Category Archives: me

Feb 25 2012

Jungfrau – the Swiss mountain train

If you haven’t been following previously, I took a break from my normal charity IT work in Israel to visit my friend in Switzerland and taking advantage of cheap flights that make landlocked central European nation a good stopping point in between coming back to Israel.

The railway that goes to the Jungfrau is an interesting one, not quite as radical as the Funicular railways, but this system is made of a mixed type trains for normal linear track and hill climbing, I walked about 3 miles to this station, and asked in the office for getting to the Jungfrau which is the highest mountain in Europe.   Had to gasp and almost walked away, as it turns out this was the most expensive railway journey I have been on, 186CHF, which is about £130.

This ordinary railway stops halfway up at a stop called Wenger, then you change trains onto whats known as a cog railway, the carriages are quite spartan, they have wooden seats, probably because people are carrying skis and equipment with snow or moisture on them, and the interior of the train has to be durable to cope with this.   The train has a third rail in the middle not for power (this is done by overhead wires) but is actually a ‘toothed’ rack, I think this provides better traction for the train to go up hill.

Second stop, halfway up, is the ski slopes of Grindelwald.

I realise now, was a kind of bit jealous of not being able to do any skiing after seeing so many people having fun whizzing around the slopes here, the path with the blue sign above it, is a slope for new beginners.   It seems that like yachting or owning a horse, skiing is one of those expensive hobbies out of reach of a lot of us, as well extra payment needed for an actual ski pass, the equipment, (renting it, or shlep your own gear around with you) and very necessary insurance as well of course.

There seems to be a helicopter permanently hovering around the slopes with someone keeping an eye out for anyone that could of had an accident.

Normally the Swiss are polite and civilised sort of folk, although I think the driver of this sweeping type vehicle is deliberately clumsy with the spray of excess snow to any tourists not paying attention!

From right to left, a small skidoo (for the kids?), a nice clean snowplough (the Mrs? :) ) and one that’s been out busy! (driven by a chap I think)

  

A few amusing sites to be found is the teepee shaped bar which I think its fab!! its also nice and warm inside!

On the right, is a place where you can get German style bratwurst sausages, notice the bottles of sauce are upside down attached the chains!   I wondered how concerned the owners is about theft of condiments or people making a mess to have this kind of setup!

To be honest finding which trains and where I needed to change was not at all simple, it was only from asking a chap on the carriage when I left the first station, who was a British gent who comes here every year did I get to understand where to get the right train to get up the top of the legendary mountain.

Right: the Swiss are fun and outdoorsy, but like their peace and quiet in the evenings, this poster is a reminder to foreign visitors I think!

This oddball vending machine lets you lock your skis whilst you pop in for a beer, with a non-refundable 2 CHF coin.

Next: the strange hidden complex of tunnels inside the Jungfrau mountain….

Feb 23 2012

Can we overload prayers to help our Christians brothers and sisters in Iran?

Following recent news that the Iranian Christian Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani held in a prison had been sentenanced to death, I decided to email the Iranian embassy politely in the UK to tell them how angry I was with this decision.   Hes been offered leniency if he rejects Christianity and takes up Islam, which he has refused to do so.

http://aclj.org/iran/execution-orders-issued-pastor-youcef-nadarkhani

A while back the UK embassy in Tehran was broken into and looted.   I don’t know if there are many people in the UK office doing any administration.   Sounds like a tough job trying to do PR for a company that flaunts the ability to destroy another neighbouring country by saying they will “wipe them off the map”.

I looked in the spam folder of my email and saw this today, their mail server rejected my email as their mailbox is full.

I wonder if this means that lots of Christians (or indeed anyone upset by this decision) have emailed the Islamic republic’s UK operations and overloaded their mail system.   Or maybe their IT systems are just are rubbish as their human rights.

Of course, if this many people were praying for this man’s release and safety, without compromising his life with Jesus, you can’t pray too much, my loving God has infinite capacity for requests to him.  I hope all Christians feel compelled to pray to see this innocent man’s wife and children get to see him come home safely.

Feb 6 2012

Funny funicular railways and scaling the steepness with God

Getting around Switzerland on trains is rather jolly, quiet, civilised and very enjoyable.

Given extreme terrain in places, a few more radical solutions are needed to get to certain locations.

I haven’t really heard of a funicular railway before, until I saw this one.   Funnily enough, this one was shut until the evening for some reason.   The other one I saw in Interlaken was completely closed for maintenance.

They look a bit like something from a theme park.   I will be honest, I don’t really like theme parks, they always seem contrived, and don’t like deliberately getting on apparatus to deliberately make myself sick and dizzy.   This is way better though!

