Mambo Italiano - Here we come Italy !!

Sometimes childhood dreams and memories come true unexpectedly as I always dreamed of visiting Switzerland and the day came when I was almost sixty to visit Switzerland and walked through this heavenly country. Like Switzerland, Italy too had been on my wish list since my childhood, a wish that sprouted by seeing View Master slides of Venice, Rome and Pompeii and of course the famous song  Mambo Italiano, sung by many artists including the famous Dean Martin, which my father used to play on his HMV gramophone - the days of 78 RPM vinyl records. 

Coming back to Italy, after staying two memorable days in Switzerland, we drove to Italy and headed for Milan or Milano as the Italians call it. Due to shortage of time as we had to rush back to Germany where my son was studying and had his exams coming,and could not got to Rome, Venice or Pompeii which I always wanted to visit and see the dreadful scenes of that horrible day when it was covered under volcanic ash after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. I will still make an endeavorer when I visit Germany next time.

Thus due to shortage of time, our visit remained restricted to Milan and a visit to the still leaning tower of Pisa. We desecrated from the lush green mountains of Switzerland covered with low clouds to the Italian plains - feeling an almost 180 change in temperature and landscape as Italy is devoid of vegetation and one goes on and one for hundreds of miles with barren landscape or scanty vegetation covered with dust. We were lucky that our hotel was very near the city center and made it easy for us to move about easily, though parking of car was always a problem. 

 

 

 

 

 

The roads in Italy are not as good as Germany or Switzerland - in fact after coming from Italy I do not lament about state of affairs of roads in Pakistan as I now find these much better than those in Italy. But despite all odds, Italy is a fashionable country where stores and malls are flooded with latest women and men fashion, clothes, bags and shoes. And Milan is famous for its fashion stores for its second richest city after Paris both in wealth and fashion. It is also well known for many international fairs, including Milan Fashion Week and the Milan Furniture Fair.

Soon after reaching our hotel and freshening up, we hit the nearest markets from where my wife bought a number of bags, a treasure she still cherishes. In fact the show cases artfully loaded with bags and shoes are so tempting that one cannot resist these and coming out of shops with more bags in hands than we had before. 

While my wife was busy looking for her tastes, my sons were looking for Italian pizza and we soon found a place and the cheese pizza we had was something I had never tasted like that before. I will talk about it in my next post. We remained on the roads and nearby places for as long as we could walk and enjoyed the first night in Milan to our best.

 

 
The orange ATM 1500 tram is an iconic symbol of Milan which zooms past and one has to be very careful when crossing roads

 

 

I do not know whether dirty dancing comes in the ambit of Mambo style of dancing, but when the Mambo Italiano was first sung, there certainly weren't dirty dancing and from today's standards, the mambo style of dancing was certainly very romantic and refreshing

Those who haven't heard of the song Mambo Italiano, can now click play and listen to this beautiful song starring once Hollywood's darling Sophia Loren:

I will talk more of my stay in Italy in coming posts - so don't go away!!

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Goodbye Switzerland

It has been a while that I last wrote about my Schengen Travelogue and could not continue writing about the rest of the countries and places I visited during my memorable travel a few years ago. In my last post, I wrote about the Zürich Film Festival which was our last destination in Switzerland before saying good bye to my childhood dream country and travel to Italy.

After two days in Switzerland, though we should have stayed a month there and I wished I could had it not been for the exams of my son studying in Germany to whom we had gone visiting, we left our motel in Lichtensteig, a small town some 57 kilometers due east of Zürich early morning and set our course to Italy - our next destination.

We got up early morning with a bright sunshine, falling on the contours of lush green hilly landscape, and packed up all set to leave, though really not wanting to. Before we moved out of the motel, I drank the last cup of hot fuming Swiss coffee while sitting in the motel balcony feeling the cool scented breeze and thanking the Allah Almighty for having afforded me to come and visit Switzerland - a heaven on earth indeed.

