The Swiss Center

I took the train from Menningham and after a couple changes arrived in the beautiful Swiss village of St. Imier. Carrying my heavy load (no pun intended) I made it to the cable car station that took me up the mountain to Mont Soleil, and Dhamma Sumeru. The center basically consists of one very large old European style hotel, housing the kitchen, dining rooms, meditation hall, male and female residences, office, showers, and teacher's residence. The first four days I succumbed to illness and the weather got so absolutely frigid that I was wondering when it would snow, and the heating system actually had to be applied. I had a real mound of blankets on my bed!

Slowly I got better and was able to take on more server responsibilities in the kitchen. Our crew consisted of a smattering of nationalities: Belgian, German, Swiss, Slovenian, and a mad Frenchman whose antics still crack me up as I think back. The food was of a gourmet quality-- too good, I think-- with things like fresh salad dressing and dessert made daily.

After the course ended most of the server crew drove down the mountain into the valley of St. Imier, and hiked up the peak of the opposite mountain. It was a beautiful stroll through the alps, past the musical notes of a myriad of cows wearing giant-sized bells round their necks each emitting a different chord (students at the center are treated to this for the full ten days!) , and nice to be in such a relaxed and fun atmosphere with people you've been working hard with to cook and clean for ten days. After this a few parted ways to return home, and others of us returned to the center to do some preparation for the coming course.



With much planning and decision-making sankharas coming up, I ended up leaving Thursday for Italy. I took one of the most beautiful train rides of my life to the Italian border. I had to sneak looks through the window to enjoy it, for I was sitting next to an Italian girl from Sicily who had been living for some time in Switzerland, and spent most of these many hours going detail by detail into all the problems of the Swiss people and their land. From hearing her I found myself amazed the two countries still have amicable relations.

I arrived in Milano greeted by sweltering heat and overwhelming crowds. I boarded a train for Piancenza that was equally hot and overcrowded, the whole scene looking so shabby and startingly different from the exact neatness of the Swiss train. I sat next to an Indian man dozing with his shirt off. I found the bus that meandered into the Italian countryside, on which one young man had an increasingly animated conversation on a cell phone with what sounded like his girlfriend, dirty looks back by the passenger having little effect. When he finally got off(a young girl waiting by the side of the bus), the bus driver slapped him and yelled something at him-- welcome to Italy.

And so arrived at the Italian center a day before the Satipattana....