happier or wiser."

There is also one final gem, towards the end of the book; quoting De Maistre; "I advise every man to get pink and white bed linen."

However random these thoughts, they all come together into a damn fine read. I bought the book new, asked for a discount at the WHSmith's Paddington Station since the cover was scuffed. The book, appropriately, now looks like a book I have had for a few years; it has been to Milan, to Zurich, to Lucerne, to London and Kent.

Any book written by someone whose name sounds and looks so similar to 'Bottom' is certainly worth reading!

Minature Earth...food for thought.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvTFKpIaQhM

If the world was made up of only 100 people... this video should be on the curriculum for all school children. Prepare to feel small.

Is this the most beautiful car in the entire world?

I was invited for a passegiata in one of these beautiful vehicles...since I was alone, no-one really knew where I was, and the men who invited me also asked if I was single, I thought better of it...but I was incredibly tempted!

How not to deal with a broken-down train

Sometimes you really wish you’d taken a different train. Tuesday was one of those days (and also a day when I had actually contemplated getting an earlier train). What is, on paper, a logistically uncomplicated journey of one hour exactly, ended up taking about three...here’s my account as I sat in the limited shade of Treviglio Ovest train station (nope; I hadn’t heard of it either), avoiding my creepy stalker and sunstroke, wondering how my day would end...

I am currently sat on the platform of Treviglio Ovest, which is, as far as I can tell, a sleepy provincial town. It is not Bergamo, where I had hoped to be an hour ago. However, the shoddy looking train had pulled out of this small station to continue its trip to Bergamo. It stopped. It spluttered. It choked. The air conditioning also stopped (which is when you start to wish that deodorant was a obligation for anyone past puberty). A man in a Trenitalia shirt and jeans scuttled down the dirty overheating carriages with no explanation to his urgency. Another member of staff comes by quickly, and only when asked informs us that the engine has cut off. Great. A broken-down train.

We wait for ten minutes, overheating, blaspheming and wondering what the hell is going on. Then the train rolls backwards a few metres. A few more minutes pass. The train is rolled back into the station we just left. Without any explanation other than “The train is broken, please get off” (no pleases, thanks yous, apologies), we all descend onto platform two. We wait angrily on the platform. Ladies who thus far looked fairly respectable start using words I would never dream of using in Italian, or in any language. No announcement comes telling us what is going on. 5 minutes pass. Still no news. Ten. Nothing. There’s a lot of furious waving of arms, a few ‘ma che paese di merda!’ from disgruntled stranded travellers and a whole bunch of tourists who are even more confused since their Italian vocabulary stretches only to ‘pizza’ and ‘pasta’. Still nothing.

Then, after what seems like a lifetime (and a pretty hot one too; its about 32 degrees) an announcement comes. There will be, ladies and gentlemen, a replacement bus in front of the station in about ten minutes, to take us to Bergamo. There’s a mass stampede via the sottopassagio to the front of the station. In stampedes there is no social hierarchy, no reverence, no altruism. Business men push past nuns, frail grandmothers beat their way past giant black men, all to get to Bergamo.

Half an hour passes and there is no replacement bus service. A couple of buses come, but they are not the replacement service. A few bewildered Asian tourists are taken away on such a bus, unaware of the driver’s verbal protests about not being a train. I swear those were his words; “ma non sono il treno.”

Eventually, a coach turns up, and it is clearly the replacement bus. The only one. The wonderfully efficient and communicative Trenitalia team have organised one bus to replace the whole train. Now, I’m no mathematician, but I know that one coach for about 50 will not be able to take every passenger from a broken down train. Considering the train was very busy, my guess is that there were about 500 people on it. The clever boys of the state railways thought a coach would solve the problem. I checked my calendar thinking maybe it was April Fools Day, since this whole episode had to be a joke. When asked if there would be more buses, the reply, accompanied by a nonchalant shrug of the shoulders, was “we’ll see.”