 My wife and boys posing  just outside our motel

 Filling up for Italy

 Spectacular view of Lake Zürich

 Lake Zürich behind, we preserving our presence for forever

 

 

 Don't hit the cows !!

The family selfie before we moved on to find the spectacular view of the Uri Lake to our right. I wish we had time to go down and had the ride in the steamer which we could spot from the above.

Uri Lake with its ocean blue and green hues was a spectacular scene watching it almost from the above. We could sail boats, motor boats wading through its blue waters while big steamers also sailed bye us and we could see tourists enjoying their sail - something of a life time remembrance. 

The photo below with sun rays peeing between the two mountain crest simply spellbound me. The photo did not come out as it was there right in front of me but is imprinted on my memory - something that can be described in words.

Skirting the mountain peaks obscured by clouds, we finally started to descend on our way to Italy. Those who have traveled by road from Switzerland to Italy would know a stark difference between the landscape of both countries. While Swiss landscape was lush green, captivating and refreshing, the plains leading to Italy were devoid of vegetation and landscape to enjoy. From then on to Milan, our next three-days stop in Italy was straight drive - looking front only.

 We entered Milan or Milano as they call in Italian with refreshing memories of Switzerland and looked forward to Italian hospitality, music and dances. 

But passing through Switzerland was not over yet - upon return from Italy, we again passed through Switzerland and Austria, though briefly on our way back to Germany. I will write about Italy in my coming few posts and going back -so don't go away !!

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Dream: These do come true one day

Dreams are always fascinating - these come to us while we are asleep and we see images, people or events happening even if we had never thought of these in our lives. sometimes we actually see real life events that later happen to our lives or have an impact on our lives. These dreams are involuntarily which may or may not come true,

But we also dream of things in our real life and hope these to come true one day. Usually these dreams or wants are on a higher pedestal of life that we are - which generally remain unfulfilled unless we make an endeavour to realize these.

When I was a child, I could not read the hands of the watch and wondered why there are number instead of hands for immediate reading and recording time. It was just a childish thought or a dream I never knew would one day become a reality when digital watches came and helped many children like me to read the time instantly.

Seeing places has always been my favourite day dreaming. and of all the places, I always wanted to see was Switzerland on top of my 'dream listing.' That was decades ago when I read a travelogue in which the writer described how he bought a cup of hot milk and Tobbler chocolate and drank while in the typical Swiss countryside with lush green meadows and mountains and a scented breeze blowing. Reading this I dreamed of being in Switzerland and drinking this heavenly drink.

Unknown to me how onne day things will move and one day my younger son, about the same age when I dremaed of seeing Switzerland, announced one day that he wanted to go to Germany for his higher studies. He convinced me and I let him go for I never wanted to stop his dream short of being realised. So of he went and one day the rest of us decided to go to Germany and visit him, never relaisng that one of my decades old dream was about to come true.

Once in Germany, a friend suggested that we rent a car and have a tour of neighbouring EU countries for which we laready had a valid visa. So we hired a car and set forth for a journey that also inlcuded Holland, Switzerland, France and Italy. 

Thus travelling we met a school days friend in Groningen, Holland after some forty years, went to Paris and saw the Eiffel Tower, the Arch de Triumph and Disneyland - it was as if all childhood dreams were unfolding into reality one by one. We went to Italy and saw the Leaning Tower of Pisa and then on to Switzerland.

My son had deliberately booked a motel some 60 kilometers from Zurich in the 'typical Swiss landscape with mountains in the back, with rolling down meadows and Swiss cow grazing. When we reached the motel, it was already dark and we could not see the landscape shrouded in the dark.

When the dawn broke, I sneaked out of the bedroom into the balcony and suddenly I saw something that I had dreamed decades ago. The lush green landscape with a heavenly scented breeze blowing with a clear sky criss crossed by airplanes going in different directions. While I was obsessed with the heaven I was watching, my younger son brought me a cup of sizzling hot coffee - an alternative of milk and chocolate but with the same background. I sat there drinking my coffee sip by sip and enjoying the realization of my dream - in the meantime my wife also came out, sat with me and enjoyed the scene I was already enjoying sipping my coffee.

