What are we doing? May 7th, 2001 42nd Schweizerischer Zweitagemarsch Bern And then the start of marching season 2001 had _finally_ arrived. A very nice moment, for your average Wandelsoc.. And so three of us tore down to Bern, where, yearly, the Schweizerischer Zweitagemarsch is marched, through Bern and surroundings. We left somewhat early, because we a. needed some time to recuperate from the long drive, b. still had to register ourselves as partaking in the march, and c. wanted to look around Bern for a while. Thursday, May 3rd, 2001 - the trip to After Marco van Zijntergen picked me up at nine, he and I drove towards Utrecht at nine thirty, after an unsuccesfull attempt to procure an army sleeping bag for Chielie in Haarlem. In Utrecht we loaded up Schelden and on it went, in the direction of Germany, at high speed. All of this went smoothly, until Marco was not allowed to use his bankcard in the gasstation of a Raststätte near Karlsruhe - because it wasn't a German one but a Dutch one. Uncontrollably incensed over this xenophobia-in-times-of-European-union he blasphemed himself around the Raststätte buffet, where, other than that, we had a good meal and great coffee. In order to get into the atmosphere, we then slid Schelden's Zofinger-CD 'Schall und Rauch' (this is an album full of student songs, sung in Schwitzerduetsch, recorded by Zofingia Zürich) into Marco's CD-player, which turned its own volume up to ten at every bump in the road anyway, but at this particular moment in time got dialed to 'EXTREMELY LOUD' by us on purpose. Windows open (the weather was amazingly beautiful in these parts, far above twenty and brightly sunny) we drove into Switzerland at Basel. Here we bought an Autobahn-vignet (handy system, Marco can go sell beds in Switzerland for an entire year, where that is concerned), and raced on towards Bern. Always a strange experience, the effect of mountains on the human mind and on nature itself. Beautiful weather in Basel, but through the tunnel, thereby having passed under the mountain-range, suddenly greyish. Greyish, by the way, is an impression that, strangely enough, goes with Switzerland anyway, since it absolutely applies to, in particular, the industrial outskirts of cities like Zürich (where I had once been before, with my blasted ex) and Basel. The Swiss do not bother to wrap up industry in happy colours and un-industrial styling: industry is industry, and, as a passer-by, you will know so in a very efficient way. Apart from that, the 'vacuumed' pastures left and right of the road, omnipresent when leaving the Baselbiet, had a most calming effect on our minds, that were somewhat tired by now (this once used to be different for Schelden, who had after all studied theology in Bern for one-and-a-half years, and who had, in those times of poordom, been very annoyed at this hypocritically immaculate aspect of the surroundings). A totally different effect on our tired brains was effected by the Zofingia Bernensis. In the early hours of evening, around seven thirty, we parked the car next to La Blanche, the Zofingerhaus at Alpeneggstrasse 8. I should explain what Zofingia is. Well, this is a student union, founded by students from Zürich and Bern in 1819, in Zofingen, which is located between the two. And it is the student union that Schelden is a member of. Now there are a lot of unions like that, in both Switzerland and Germany, and although they are like the Dutch student corps in many ways (excessive drinking and singing are coupled with blustering ritual and beerpunishments) in other ways they differ from it greatly (they wear nineteenth century uniforms, including cap, sash, riding breeches and -boots, and in some cases are schlagend - which means they try to bash eachother's heads in with sharp swords by way of sport, and proudly wear the resulting scars). But Zofingia is the largest nicht-slagender Verein in Switzerland, and would never have become that would it not be an utmostly moderate club - as student unions go. This also showed itself in the reception they gave us. Not only were we practically drowned in beer, in between the multivoiced singing we were also intensively quizzed about Holland and the things we do in daily life. A pleasant company, interesting itself because of its mixed character (Zofingia has relatively many non-Swiss members, Schelden amongst them as said) and simplicity (there are ranks and classes, but both Fuxmajor Subtil (Yves Stucki) and Präsident von&zu (Pierre-André von Zeerleder) approached us, if not as honoured guests, then most certainly as equals), which, moreover, offered us free lodgings, without even a second's hesitation. A kind of hospitality that completely revived our weary minds and raised our spirits to great heights. And some lodgings too! La Blanche is a beautiful building, which, in a typical Swiss style, looks like a low bungalow-with-a-small-attic when you stand in front of its entrance, but turns out to have two respectably sized floors below that (with a large main hall and showers), on the side of the mountain it stands on. Also, half of it is inhabited by a non-student, Susanna, who, in