The fifty most pushy travellers are on the bus (plus, it turns out, quite a few more hiding between baggage and seats), the bus driver gets off the bus in a strop. He lights a cigarette and stands in front of the bus. “I am not going anywhere until everyone is sitting down,” he protests, folding his arms. When he has finished his cigarette, he reboards the coach and walks up and down the aisle. He finds a poor lady who was obviously using a fellow passenger as a seat, or perhaps hiding in the toilet, and ejects her and her huge suitcase from the coach. The coach then departs (about an hour after it was due to arrive) and the majority of the travellers from the broken train are left on the pavement going nowhere.

I then overhear a conversation that there should be a train arriving in a few minutes from Milan to go to Bergamo. If they can succeed in putting it on the other track so it avoids our train currently blocking one half of the station, then it should be here and we can all continue our journey. But it’ll be half an hour late.

At this point, I notice a man in a pink t-shirt is standing very close to me and occasionally taking his eyes of my breasts to look at my face. I do what I learned in primary school and find a family with children to stand next to, because that’s what you’re supposed to do if a stranger scares you, apparently. The man follows me and stands very much in my personal space. I move again, this time next to a lovely looking older man who looks like he has travelled the world. The creep (who looks a bit like one of those E-Fit images you see of criminals on the news) follows me and asks me where I am from. I grunt Switzerland. He asks me if I live in Treviglio. I laugh (but only in my head as I don’t want him to think he is funny) and grunt no. This kind of mundane conversation continues, and I continually try to wander off, but he follows me like a shadow. By this time, after an overheating train, a tiny replacement bus and now a stalker, I am praying that the train arrives immediately.

About 45 minutes after the second train was due, it rolled into the station. The whole crowd pushed their way onto the train and battled for space. The pink t-shirt was just in front of me and I made to get on the train, waited until he had his back to me and then ran down the train on the platform to the front so he didn’t see me. I then found again the nice old man and sat next to him, hoping he would protect me if the pink t-shirt man reappeared.

Finally, after a very long trip, I arrived in Bergamo. I was so desperate for the toilet and so hungry that I stopped in the first cafe I saw, and only then could I start to explore. Luckily, Bergamo was well worth the wait and was one of the most beautiful towns I have been to in Italy, and I had a great day.

Good (British) grub!

Apart from catching up with friends and family recently in the UK, the best thing about going home was the food. British food is fantastic and I challenge any ignorant fool to claim otherwise, since I know that real British food is up there among the coq au vin, the tapas and the other equally delicious European dishes.

In London I picked up a BLT. Every time I took a scrumptious bite, I let out a little mmm (barely audible for fear of scaring or worrying those picnicking near to me in Hyde Park). The bacon was crispy, not fatty, there wasn’t too much of it. The bread soft, with delicious (and nutritious!) seeds and it tasted homemade. The lettuce was everything you want lettuce to be; fresh, green and with that satisfying crunch noise as you bite into it. The tomatoes were straight from someone’s greenhouse vine. It was a rather spiffing sandwich. Well done England, you’ve done Lord Sandwich proud.

Then I was in a countryside pub, and I spent a good few minutes deciding what to have from the blackboard menu. Steak sandwich? Ploughman’s? Goats cheese salad? Bangers and mash? A whole menu of fantastic fodder. I went for the goats cheese salad – welsh goats’ cheese on crusty bread, with a salsa of fresh tomatoes. Admittedly, the idea of this dish is mighty similar to an Italian bruschetta, or a French salade de chevre chaud, but it was British goats’ cheese, homemade bread and British tomatoes. And even better because we sat outside on a wobbly wooden picnic bench in the beer garden and ate it.

You really are hard pushed to find a pub equivalent anywhere other than in the UK. The thing about our pubs is that there is no pretension. You go there, drink some local beer, eat some (usually) local food and be merry. The nearest I have come across to a good pub in Europe is the Germanic beer halls, but they tend to be a little more regimented; rows of benches laid out, smart waiters come to your table to take your order, no-one shouts ‘time at the bar’ and they don’t tend to have beer gardens.

Obviously, there are still some rather rubbish eateries in the UK. But we should celebrate the culinary diversity of the UK (I also enjoyed a Philippine meal during my trip) and the delicious and often inexpensive food that is offered to us on a plate in the UK.

And, isn’t the fact that we export so many of our cookery programmes and celebrity chefs to the continent proof enough that actually the Europeans (that’s right, even the French) want to eat British?