Onward to the French speaking city Vevey, the place where milk chocolate was invented, where Charlie Chaplin spent his retirement and the HQ of the global overlord food producer Nestle.  As Montreux is just 8kms or so away, and I thought I would walk as it was a pleasant sort of day.   Is this a bus or a tram?   It seems to be both!!  Just as long as the driver doesn’t steer too far away from the overhead wires I guess it works well.  Look closely and the bus’s signage shows ‘Desert’ which is kind of odd here!!

Vevey, Lusuane and Montreux are the French speaking neighbouring cities on a hill over looking a lake Geneva, so the roads can be pretty steep, needing to be negotiated in a zigzag fashion.  These fruit trees seem quite common in this city, I think they are apricots.   There is a English Anglican church at the foot of the hill which I was surprised to see.

I was quite pleased to find one of the funicular tracks that just goes briefly between two stops;

 

This completely bonkers mode of transport is great!!  The rail car that goes up is completley autonomous, there is no driver or any other staff, in fact no staff are to be seen at all, my ticket was bought from a vending machine, and there is a large screen with the times, and an alarm sounds when its ready to leave and the doors open and close by itself.   Just a winch and a computer system seems to control the whole operation, probably just one very bored guard somewhere checking over it.   Someone has thoughtfully made the seats in the train heated which is great during the harsh winters here.  I would guess that the trains may have to specially designed for particular gradient of the hill maybe.   The steepest one in Switzerland goes 48 degrees!

Looking back, about half way along, you can see a lovely view of Lake Geneva, the ride is no longer than about 3 minutes, there is another car travelling the other direction, and the single track forks into two briefly and merges back, allowing a simple pass.

The short journey reminded me of some things happening for me at the moment, often we are up against a steep gradiant, with my time doing volunteer work likely to end in the spring, I am keep wondering what I will be doing back in the UK.   I need to find a new job,
new place to live and a new church.  At the moment I enjoy the work I do, the church I have here, the friends from dozens of different countries, I will need to go back to earning a regular wage again, and readjusting to life in post-recession UK and being a single chap in my mid 30s its hard to get an understanding what this year will hold, it all seems massively overwhelming.

My life with Jesus has meant that he has provide me with a way to conquer all kinds of enormously varied challenges so far.  But like this unorthodox transport system this is one of most hardest to try and fathom.  Here if I didn’t see this special railway, I wouldn’t of guess scaling this kind of hill would be impossible, but the Lord seems to provide when no tangible solution is in sight.   Up here you can quickly jump on another traditional railway system running parallel with the other line by the lake.   It was nice that it started to snow up here too, only for a short time though, I just had to stay under this shelter for about 5 minutes.






Feb 4 2012

Jerusalem in fog

Clouds again.  Having this low that makes part of the city invisible was a strange sight to see on the way to work over a week ago on a monday morning.

from Matthew 24 : 30 

And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the SON OF MAN COMING ON THE CLOUDS OF THE SKY with power and great glory. 31 And He will send forth His angels with A GREAT TRUMPET and THEY WILL GATHER TOGETHER His [t]elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other.

Clouds seems like a perfect way for our Lord Jesus to make a stage entrance back to this city, ok it wasn’t the right time last week, but its still quite a bizarre sight and it did mean we had plenty of rain in the last week of January.


Jan 28 2012

The town of Interlaken and the Balmer’s Herberge

Getting back to the magnificent Basel railway station, I was looking forward to this train which was taking me to Interlaken, a small town of just 5’000 ** in the middle of the country.  Having high homes that this ride would meet up to the high standards that Switzerland is famous for, I was a bit shocked that train was made of 45% standard carriages and 45% first class, this meant there was hardly any people traveling in the highest class seats, and not enough seats for regular passengers, this left a lot of people standing up and lot of large cases and ski equipment in the corridors.   In someways I wished I left earlier as it would of been nice to get see some scenery out of the train windows.

<<** the Swiss like to use slightly different grammatical symbols than the rest of Europe!>>

The remaining section in the middle of the train was the dining car and kitchen, so I snagged one of the last seats there and got a tea from the counter there.

After a couple of hours, I arrived in Interlaken, it was dark by then, and really difficult to figure out the terrain, just some ghostly black shapes in the sky which I found out the next day were mountains.

This hostel is great!  It takes its name from Eric Balmer who is something of a local maverick and entrepreneur in getting Interlaken one of the most famous hostels in the country and an adventure capital, this attractive traditional wood style building has everything needed to be a base point for a big adventure in the Alps.   Mr Balmer’s face appears on lots of pictures around the hostel showing him meeting famous people.   The hostel is made of 3 separate buildings with the main hotel and a (presumably purchased later)  annex with more rooms and big dinning area, there’s also a basement bar and dancehall under where I am standing, but it seems nice and quiet in the rooms which is good.