exchange for a low rent, cleans it and takes care of the most elementary supplies. Utmostly comfortable, and more than I could ever have hoped for when participating in a multi-day march. Not to mention the fact that La Blanche sports a ve-ry nice balcony with a grand view of Bern. Bern, by the by, is a city of beautiful views anyhow. It's much like Luxemburg, in the sense that it, too, is built on two sides of a river gorge, is filled with buildings that ooze grandeur and is very international in the composition of its population, and to top that all off Bern also is a university town - which means, as it does in all university towns, hordes of tas-ty girls. But all this we only found out by the next day, naturally. Before that, all hell broke loose. Because when the Fuxenstunde ended, and the Zofinger left for a party somewhere, Marco was missing, all of a sudden. Because Schelden did not know where he was, I had to assume he had gone along to the party, and decided to go locate him there. Schelden did not like that idea, and wanted to quietly eat, have a drink and go sleep, but bowed to my 'we're in this together'-argument, and so we boarded a taxi and set out for the Gaskessel, where we had heard the party would be. The Gaskessel turned out to be a discotheque, which, moreover, appeared not to contain any Zofinger but for Botty and was most unwilling to guide Marco to the front door by way of the Tannoys, and so I exploded in anger and took a taxi back to my stone: the terrace of La Blanche. Schelden arrived there five minutes later and, because Marco was still missing, decided to go sleep, a plan that astonishes me to this day. And so I remained awake on the terrace, too drunk to succesfully remember the +31 prefix for Holland I needed to be able to call Marco, until he arrived there in great anger, having first brought his car to a halt with screeching tyres, in front of La Blanche. It turned out that Marco had asked Schelden repeatedly for an explanation of the local parking rules, fearing a ticket. This explanation being withheld by Schelden, he had left angrily for the ticket machine, after discussing the subject with David Ingen Housz, the other Dutch Fux. Upon return, five minutes later, everyone had disappeared, not just the Zofinger, but Henk and I too, and so Marco had gone tearing around Bern in a murderous mood. As soon as this story was clear to me, I concluded this was an unfortunate misunderstanding, aggravated by Schelden's well-known egoism. And so I spent the rest of that night until sleeping, plus the better part of next morning, in keeping Marco from immediately driving all the way back to Holland, and re-explaining that Schelden's selfishness is offset by his bizarre subservience and terminal funniness. Friday, May 4th, 2001 - enrolment day Successfully, thankfully, and in addition, Schelden did take the initiative to straighten matters out by talking to Marco, in the garden of the fine Beaulieu restaurant. Very good of him, and a weight off my shoulders, since I had come for that blasted march, not for bullshit like this. We decided to immediately phone one another in circumstances like the abovementioned, programmed the +31 before eachother's numbers on the spot, and then went to Wankdorf together, to enlist as participants in the Schweizerischer Zweitagemarsch at the stadium-grounds there. This was a breeze, and took me back to the familiar atmosphere of MESA and Dodentocht: large halls with barriers and wooden tables, displays of decorations and bizarre paraphernalia, many uniforms, lots of professional walkers and large quantities of tigerbalm. Great stuff, in short. After a quiet return to the Zofingerhaus by tram and a general refreshing exercise there (wonderful, to freshly showered sow shut the holes in the inner pockets of your overcoat while sipping a beer and looking out over Bern, from the terrace), Schelden gave us a great tour of Bern, stopping at Hotel-Restaurant Zum Goldenen Adler (where Marco and I shared a fine cheese fondue and Henk ate his coveted Kutteln mit Rösti) and ending up in the Altes Tramdepot (the Bern variant of Brouwerij 't IJ in Amsterdam, where we sat down at the Zofingia Stamm. This is an exceptional thing: in a 'normal bar', in this case also a highclass restaurant, there's a large round table, in which names+nicknames of the Zofinger who sit around it are engraved, until it is time for a new bar and/or a new table. This one wasn't full yet, but did already contain the name and nickname (Beatrix) of Schelden. Of course the purpose of the evening was an enjoyable and extensive binge, just like the night before, and with much the same Zofinger as the night before. This binge then took place, although we interrupted it ourselves, at eight o'clock. We, that is Schelden, Marco, DoeDeDeurDicht (Urs Kremer), son of Dutch parents, born in Bern, and I. And we interrupted our partaking in the Stamm to, outside the Altes Tramdepot, by the Bärengrabe (a zoo-pit with real, though at that moment invisibly sleeping bears, since they are symbolic of Bern, as the bear-with-beer is symbolic of the Zofingia