Le binge-drinking

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/aug/27/foodanddrink.france

I read this article about ‘le binge drinking’ and I rejoiced! This is something I have argued with many a French person on many an occasion. Those French people tended to get on their high horses and claim, (as is often the case, I have found), moral superiority; its that mythical ‘exception française’ cropping up once again!
My most memorable discussion on alcohol consumption in the UK and in France was at a party in Calais. Most people were fairly well oiled and I believe that the conversation arose because a French guy there believed me to be a lot more drunk than I actually was. Since English girls do not have a fantastic reputation in France, I took up this guy on his invitation for an intelligent discussion, to try and defend the British Female. He claimed that there are more alcoholics in England than in France. I have no idea about the statistics of either country; but I looked around me at the gathering, and counted that half of the French punters were alcoholic according to most definitions of the expression. And this reflects my general experience of two years in France – I met more people with alcohol problems during my time there than when living in the UK. It is worth noting that the Pas-de-Calais does actually have alcohol dependency figures that are higher than the national average (for a number of reasons, but this closely correlates with the higher level of unemployment in the North), but I don’t think my experience is unique.
There certainly are alcohol problems in the UK. But finally it is great to see that people are realising that France is not immune to the same societal problems as the rest of Europe. I think the prevailing attitude (particularly among the British middle classes) that France is socially superior to the UK, with its super gastronomy, its family culture, its je ne sais quoi, is beginning to change. Not that either is better, nor perfect, just incredibly different with a few worrying similarities.

A la tienne!

Kissing Europeans

There was an interesting article on the Guardian website recently. It was the brilliant photo of a clumsy Gordon Brown embracing a Carla Bruni that drew me to the article. It is true that for a Brit, the question of social kissing (which itself is an odd expression, alluding a little to the concept of a social smoker; someone who lights up when a little tipsy, or when surrounded by people who are smoking), is a tricky one.

In France, it’s relatively easy for a girl. You kiss everyone, male and female, the required amount of ‘bises,’ which depends on your location in the country, and occasionally on your social standing. It is sometimes a little an inconvenient and time-consuming convention; I remember on a school bus once, at each stop children would get on, and they would not sit down until they had made their way along the bus greeting each person. This takes a while, and the bus driver won’t wait, so you could go as far as to say that kissing in France is dangerous!

It isn’t, however, that clear cut. The Guardian article claims that research in Calais confirmed that 50% of the people go in for 2 kisses, and the remainder go in for 3. In my years’ residency in Calais, I did not once come across someone who insisted on trois bises as opposed to the more common two. In the village where I lived during a school exchange in the South-East of France, the custom was three kisses, and yet in Sisteron, where I attended lycee as part of this exchange, the norm was two. It was up to you to decide the cut-off point between the two towns, and to remember who came from where.

Then there’s the man-on-man kissing, which to unaccustomed eyes is a funny sight. Not because I am homophobic, or because I don’t agree with men being affectionate; but it’s really not something you see very often in the UK. To be fair, most French guys have a core group of guy friends they kiss, and with the deprived remainder, a handshake suffices. I cannot imagine British guys, who will usually only go as far as an awkward pat on the back and an ‘alright mate,’ going cheek-to-cheek with their male friends for the sake of greeting each other!

In Italy there’s a lot of kissing too. And also in Spain. Even in Switzerland – even in German Switzerland, where friends (and actually it is only in very informal familiar situations) greet each other with three kisses. So why are we Brits so keen to avoid physical contact? Risk of infection? Social awkwardness? People often ask me “So if you don’t kiss when you greet each other, what do you do?” and I really have to think about it – the answer is, I think, that we simply say hello, and then move onto the conversation (usually about the weather).

So now that I have fully embraced the European kissing culture, my dilemma is that I find it hard to gauge the whole kissing thing in the UK. There are people who kiss. There are people who kiss once. There are others who go for two. But since they don’t wear stickers on there forehead making this clear, you have to guess. I have many more embarrassing kissing experiences in the UK now that I do in Europe, because there simply is no social convention for it yet.

