Day 56: Chiasso to Taverne, Switzerland

September 15, 2015

We went just a half block from our hotel to leave Italy (again) and enter Switzerland. This was right in the middle of the city of Como/Chiasso, and there seemed to be officers at the border station, though they were not doing anything. We then used another 5 km to get back to where we had been yesterday when we decided to head to the hotel in Italy.

As we cycled through "Switzerland" I noted that not only did it not look any different from "Italy" but it totally lacked any chalets, brown cows, meadows, or girls named "Heidi" (not that I was asking anyone their name!). This was similar to another time, when we entered Switzerland at Basel and saw only chemical companies. That time I subtitled the blog page "where's the chocolate, where's the cheese?". Of course not every part of a country lives up to it's postcard image, but we are starting to notice that many regions of Switzerland really are quite far of the postcard target, and in fact are very plain and industrialized. I bet Swiss friends are reading this and thinking "Yeah, so what" - fair enough!

Just into Switzerland, the scene is not too "scenic"

I did manage this carefully framed scenic shot

Look Ken, the track temporarily went up into the vines, and we found this and two other tractors. Ken - we could email the other two shots...

Up in the vines, we found these donkeys and even some cows.

These grapes were ripe and ready to go - we know!

One of our first activities in Switzerland was to go to a grocery store for supplies. Dodie came out and reported that prices were basically double. In her shopping cart, though, there was Swiss chocolate. So that answers the "where's the chocolate" part. But there was no cheese. Dodie said it was too costly. Hmm, unable to buy Swiss Cheese in Switzerland? Maybe things will be different at the next store, or maybe we will resign ourselves to the level of prices.

To finance this and any other purchases would require some Swiss francs. Here near the border they were still accepting euros, but we could not guarantee that that would work everywhere. The current nominal exchange rate is such that one Swiss franc costs .91 Euro (and this seems to be exactly the rate that happened in the grocery store). That is, each euro is worth 1.1 Swiss francs.

So I took myself and my Canadian VISA card to the bank machine of a Raiffeisen Bank. Raiffeisen, centred maybe in Austria, is a name we see often in Germany. So an Austrian/German bank in Switzerland should be a good spot for some high finance, like getting 600 francs, right? Wrong. The machine spat out my card, saying it could not do the transaction (or some wording like that). So I fired up the phone and called Canada, to see whether my financial empire had collapsed while we have been pedalling around. Canada said "Are you nuts - it's 4.a.m. in Toronto, at VISA headquarters". But I phoned back and told their system it was an emergency (no money to buy Swiss cheese!), so they put someone on the line. "Nope", they said "No transactions coming in from Switzerland". So I went in to the Raiffeisen Bank and waited in line. The lady said she could only give out money to Raiffeisen customers. "But the machine has the VISA symbol", I protested. "So talk to the machine", she replied. "The machine does not work", I protested. "Eh!" she said, in that classic Italian way. "This is not a very good bank if you can not do this simple thing", I commented. "Eh!" was the offhand reply - "Try a bank in another city".

So this happened in Coldrario. We did indeed go to another city, since that is our game. In Mendrisio, I selected a real Swiss bank, and got the same answer from its machine. So I went in and spoke to a manager. "Good news" he said, there are three other banks in this town. You can go try their machines." These banks, though, were up to a block off route, and Dodie will never go off route if she can avoid it.

So we carried on, until I spied a bank machine from the Post Office, in Bissone. The Post Office sounds like a serious organization, I thought. But their machine rejected my transaction. "Let me try", said Dodie, "You hit the keys too fast". "Sure, whatever, I replied, just to be nice". So Dodie talked to the machine, and came up with 300 Francs! Her secret was to ask for half what I had asked. The machines offer up to 1000 Francs as button push options, but clearly some limit was applying to our withdrawal. Wouldn't it be nice if the programmers could put in enough effort to have an error message to that effect, rather than "The transaction could not be completed"? Anyway, I am now looking for a cheese store!

A real Swiss bank, but not very effective for us.

There are two sort of finger lakes that dominate this area - Lake Como and Lake Lugano, plus a whole lot of smaller lakes. Our route - Swiss 3 (Eurovelo 5) travels north, beside Lake Lugano. In the early part of the ride, I did manage some rather picturesque shots of houses on mountain slopes, and buildings in towns. Then when we drew abreast of the lake, three were some nice lake views. One main and long segment was when the road traversed a steep slope. The roadway was cut into the side of the slope. Below were waterfront houses, and above were view properties. At the level of the road there was not much level space, but it was mostly taken up by private parking for the houses above and below. At least one house below had a concrete elevator shaft just beside its little parking lot. We also spied at least one pool down there. A people who might now be able to afford a slice of cheese here, we were wondering how much these properties sell for!

There is only a narrow strip of development along the slopes descending to the lake

The buildings are looking just a little different from those in Italy

The road leading in to Agno had these useful red stripes for us.

The road did a lot of twisting and turning, so though there was really no shoulder for us we did not feel threatened by the cars, which had to drive and pass at reasonable speeds. At least, though, we were riding on pavement with fairly nice scenery (trees and fences often obscured the lake). When finally we came to the quite large town of Agno, though, things fell apart in a couple of ways.

The signage for Swiss 3 had been excellent, but near Agno it directed us down an indistinct dirt track beside a stream. Dodie checked the GPS, and the track showed the path on the other side of the stream. We went that way. After a while, that way deteriorated into a single track through some woods. We decided the earlier sign maybe had the right idea, so we backtracked, and went down the indicated rough track. From that point forward we had a mixture of rough track and/or industrial surroundings. Throughout was the sound track of the main road that heads to the Gotthard Pass. Very noisy.

Oh, oh, Swiss 3 seems to have ground to a halt

Cycling through industrial stuff, beside a big highway - not so pleasant

More rough track. Maybe we are not so keen on this route?

The forecast called for rain, so we checked Booking.com. Not only did it quote some fabulous prices - in thehundreds of Swiss francs, but it found little or nothing near us. As we entered the town of Taverne, I was sure it was the kind of place that should have an albergo. Yes, there was a sign for one at the entrance of town - though of course there was one only direction sign and no further guidance. I asked Booking about it. Sure, was the reply, but 270 swiss francs.

Ok, rain be damned, we headed for camping that we knew was around Taverne. The great thing was that we both found the camping and they had bungalows for rent, at 52 francs. That's where we are now. There is a sink, stove, and fridge in here, and power for the tablet. We have to get on our bikes to reach the toilets, but still its great. Also the manager spoke some German and some English as well as Italian so we could communicate better than usual. And get this, fruhstuck is included!

We arrived at our bungalow reasonably early. So we took the time to look at our brakes. Dodie in particular does not fancy descending the other side of the Alps with worn brakes. I pulled her fronts, and she declared them worn. Ok, new brakes for Dodie! I really appreciated the sink for hand washing, and the supplied soap that did a good job removing the road grime from my delicate hands!

At the end of today's ride - on rough track in industrial zones with only multi hundred franc places on the radar, we asked ourselves if we really wanted to be here. It turns out to maybe be a non issue. We had always planned to train over the pass, and the Swiss cycling website warns of a dangerous road section coming up where a train is also necessary. So maybe trains will end up jumping us to just beyond Andermatt anyway.

That's for tomorrow, though, which as usual - is another day.

Dodie's brake pad (left) compared to a new one.

A covered section by our bungalow door was the perfect place for bike maintenance.

Today's ride: 51 km (32 miles)
Total: 2,582 km (1,603 miles)

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