WenkUSA

THE BEAUTY OF THE SWISS LAKES

Before I began to love and admire the many Swiss lakes I learned to hate them. Growing up near the Swiss border city of Basel I came to know the mighty Rhine River and many of the smaller rivers that flow into it. I liked the Wiese River most as it edged our village on its way from the mountains of the Black Forest to the Rhine. But there were no lakes close to our area. I may not have been aware that lakes existed, when my parents took me as a small child to the lakes and mountains of the Bernese Oberland.

I was not keen on going along. There were too many interesting places just in the neighborhood: friends, farms, animals, forests full of secret hideouts. Reluctantly I settled in the back seat of the car and went to sleep. For the next few hours my memory is almost blank. I distinctly remember being many times rudely awakened by my gentle mother who was under father's orders to make sure I would take in the scenery. "Ernstli, look at the beautiful lake! Do you see all the wonderful boats?"

Well, Ernstli was not much into lakes on this trip or anything else for that matter. I was sleepy and all I remember is being shaken because of some lake we passed and I was supposed to admire. Instantly after such unwelcome awakening I went back to sleep only the have the procedure repeated. At days end I still had no clue what a lake was or looked like. Nobody understood that I was tired and at this particular time not the least interested in any lake, Swiss or otherwise. I hated the trip and the lakes.

In my teens that changed. When I was twelve I went to my first summer mountain camp for boys. We hiked to many ice cold mountain lakes, some of them at the foot of glaciers, all of them fed by melting snow and ice. Soon after this camp I started to tour the mountain regions by bicycle, sleeping in tents and mountain cabins. With friends I bicycled and hiked through many alpine regions and when I had to enter military service I knew my country well.

For many years we explored every canton on bike. The lakes were some of our favored destination for fishing, swimming and boating. Still today, after many years I recognize some of the old roads that we used along the shores of Lake Lucerne, Lake Constance, Lake Thun, Lake Geneva, Lago Maggiore and others and many places did not change much. The traffic has increased a great deal but the beauty of the landscape has been preserved and is testimony to Switzerland's unsurpassed magic.

STORYTELLER: Ernst Wenk ( 1923 -- )