Bernensis), remember those who had fallen for our Dutch freedom in WWII, in the way we are used to. Two minutes of silence therefore, followed by the singing of the first and sixth verses of the Dutch national anthem, the Wilhelmus. I must say, I sing those every year at that moment, but to have to do so in a foreign country for the first time, that foreign country being Switzerland moreover, this gives one a strange and gripping ambassadorlike feeling. As, Schelden told me later, was the impression of DoeDeDeurDicht who, being a semi-Dutchman, had never done this before. See, those are the touching benefits of it all. We had to drink to this of course, and so we outboozed the Zofinger. This, too, is a natural part of the ambassadorship towards a friendly nation, so much is obvious. Having said goodbye to them (not without having declared our hope for a speedy reunion, of course), and after Schelden had succesfully lured the waitress into a photo-opportunity, we also took the road home, which was followed by a quiet night. Saturday, May 5th, 2001 - first day of marching Which was torn to pieces by a horrible morning. Schelden's renowned refusal-to-wake-up manifested itself in an utmostly recalcitrant refusal to acknowledge a. the time as it was and b. the existence of our agreement to leave at such time. And so my morning was spent a. opening the door for a furious, starknaked Schelden who, having woken up with a start, had run outside to complain to Bern in its entirety about the fact that his mattress had gone missing (it had indeed been 'neatly stored' behind a few chairs by a reprobate, but we had already found out it was missing when we arrived home late at night, Schelden had slept without the thing, and sleeping was not what was currently required of him, he should get into his clothes and into Marco's car, goddammit) and b. waiting outside, by the car, with Marco, and with grinding teeth, until Schelden, raging at us that "we shouldn't be so shitty and come inside until he was ready" condescended to get into his Wandelsoc. gear and into that car. As soon as he was seated, stopping briefly along the way in order to allow Schelden to puke all over the pavement, we tore towards Bea Expo, where the first marching day began. And it was beautiful. Not only did we have deliriously nice weather (twentyfive degrees and sunny), but also the surroundings of Bern turned out to be much prettier than I had expected: the Berner Oberland looks much like the Ardennes. Flashes of MESA therefore, also because of the course of the march (in Bern, military police stops traffic at crossings just like in Belgium, and just like in Belgium, we thanked them for it at every crossing) and the participants in it (barring a gang of bald neonazis dressed in black, who, by the by, were welcomed alarmingly warmly in the peasant village at the first civilian stop-sporting-coffee, the field of participants, in atmosphere, was identical to that of the MESA). A brilliant marching day, in short, but for 1 thing: the signposting. Had the split between the routes for the 20 and 30/40km-distances been very clear, when we had passed all 'fortiers' at great speed (but for a few English teams who were far ahead of us), and were amongst the 'thirtiers', it turned out that the split between the 30 and 40km-distances was indicated by a very small signpost, in the grass at our feet, and we had missed this sign because a. our line of sight had been blocked by others, and b. nobody at that point turned off for the 40. And so, to our great dismay, we only found this out by the time we were joined from the right by an English team who had just completed the extra 10km-ellipse. Fortunately, the Swiss again proved sympathetic, and, upon our reclamation, offered us their sincere apologies, awarding us the punch-hole-for-the-missed-checkpoint anyway. Nonetheless, this whole thing was a disgrace to us, and it forever stains that one instance of the red-and-white. This blemish could not even be taken away by the extremely friendly Germans who, at the private stop they had intended for their own team, shared their food and drinks with everyone passing including us - although they tried, and we were very thankful to them for it. Other than that this was a great walk, ending in a fabulous bout of beerdrinking outside the tent in the barracks grounds, with UN-diplomat Jan, who's in flowers for the UN and lives next to Ruud Lubbers in Geneva. Great guy, big example to myself. Jan, that is. A man who believes in his ideals and cares not for those who think he pursues them in the wrong manner: be gone, thy windmills. Old enough to be my dad, but young of mind and heart. The day itself continued for some time, first with a short binge with two representatives of the Danubia-Studentenverein from Munich, a most teutonic (and schlagende) variant of Zofingia, whom we met in the stadium grounds and whom Henk had invited to La Blanche, then with a great dinner, at the foot of the hill, in the greatest eatery the city of Bern, to my mind, has to offer: Neal's. This used to be called Wendy's, and it is a fa-bu-lous place: the Swiss idea