Here's the link to ther article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/aug/05/humanbehaviour.familyandrelationships

The difference a few kilometres make to the future of the Earth

The problem with living in a place like Switzerland is that when you cross a border into another country, you realise that there are a lot of things that you take for granted here. Things like bin men, buses that come on time and whose doors close, clean lakeside beaches and clear signposting. This really isn’t an anti-Italy rant – I really love Italy and most Italians I’ve met are lovely (except for the man who chased me and an Austrian friend through the back streets of Bologna shouting ‘Pikatchu’ at us – but that’s another story all together!). Neither is it a blind praise of Switzerland. It is pure experiential observation.

It is rather easy to live in a bubble in Switzerland, ignorantly believing that everyone, at least in Europe, has PET recycling bins, pays for the amount of waste they generate and takes their own shopping bags to the supermarket rather than taking plastic bags. Yet only a few kilometres away in Italy (and I know that Italy is certainly not the only environmental criminal), searching for a bottle bank is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Perhaps the most shocking observation from my weekend camping in Lenno on Lake Como was the amount of pollution the public boat services pumped out. Boats left each port of call with a huge filthy putrid black cloud that clung to the water surface and eventually dispersed. The air is filled with the noise of jet skis and power boats, something we are spared of on Vierwaldstatersee. I’m not sure if there are speed regulations on Lake Lucerne, or if people would simply consider you a pretentious arsehole if you were to create such a ruckus in such a beautiful place.

An Italian paradox: Italians love children, but apparently not enough to clean the broken glass and empty containers from the beaches of Lake Como. As far as I am aware, there is quite a high rate of unemployment in Italy – couldn’t these unemployed people clean up a little bit?

On arrival in the beautiful town of Como, we descended into the centre through a little park, which was littered with discarded newspapers, drinks cans and plastic bags. That was the first of our many “This wouldn’t happen in Switzerland.” On departure, Juan nearly fell out of a broken bus door as the delayed bus swung around a corner. So the departing exclamation was identical to that of the arrival.

To me this is one of best things about living in different countries – it makes you question other places, other peoples’ behaviour (and your own.). I really had a super weekend; and Como is beautiful, if a little polluted. The Italian way of life is also beautiful and Italy is wonderful, but the Italians really need to change their attitude towards the environment.

I will keep going to Italy for as long as they continue to make delicious gnocchi, to ride rusty town bicycles and talk with their hands, but I would rather swim in a cold but clean lake in Switzerland than a warm but filthy lake in Italy (even if I can’t have such a good gelato after my dip!).

A fairly good vision of Switzerland from quite a few angles

http://www.swissworld.org/en/people/

This website appears to know what it is talking about (perhaps more than I do!)

Dancing and ear plugs

It is slightly discourageing being a musician in Switzerland, I imagine. I have observed on more than one occassion that dancing is not common practice at live concerts, and the wearing of ear plugs is recommended. Now, I may be alone in thinking this, but if I were a musician and I had scribbled songs for hours, tirelessly practised my chords and so on, I would be pretty peeved if punters turned up at my gigs with bits of foam in their ears. And trying to encourage the crowd to clap or to dance is as challenging as drawing blood from a stone.
I have to say though, that those who do dance and clap and ostensibly enjoy themselves are not frowned upon, although you do get a few smiles that could easily pass as sympathy smiles. It's sort of "Aww, bless them having a little bop, don't they look silly. And oh, they're not wearing ear plugs - they'll regret that when they're older."
As a fan of bopping along (usually out of rhythm, but that's not the point), I see live music as an opportunity to wave your arms in the air, wiggle your bum and generally let the music into your body through your ears. Maybe the Swiss have extra 'listening' holes and can therefore afford to block their ears with foam.
Hmm...now I feel like I'm missing out on something!

