At Andermatt, the epicenter of the country where the Rhine and Rhône rivers surge icily out of their mountain fastness, the Milan-Zurich transalpini slice deep into the Gotthard mountains while hundreds of feet above them the Glacier Express cuts a series of terrifying switchback cog tracks on its vertiginous climb clear over the roof of Europe. It is hard enough to navigate these routes in a car, much less cycle or walk them. How on earth were they built? Who are these people?
My happiest memories are of Mürren. We first went there when I was eight years old: an unspoiled village halfway up the Schilthorn massif attainable only by rack railway or cable car. It takes forever—and a minimum of four trains—to reach the place, and there is little to do once you arrive. There is no particularly good food and the shopping is unexciting, to say the least.
The skiing, I am told, is good; the walking certainly is. The views—across a deep valley to the Jungfrau chain—are spectacular. The nearest thing to entertainment is the clockwork-like arrival and departure of the little single-carriage train that wends its way around the mountainside to the head of the funiculaire. The electric whoosh as it starts out of the tiny station and the reassuring clunk of the rails are the nearest thing to noise pollution in the village. With the last engine safely in its shed, the plateau falls silent.
In 2002, in the wake of an operation for cancer and a month of heavy radiation, I took my family back to Mürren. My sons, aged eight and six, seemed to me to experience the place just as I had, even though we stayed in a distinctly better class of hotel. They drank hot chocolate, clambered across open fields of mountain flowers and tiny waterfalls, stared moonstruck at the great Eiger—and reveled in the little railway. Unless I was very much mistaken, Mürren itself had not changed at all, and there was still nothing to do. Paradise.
I have never thought of myself as a rooted person. We are born by chance in one town rather than another and pass through various temporary homes in the course of our vagrant lives—at least that is how it has been for me. Most places hold mixed memories: I cannot think of Cambridge or Paris or Oxford or New York without recalling a kaleidoscope of encounters and experiences. How I remember them varies with my mood. But Mürren never changes. Nothing ever went wrong there.
There is a path of sorts that accompanies Mürren’s pocket railway. Halfway along, a little café—the only stop on the line—serves the usual run of Swiss wayside fare. Ahead, the mountain falls steeply away into the rift valley below. Behind, you can clamber up to the summer barns with the cows and goats and shepherds. Or you can just wait for the next train: punctual, predictable, and precise to the second. Nothing happens: it is the happiest place in the world. We cannot choose where we start out in life, but we may finish where we will. I know where I shall be: going nowhere in particular on that little train, forever and ever.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Preface
II - Night
PART ONE
III - Austerity
IV - Food
V - Cars
VI - Putney
VII - The Green Line Bus
VIII - Mimetic Desire
IX - The Lord Warden
PART TWO
XI - Kibbutz
XII - Bedder
XIII - Paris Was Yesterday
XIV - Revolutionaries
XV - Work
XVI - Meritocrats
XVII - Words
PART THREE
XVIII - Go West, Young Judt
XIX - Midlife Crisis
XXI - Girls, Girls, Girls
XXII - New York, New York
XXIII - Edge People
XXIV - Toni
ENVOI
XXV - Magic Mountains