Always follow your nose | torment
My good friend Salomon, who is approaching 30 and whom I know from my military days, taught me one thing: when you get stuck in life, always follow your nose. No matter what happens, your nose stays with you and shows you the way forward, further into being good and happy. Curtain up!
In December of last year I decided to cycle from Untervaz in the Chur Rhine Valley to Tarifa on the Atlantic in southern Spain. It was a conclusion that matured over a few weeks and finally manifested itself in the following plan: I wanted to experience two thousand five hundred kilometers of road by bike within two months. There were also a few thousand meters of altitude. i am winter Sometime in the middle of December I was ready to leave and waved to the bereaved one last time from the saddle and then looked forward to an uncertain future. So I drove from Untervaz along the Walensee to Rapperswil, where I pitched my tent for the night at a rest area between the train tracks and the lake. A middle-aged Greek with a twinkle in his eyes stopped walking and we struck up a conversation. I felt as if I saw a new world. The Greek, who prepared menus as a chef in Davos and in posh Zurich restaurants, said the following, which touched me deep down: «Life in Switzerland is beautiful and good and very safe. The work is safe, the economy is not as bad as it is at home in Greece. But the Swiss are missing one thing.” For the readership, I note that it was December 2021, a time when the illegal measures and restrictions of our beloved Federal Council still applied. “The Swiss lack,” continued the Greek, “the sense of disobedience to a corrupt government. In Greece, the government and whatever else is part of the leadership of the country can be bought and the white population is dying. But here in wealthy Switzerland, people are not aware that their own government, despite all appearances, could also be bought and, to some extent, it is safe.” We still talk about this and that and at some point the Greek will continue on his way and on my first evening of the bike trip I cooked something that the Greek would certainly have cooked better.
It was a first encounter on this journey with a person who lives in a different consciousness. I still remember how happy I was not to be able to end the first day of the bike trip south to the warmth without talking to an unknown person. It made me feel like I was on my way to far away places and filled me with a quiet contentment. As I continued my journey the next morning, this feeling had settled in me. I had realized that it wasn’t landscapes that made life. First and foremost, it was the encounters with the people of this world that revealed the splendor of forest and meadow, waves and wind. The rest of my cycle tour took me through the city of Zurich, to Baden and to the nuclear power plant in Niedergösgen.
I set up my tent in a forest very close to the nuclear power plant. I felt uncomfortable sleeping in an area where there was a power plant in the immediate vicinity that, in the worst case, could contaminate the whole of Switzerland for decades or centuries. It was the encounter with fear that made this night special. I was thinking, what if… something happened at the power plant just tonight? Luckily, I was so tired from all the driving that a quiet indifference to “what ifs” predominated. Always following my nose, I was a reacting type of guy as things get better. So I stopped worrying and finally fell asleep content.
I don’t want to reveal every detail of this wintry cycle tour here, at least it was the end of it and I finally rode for two weeks from the Rhine Valley via Zurich, Solothurn, Biel, Yverdon-Les-Baines to Lausanne and finally to Geneva. The nights were cold and long. I lay in my sleeping bag fifteen hours a day. I had to, had no choice, slept in the tent all the time because that was what I had planned to do. And if I hadn’t spent this time in my sleeping bag every day, I would have gotten so cold that I would probably have hypothermia. I was constantly exposed to this winter cold.
It consumed me and increasingly took away my strength and desire to drive. Luckily for me it didn’t snow during these two weeks, but it was cold. And because it was cold and the days only had a few hours of sunlight, I had the following problems:
Toothache from being constantly exposed to the cold –> tooth shock from hot meals and tea –> even more intense pain from the subsequent cold -> personal stubbornness to always want to stay in a tent –> to stay in guesthouses, hotels and also AirBnB excluded for me, because I would not get tested for the corona virus, firstly to act according to my attitude and secondly not to feed this toxic system with my money.