Learning Swiss German in Switzerland

I am a huge language geek. I read verb tables in the toilet and stay awake at night wondering about subjunctives and phrasal verbs. Well, not quite. Swiss German is however, rather baffling. It should be pointed out that Swiss German is really not like German at all. Germanophones pain to understand their linguistic cousins, and I find it frankly impossible; Swiss German is unlike any language I have ever come across.
There's a sort of guttural phleghming theme; it's not the most attractive of languages. (The fact that I find it sexy is not a reflection of it's sex-appeal, merely a sign of my madness). Words are often suffixed with -li, making it sound a little childish, similar to when you turn a dog into a doggy in English. However, it cannot be that infantile since I am not entirely convinced that children are able to make such violent sounds with such delicate mouths. That said, they must be, because Swiss German kids are just as chatty as any!
Even more confusing is the scattering of French borrowings such as 'merci' or 'billet' but for French speakers, the wrongly placed phonetic stresses ring in your ears like cow bells (or is that just me?)...And it seems unnatural not to reply 'de rien' to any 'merci.' There is a good side to the French borrowings - you can get away with buying things like ein Billet Retour without having to venture into your German phrasebook.
There is another issue with attempting to master the local language; it's so local that if you nip over to the next valley or town, the version of the language is slightly different, and for those who get accustomed to one dialect of Swiss German will take a while to get used to the Swiss German from another canton.
The final hurdle to learning Swiss German is that the Swiss Germans often speak impecable English. Those same people usually modestly claim that they only speak 'a little' English. Even the staff of Starbucks speak amazing English (which is barely true of Starbucks staff in the UK!)! Most young people have a great grasp of English, and are usually happy to use it, which is a refreshing change from France where the majority would rather eat dirt than converse in a foreign language.
So, if you're prepared to jump those hurdles, Swiss German is worth a try. It's more amusing than most languages to learn, since you can always pretend you're talking in your tiny valley dialect and that is the only reason the natives can't understand you!
Grab a Gipfeli and a coffee and set to learning one of the coolest languages in the world!

Flying upside down round and round...Acrobatic flight

The view from the top of Mount Pilatus is pretty impressive; the view of Switzerland from an open top airplane is mighty impressive. I had the chance to fly above one of the most beautiful countries in the world. Getting into the stunning aeroplane, you have to be careful not to press on the wrong parts of the plane: and you realise that the machine in which you are about to do fairly ridiculous things in is in fact fairly flimsy. I was a little concerned that I was getting into a large yellow paper aeroplane.

Once strapped in (with parachute and overalls - looking like I was auditioning for Top Gun, although not looking quite as sexy and fearless), you wait patiently while the pilot climbs in behind and does the final checks. The passenger sits at the front, facing the black box as a sombre reminder that your death would be recorded should something go wrong.

Since the nose of the aeroplane gets in the way of seeing straight ahead, we taxied along the runway by zig-zagging. The take off was smooth and very calm. It is amazingly serene and I felt surprisingly calm at this point; gliding along into the gorgeous evening sky. Tilting slighty to the left and the right so you can get a good view of what is beneath you is also surprisingly calm.

But serenity cannot last forever and the pilot was getting a little impatient to do some twists and turns. Luckily the pilot was fantastic- he explained how everything would work and told me before we did anything so I was as prepared as you can be for flying upside down in an open top plane!

The first test for the stomach was a 'simple' flip. Fine. Yes, a little scary since I forgot that there were bars to hold onto, but it was fine. Then we progressed onto the stomach churners. For the formations, the pilot descends before starting, and actually the inital drop is when your stomach goes, rather than during acrobatics. The Loop the Loop was amazing - you look up and see the ground, and you have to try really hard not to think about the fact your plane is virtually made of paper and you are held in only by an antique seat belt!

The worst feeling was when we went virtically up and then flipped over and nose-dived for about 800 metres. I was sitting at the front, and could see only the black box and the ground rapidly approaching! Flying upside down is also a very strange feeling and after a few seconds it almost feels like it's normal to fly upside down in an open-top plane.

The G-force (4.8) and the adrelelin aside, it was breath-takingly beautiful up there. A gorgeous summer evening, beautiful lakes and rolling green hills with mountains in the distance. Pottering around in the skies at 2000m is a wonderful occupation!

The landing was smooth and after the formations it was very tame! I hadn't felt sick at all in the plane, but once out of the cockpit and on solid ground, I felt very queasy. My poor stomach didn't know which way up it should be anymore!

I would recommend an acrobatic flight to anyone; especially over Switzerland! Although not after a heavy night out!