of fastfood. This means you can not only get your average BurgerKing-stuff there, but you can also, in real fastfoodform, get rösti, chili con carne, tacoes and roast potatoes with six different fillings, and that there's a full salad bar there (selfservice-after-payment, 'small' or large plate, helping to your liking). You can eat there every day, without it ever becoming one-sided or unhealthy. Fan-tas-tic is a definite understatement. Finally, we had drinks in Jack's Brasserie, the café that goes with Hotel Schweizerhof - this is what you might call the Americain of Bern, visited by celebrities like Ella Fitzgerald, whose names are engraved into small copper plates in the backs of the seats. And the service is impeccable. Sunday, May 6th, 2001 - second day of marching On Sunday morning Schelden unexpectedly turned out to have learned from the previous morning, and so he was ready to go in time, making us arrive at the appointed hour for the start of another fine marching day. The weather was a little less fine, overcast and twenty degrees, but it was dry and we put up a constant brisk pace which, after an utmostly pleasant punishing march, of a full forty kilometres this time, brought us to the finishline at Bea Expo. That finish, being used to the masses of Bornem, Vielsalm and Nijmegen, was somewhat humiliating, but no less glorious for it. By glorious I don't mean for ourselves. Well, it was too, of course, but that's not what it's about. What's nice about these finishes, is standing at the finish yourself, and applauding the people who had a harder time getting there than you did. Take, for instance, the Zürcher Verkehrskadetten, marching in bright orange uniforms, whose (young) girls had great trouble finishing the march, but were supported in a wonderful way by their male (and older) colleagues, who literally took them by the hand and coached them on. Beautiful things, agreed Capt. Pat Badder, ex-SAS, of the Vehicle Specialist Training School in Gloucestershire, whom we met with his team in the beertent. Great conversation followed, ending in a principal accord to sometime go visit the grave of his great-grandfather together. The man died during the battle of Arnhem, and Pat has never actually been to the grave yet. This, apart from fraternization with for instance German soldiers and the solidarity that marks the harder moments, is what these marches are about for me, folks - being able to thank persons like these for something that is beyond my comprehension: the fact that others died for my, read our, personal freedom. That Schelden proceeded to dance on the tables with an American, a Swiss and a British soldier could therefore only enhance our joy. And when we enjoyed our evening meal at Neal's, after Marco had woken Schelden from a short sleep with a terrine of cold water ("Schelden, if you don't get up I shall have to take measures. Will you get up?" "No, because I want to share the sentiment, eh" "Then this is the sentiment I wish to share *splash*"), we completely agreed on the fact that this was what we had been waiting for, troughout the entire Crossing Borders from Border to Border. And for me even my new series of nicknames (amongst which 'flasher' took the prize, only just beating the nickname that returned for the same reasons it originated for at the MESA, 'Le Matrix') could not do harm to that conclusion. Monday, May 7th, 2001 - the way back And all during the next day, which Marco and I started off with a wonderful breakfast in Schweizerhof (wonderful not least because of the insanely beautiful English-speaking lady across from us), this remained the dominant impression for all three of us: we had immensely enjoyed ourselves, and we will return. We thank the Swiss, thank the Zofingia (whom we sent a card that arrived back before we left and could thus be affixed to the notice board in the hallway of La Blanche by ourselves, that's Swiss postal efficiency for ya) and thank Susanna (whom we provided with a bouquet made up in rot-weiss-rot before leaving). The journey back, by the way, was eventful in itself. Because we didn't really feel like barrelling down those German autobahns again, after a short sentimental visit of Schelden's to the Universitätsbibliothek, we opted to drive back via Luxemburg. This was smart in itself, but to drive there via the French city of Metz was definitely not, since you end up on one of those blasted toll roads, having to stop every twenty clicks at one of those 'border posts' put there for pure blackmail. Exasperating arrogance. When will those French take an example from the Swiss or Austrian systems? Well anyway. Thankfully we enjoyed a marvellous meal at Café l'Académie in Luxemburg City, the fine establishment where I had also had dinner at the end of my south-German holiday with drs. Denzler sometime last year, and ended the whole shebang there, with a sturdy drink in a bar sponsored by Bofferding. This was definitely worth the late hour of our arrival back home (4 am, after a devilishly fast drive back, in 3 hours, by Marco). To your health gentlemen, excellent walking there. Bern is ours. Diekirch awaits.