Switzerland: To The Moon And Back

Switzerland during spring and summer is a riot of colours. Lush green meadows dotted with flowering trees of every colour imaginable, sparkling clear turquoise lakes reflecting the azure sky which, come sunset, becomes a veritable smorgasbord of pinks, oranges and blues.

When I was pursuing my Masters in London, I had the good fortune of traveling to Switzerland once or twice a year to see my boyfriend. Most of those visits were during Easter break in spring so this was the only side of Switzerland I saw. Until last year, when I visited him in December.

It was a bitterly cold winter unlike any I’d seen during my time in London. The sun barely came out. On a rare weekend the weather seemed alright and some of us decided to go up to ski and sledge to Melchsee-Frutt, a ski resort in the canton of Obwalden around the centre of Switzerland, high up in the Alps. While I was excited to try sledding for the first time I was secretly dreading going up the mountains where it was about 10 to15 degrees below freezing.

After a journey of a couple of hours on trains, buses and a funicular that took us up the mountain, we finally arrived in Melchsee-Frutt. It was like being transported to a different world. At nearly 2000 meters above the Alps everything was covered in several feet of snow. No amount of literature, Bollywood song sequences or images could have prepared me for the sight of an undulating pure white landscape. I was hooked to the savage beauty of this monochrome world within minutes of arriving and barely even noticed the cold.

Next, we went to Grindelwald, a quaint old Swiss village near Interlaken, at the base of a ski track surrounded by several prominent peaks. The second was on New Year’s Eve across the country to Zermatt, a beautiful old town that overlooks the famed Matterhorn.

I didn’t think anything could possibly be more beautiful than European summers but if you really want to see something out of this world I’d strongly recommend a visit to Switzerland in winter.

The film follows a day of travelling out of the city to the mountains and back, albeit shot over multiple days and trips. It has visuals from all the three places I travelled to along with glimpses of beloved Zürich.