The constant cold and the ultimate consequence meant that I dragged myself to a youth hostel in Geneva and quickly expected, without hope, whether an overnight stay would be possible without testing. To my surprise, I was able to spend the night there and was happier than I have ever been in my life. Imagine being outside in the cold with zero degrees during the day and minus ten degrees at night. Bathing in flowing water becomes hell. I was only able to warm up afterwards by lying in my sleeping bag for hours. Once I gave away four days of outdoor swimming because it was unbearably cold. I couldn’t light a fire to warm my body anywhere on my trip because, despite the lack of snow and downpours, the deadwood in the forests – everywhere from Zurich to Geneva – was wet.
It was a practical lesson for me to have to endure this cold and to doubt my will and my conviction because my body was visibly damaged by the cold and my soul quickly froze to death from the constant loneliness. Inwardly I already knew that this bike trip south to the warmth would not last much longer. I would have liked to get on the train in Geneva and take it to the Mediterranean Sea to get off there and continue on at a more pleasant temperature. But the French government forbids me, as a healthy Swiss citizen who has not been vaccinated against the mentioned and known C virus, to use French public transport. On Macron’s statement that he wanted to make life as difficult as possible for the unvaccinated citizens of his country (and obviously also for foreigners) (in order to persuade them, of course, to do something that they don’t want and by no means have to according to internationally agreed human rights), I will not go into this statement by the incumbent French President here, but I would like to have it mentioned. Perhaps Emanuel only meant well, just as he perhaps meant well in his attempts to mediate at the beginning of this year’s Eastern European escalation.
To get back to my bike trip: I finally crossed the French border near Geneva. It was a secluded lane connecting a tiny Swiss village and a still tiny French village. There was no border control there that checked me and would not have let me enter due to lack of vaccinations etc. The prospect of being in the country illegally for not complying with a single, unlawful and inhumane requirement, restriction, measure made me angry and at the same time very proud of my defiance based on my personal responsibility. I was fondly reminded of George Orwell’s book 1984 and how it might as well be titled 2022.
The night I spent near Bellegard sûr Valserine between the main road and the train tracks finally gave me the rest. The evening before the night I realized that my thick winter insulation mat had a hole and could not be pumped up. I couldn’t repair the mat with the glue that went with it because the temperature was too cold and the air was too humid. I knew it was going to be a cold night. What I didn’t know was whether I wanted to continue traveling by nose. I was so bitterly cold in body and soul that I decided that evening to decide where to point my nose the next morning. The fact that I could hardly speak French and was constantly exhausted from my bike trip and hardly able to communicate with my fellow human beings steered my decision in one direction. However, since I was and still am a very proud and consistent person, I didn’t want to give up after just two weeks. So I left my tent and, melancholy and lonely, walked down to the Valserine brook. The roar of the water was a blessing to my ears. I would have liked to have seen this environment in the colors of spring. How I would have dipped my head and body in this refreshing wet. And I would have loved to have pitched my tent here and stayed for a week. I wouldn’t do any of that. My nose was pointing home. I wanted nothing more to do with this cold and the loneliness I had to endure.
After 500 kilometers of cycling, two weeks of cycling, persistent cold and increasing loneliness (because I didn’t meet anyone else who was cycling with whom I could have exchanged views), I found myself one evening on the banks of the Valserine in Bellegarde, France determined to point my nose home.
This was the first decision I was likely to have the most difficult time making on my own and I finally came to the conclusion that it would also be the most sensible decision. Today, for me, cycling is just a form of transport, not a romanticized way of getting around. My winter bike trip took away the joy of cycling, but showed me that the soul can only keep up with the body on foot. I can now say with relative certainty that once in my life I dared to cycle under what were probably the most adverse circumstances (weather and social conditions) and that I don’t want to repeat this experience.
Finally, coming back to the title of this post: The travel advice “always follow your nose” may be useful in times of uncertainty, but when everything and everyone seems to be against you and you are too proud to recognize it, the nose, like mine, will be pointing home again very bare. Swarmed out in vain pride and returned home in a frozen shell and lost self-confidence. I don’t want to miss the time on the bike, but I don’t wish it back.