Interlaken is quite an apt name, as its between two different lakes.   As a small quiet town its nice when you go walking, everyone you meet will say “Gruezi!” (a Swiss type of greeting I am not sure of meaning but not used by Germans I think)

The town looks efficient, neat and orderly like everything Swiss, but make no mistake, this is not a boring place!   As well being a gateway to the mountains for skiing and snowboarding, there is also loads of other outdoor sports, a rental shop for ski hire is just a couple of doors away from the hostel, and these little cars can be hired from another place across the road.  If you take a close look, the yellow ferrari ‘prancing horse’ is actually a Swiss cow standing on its back legs!

As well as these logs stacked by the side of the ride, and the unmistakable charming style Swiss wooden houses, everyone seems to have a shed to store plenty of firewood for the harsh winters here.

I was pleasantly surprised that the local churches make the effort to advertise themselves to foreigners visiting Interlaken, but I wasn’t around to visit this place.

This wooden house (I think its a school) has a biblical message painted onto the timbers.  Its nice that Christianity seems part of the fabric of the community for a long time and still today.

Of course, Interlaken is completely surrounded by mountains.   These snow dusted mammoths are all around.   Not only that, but the ones in immediate view have ones behind exponentially larger, requires some specialised transport to get there.   As well, the whiter peaks blend in with the sky and clouds in an incredible way.

I found the vast beauty of the mountains show God’s work as something thats hard to comprehend from the ground, let alone see it from a web site, post card or brochure.   This is a place thats impacted my spiritual life like Israel has.

Next, train to the highest peak in Europe...

Jan 22 2012

New Year 2012 in Basel and cheese

 

Outside the very modern and comfortable YMCA in Basel.   I hooked up with two other chaps from here, one is from Argentina and one is Chinese.

Just about 11pm, New Year’s Eve, this church had people on a balcony doing playing brass instruments for a while, then there was a church service at 11.30, instead, we headed down to the river.   The city was treated to a pretty nice fireworks display which lasted about 20 minutes, some of the pyrotechnics were coming from a different direction from some distance away, maybe from France or Germany which are only less than a mile away from here.

Had a bit of a sleep in, although didn’t actually drink the night before, took a wander down for breakfast, my new friends were not there, as they were heading to Italy.

This was part of breakfast in the canteen type area :)   Actually only 2 small pieces of cheese were laid out at a time on the table, as if people might of been pinching it and putting in a bag for lunch later.

Later I got to head to my good friend Matthew’s house for lunch, he introduced me to Raclette for lunch…

Raclette is cheese put in a small purpose designed table-top grill in small metal shovel type things, once melted your scrape it off onto your plate and serve with potatoes and other vegetables.   I was warned that non-Swiss people tend to not able to eat that much, he was right, I had 3 and half pieces, I was full, I guess eating cheese with the Swiss is like trying to playing drinking games with Russian people!

I got on a tram back to the centre of Basel and walked to the Youth Hostel to pack my things and get a train to Interlaken, a small town surrounded by the Swiss Alps.

More soon…

Jan 15 2012

Switzerland – the old city of Basel

A little bit later I will finish writing about the lively church in Nazareth I got to visit.

Meanwhile I took sometime out after flying to see family at Christmas, I wanted to do something different for New Year, the 1st of January is a non-event in Israel, and I am bored with the drinking culture in UK, as Basel is reachable by Easyjet from Luton, UK and I can get back to Tel Aviv via Geneva, I thought it would be a good opportunity to see my good friend Matthew who is a Swiss Christian who was studying Hebrew and going to the same church in Jerusalem, last year.

Railways in Switzerland are probably the best anywhere, this one is a palace in itself with attractive paintings on the walls, escalators and nice shops, and generally an accurate representation of Switzerland’s precise and efficient approach to everything.

There are lots of museums in this country, this one is meant to be the smallest in the world, I am not sure if its just a window of stuff or if you can go in.   I didn’t get time to visit any of the other ones which was a shame.

Basel is a truly beautiful place.  This was my first visit to Switzerland, so I was really looking forward to it, its quite different from Germany even before I got near any mountains, its like they have a German attitude to efficiency and engineering and use the French and Italian influence for design flair. :)

I like the mix of oldy worldy shops and modern retail places too.   Watches are a big thing of course, as top brands in fashion too.  Funny thing is, I didn’t see any places boarded up, so the recession hasn’t affected Basel, or the Swiss are good at quickly dressing up defunkt businesses with different signage, unlike UK and the US!

