Lessons from last leg of Swiss trip

- When interviewing the CEO of Girard Perregaux, do not repeatedly refer to the company as “Gerard Depardieu” and then giggle at your own goof-up. After the first few times, he will not be amused.

- Too much greenery is boring. Give me the multi-coloured landscapes of the Scottish countryside anyday. Or at least the red (blood)-spattered greys of Delhi’s roads.

- The Swiss don’t play cricket at all. Soulless people. (Ok so I never did either. But at least I write about it.)

- (Courtesy Gareth Jones, disgruntled member of FT Switzerland’s marketing team) The place is obsessed with car parks and divests most of its resources in keeping them spanking clean - something no one else in the world does. “Bloody country must’ve started digging holes in the ground the minute Henry Ford announced assembly-line production,” snarled Gareth.

- You will rarely find value-for-money food here. Swiss food is low on quality. “They mess up even the pizzas,” Gareth lamented. “One would think a country that was so close to Italy might have picked up a trick or three. But no.”

- It is possible, even with summer not yet having begun, to swim in an open-air spa halfway up the mountains. (This is what I did at the Les Bains de Lavey resort 60 miles from Lausanne on the only evening of leisure we had on the trip.) Which brings me to another point: there is no such thing as a seriously cold place anywhere on earth. On four consecutive trips now (Scotland, Shimla, Bir and now this) I’ve been duped into carrying heavy woollens with me, only to reach the place and find that a T-shirt is all that’s required.

- Overenthusiastic young lads don’t always make good air hosts. Lufthansa has a fresh crew of rambunctious Indian boys who shout at each other across the aisles and throw beer bottles over the heads of startled passengers. When someone gets up to go to the toilet near landing time, they push him back in his seat, shouting so everyone can hear, “Sir, you will be responsible for MY DEATH and YOUR DEATH and the DEATH of everyone on this plane!”

- It’s one thing to promise your editor that you’ll file stories immediately after each interview, but quite another thing to type on keyboards in foreign countries, where all punctuation marks/special characters (and even some of the letters) are in unfamiliar places and can only be accessed by pressing down three or four keys simultaneously.

- Paper is heavy. We had to offload all our press material at the airport. Every last loving watch description. Which means I’m back in Delhi now with no stories and nothing to do but blog.