Column: to Rome on foot – part 8

Today I walked from the village of Echalance to Lausanne. The last ten kilometers it was toil again. At one point I thought I saw heavy clouds in the south until it suddenly dawned on me that it was the Alps I saw in the distance. Huge huge mountains with still eternal snow on the tops. I immediately thought of my first holiday to Italy in August 1961.

On the second day, having arrived in Switzerland with the DKW, my parents warned me that I would soon see the Alps with the eternal snow. I found the concept of 'eternal snow' so intriguing that I did not dare for a moment to let my attention drop and constantly stared at the horizon from the back seat between my parents. And suddenly I saw some shadows, but they turned out to be the mountains that were getting closer and closer. Mountains with eternal snow.

Great St Bernard Pass

I realized today, as they reappeared on the horizon, that they are probably going to be my biggest challenge. If all goes well, I will cross the Great St. Bernard Pass on Friday. It is a legendary pass with a hospice dating back to 1100. All Rome-goers stay overnight after the ascent of the pass. It seems to be very cosy.

No more of Geneva

And so I reached Lausanne. If you learn one thing from such a journey, it is to adjust your expectations, because they never come true. On the other hand, there are often nice things that 'happen' to you completely unexpectedly. So I was really looking forward to a nice hotel on Lake Geneva and then two days to recover before I would start my big Alpine climb. But it all turned out differently.

Lausanne overwhelmed me enormously. It is a city built steeply against a mountain. Roads and walkways run through it at all levels, which are connected by countless sloping streets. It was hot, it was busy, you sometimes have to travel by elevator within the city. It took me a while to get my bearings.

At the tourist information office sat a not so nice lady. As a pilgrim you are always dealing with two categories of people. Those who respect you and those who view you with disdain. This lady therefore typically belonged to the second category. When I said I was on a pilgrimage to Rome and was looking for a hotel, you just saw her thinking: another pauper. She only mentioned four-star hotels with unaffordable prices.

Reggae in the camping restaurant

At my insistence, she called the local youth hostel and they had a room for me alone. The youth hostel was a long way out of the center and hard to find. It took me at least another hour to finally find him. Frustrated I walked through Lausanne, I hadn't seen the lake at all then.

But in the end it turned out pretty well. The room is very expensive, but that's because I don't want to sleep with four women in a room, I really want my privacy. The youth hostel is located in a park with a campsite and restaurant on the lake. So in the end I got my way a bit when I was drinking my wine in the camping restaurant tonight and eating a delicious salad.

The atmosphere here is nice, it is a bit noisy, a pleasant reggae music whirls through the building and there are all kinds of things, ranging from eight to eighty in all kinds of colors and from all over the world. I look forward to the evening with confidence.

To be continued…