This shoe place is a worth a mention for its amusing name :D

It is kind of horribly expensive, I went to Starbucks and paid CHF7 for the cheapest coffee, (1 Swiss Franc is almost the same as a US Dollar at $0.96)

I got to see my friend speak at a very old (400+ year) church and also another congregation who meet in a plain looking office type building too.

In town I came across a large and big Synagogue, which its own 24 hour security guard.   Normally you can go in there to visit, but it was shut over Christmas (!) as the security office wasn’t manned during the holidays.

My friend drove us to the outskirts of the city to see overhead from a hill.  There is an odd layer of fog over the city which is not that visible from the photo, Basel I think is just above sea level unlike the mountanous parts of Switzerland I visited later.

This was a tall old folly or castle which was about equvilant of a 4 story building, Matthew kind of gets a bit crazy standing up here!  I think contrary to Swiss being supposedly boring running banks and financial institutions, they treated the rugged parts of their country as a playground for skiing, snowboarding and lots of other outdoor sports they like the live dangerously!   and yes, they eat a lot of cheese and chocolate. :)

Although this might not seem in regular theme of my blog visiting bible places, this country gave me some interesting perspectives on my spiritual life, which I will explain soon…

Jan 11 2012

Return to Nazareth – 5. The replica village of Jesus

Ok the apartment blocks in the background don’t really ‘go’, but this is a garden is part of the museum with plenty of olive trees, is intended to show the outdoors to the visitor of being a neighbour of Jesus.

This actor is demonstrating looking after a flock of sheep and goats.

This tomb is quite a lot like the Garden tomb in Jerusalem, this one is a recently made mock up made to look like what a wealthy Jewish person would of pre-booked whilst they were still living, just like Joseph of Aramathea.

The carpenter’s workshop.   Here there is a selection of tools you often see by tradesman today, not shown is a drill which is a bit unusual as it requires the string to be turned using this bow type instrument to drive to tool into the wood.   Of course wood is relatively scarce in Israel, so some theologicans think that Jesus and his earthly stepfather Joseph actually did a lot of work with stone as well.

In another room, a local woman is spinning wool, and demonstrating how wool is dyed to get different hues.  Onions, pomegranates are used to get oranges and reds here.  The bible talks about rulers and rich people having clothing  of certain colours being a thing of expensive taste.   I learned today that wool with a violet or purple hue is made from certain types of sea-snails that had to specially imported which were costly to buy.

In a more recent (January 2012) conversation with the staff of the museum, I was sad to hear that the museum had be broken into and badly vandelised at the end of last year, there are still grafitti on some of the doors.

I will be honest, and say I was a bit silly and thought this building was a bath house!  Its actually a Synagogue!   Worshipers sit on the simple stepped seating that covers all around the room.  The front of the building is very plain without much decoration. I know there are some grander looking holy places from the same age, just look at Capernaum, but here Nazareth was a very small village back during Jesus’ time.

Its interesting to think, after the highly decorated design of the Basillica Catholic Church in Nazareth’s main city, that this is a much simple design of building where Jesus would of given his teachings then.

1. The Fauzi Azar – 2. The uglier sides of Nazareth – 3. Welcoming the king with palm leaves? – 4. Looking for the Jesus village – 5. The replica village of Jesus – more soon…

Dec 18 2011

Return to Nazareth – 4. Looking for the Jesus village

Back in the youth hostel I asked the staff how to get to the Jesus village, a place I missed out on previous trip, they very kindly phoned up the museum in advance, and told me I had to get there quick to not miss out as there was only one more guided tour left that day.

To get there, I had to follow the purple dots painted along the walls, this was quite fun actually, a sort of biblical follow the yellow brick road, hunting the painted on dots through the maze-like paths around Nazareth’s old city.

As you may have already seen, Nazareth’s tightly packed collection of houses closely resembles Jerusalem’s old city, its like no two houses are a like, completely unlinear in their shapes, sizes, with different steps, roofs, balconies.  I think this is a small mosque in between some ordinary houses, as it has this dome with unmistakable crescent ontop.   Theres a sort of odd mix of extensions and alterations on top of ancient houses!

At one point it took me through this Islamic cemetery.

After a few more narrow alleys, I got to a main road, and it was here I found the entrance to the Jesus village.

As you can see the car park is made big to cope with a volume of tourist buses that come often here….

Like the aforementioned following the brick road idea, I was concerned that the wizard, or in this case the intended representation of Christ’s home town may be a disappointment, but actually this place was very well done….

1. The Fauzi Azar – 2. The uglier sides of Nazareth – 3. Welcoming the king with palm leaves? – 4. Looking for the Jesus village – 5. The replica village of Jesus – more soon…