Seven of us were caravanning from Marseille to a small village in northeast France: 4 in what I call the Elephant (the world’s largest passenger van), and 3 of us in the Picnic. I was in the Picnic with AAA and Bell and we were following the Elephant.
It had been a glorious day driving through the French Alps, staring out the window in awe. AAA would entertain us with stories of dragons that hardened into the rock formations we were seeing. We would “hey cow” at all the cows that we passed by, (and all the while I was thinking, “Thank you, Lord, for that cow that makes all the yummy French cheeses I love so much.”) It was a grand ole time. Just what a road trip through the French Alps should be.
In the Picnic, we were marveling at the song selection AAA’s ipod had made, going straight from Waylan Jennings to Vanilla Ice. (Yes, you read that correctly.) He looks up from the ipod and says, “Bell, pause your story, please, and get our passports out. bettercountry, grab the car paperwork. I think we’re about to pass into Switzerland.”
Driving from one EU country to another is no big deal. You basically pass a sign that lets you know you left France and now are in Italy. But Switzerland isn’t in the EU. We knew that it would cost 30 euros to get a car sticker that would let us drive in Switzerland, and so we started scrounging for that amount of money. AAA started joking, “Well, officer, I have no idea who this car belongs to…someone just asked me to drive as I follow that Elephant in front.” I started wondering in my head if driving through Switzerland counts (within my rules) of having been to the country. I don’t count airports or training through. I say that you have to leave the airport (or car or train or etc), eat a meal, and see something touristy. So does driving through the country, seeing it (with the Alps being one of it’s main tourist attractions), and eating in the car count as having been there?
The Elephant in front of us pulled up to border control and spoke with the man working there. We saw JellyBean (who was driving the Elephant) point back to our car, and then the border control man stepped back and looked at our car. JellyBean paid him some money and then passed on across the border. We pulled up, and the border control man just waved us through. We knew that we needed a sticker to drive in Switzerland…so even if JellyBean had paid for us, wouldn’t we need to put the sticker on our car? Apparently not. (Or more accurately…we apparently already had the sticker on our window and didn’t know it, and the man had seen it, and thus waved us on through.)
So we drove through Switzerland…for hours. We passed Geneva. We passed Lausanne. We passed some awesome lakes. We saw the Alps. We saw cows. We “Hey-Cow”ed some cows—in French and English. We rolled down the windows and took in the fresh (cow-smelling) Alpine air. We turned the music up loud and had a great time being lost in Switzerland while the Elephant in front of us tried to figure out how to get us back to France. It was a glorious and grand time.
I still haven’t figured out if I can count Switzerland as a country I’ve been to…but since I’m going there for real next week, I figure it’s just a 2-week period that my country count is in limbo.
Marseille to Nice