 

Even till date I reminisce the drinking of the coffee and Switzerland landscape which I had once longed to  happen to. So don't stop dreaming - may be one day your dreams may come true without you knowing it.

You may also read one of my earlier posts linked to this post: Two days and two nights in Lichtensteig, Switzerland

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Zurich Film Festival - Our last destination in Switzerland

Our last destination in Zurich was the Zurich Film Festival - the annual film festival is held at the end of September and spills over to October. It attracts thousands of tourists from around the world, specially those already visiting Zurich - and we were one of them in 2014.

Festival centre at Sechseläutenplatz, Zürich

Young tourists and up-and-coming heroes of tomorrow posing

The festival focuses on the work of young up-and-coming filmmakers from around the world to promote their work. However, particular emphasis is placed on the discovery of new talent from the German-speaking world as German is widely spoken in Switzerland.


The Zurich Film Festival is held under the auspices of Spoundation Motion Picture GmbH in cooperation with local sponsor and international distributors and producers. The idea to create an international film festival was the brainchild of Karl Spoerri, who founded the festival together with Nadja Schildknecht and Antoine Monot Jr.. Karl Spoerri (Artistic and Strategic Director) and Nadja Schildknecht (Managing Director) are the festival’s current Co-Directors.

Each evening, the ‘Gala Premier’ section celebrates highly anticipated film premieres by established filmmakers in the presence of cast and crew. Both feature films and large-scale documentaries are presented in this section. The films are screened as world, European, German-language or Swiss premieres.

Poster showing some of the films being shown in the festival

Golden Eye Award is the main attraction of the festival - an award that also comes with 25 000 CHF cash prize (International Feature / Documentary Film) resp. a 20'000 CHF cash prize (Focus). The public chooses its favourite film from all of the competition entries by giving votes to every film. The best voted film receives the festival's Audience Award.

 The state of parking lots being displayed for the ease of drivers finding a parking lot

Zurich Film Festival night at the Zurich Opera House

Each year the Zurich Opera House wars a cloak of brightly coloured lights, dominated by the purples, to host the film festival. When we reached the arena, the guests were arriving amid big applause by the crowd gathered around the welcome shelter.

 Guests being received by Nadja Schildknecht, managing director of ZFF

 Nadja Schildknecht, managing director of ZFF and Swiss entrepreneur 

 Actors posing in front of the ZFF welcome board

The Golden Eye Award for 2015 was presented to the following films in the categories as shown below (Source):

• International Feature Film Competition: UNA NOCHE SIN LUNA by Germán Tejeira (Uruguay)
• International Documentary Film Competition: TOTO AND HIS SISTERS by Alexander Nanau (Romania)
• Focus: Switzerland, Germany, Austria: CHILDREN OF THE ARCTIC by Nick Brandestini (Switzerland)
• Critic’s Choice Award: SVENSKJÄVEL by Ronnie Sandahl (Sweden)
• Audience Award: ZU ENDE LEBEN by Rebecca Panian (Switzerland)
• Audience Award for Children’s Film: QUATSCH UND DIE NASENBÄRBANDE by Veit Helmer (Germany)
• Newly introduced Emerging Swiss Talent Award: Bruno Deville’s BOUBOULE (Switzerland)

The day at Zurich was really lovable and enjoying as we roamed the main streets of the city centre, spent a beautiful evening by the Lake Zurich and the day culminating at the Zurich Film Festival - a hectic day if I may say so. And definitely it was and we were dead tired by the time we finally settled for a few scoops of Swiss novelty: The Movenpick ice cream:

Thus our Swiss tour finally ended with the delicious Swiss ice cream and memories that would always remind us of being there - though for one day but carrying a nostalgia that keeps reminding of Switzerland till date.

Tomorrow we would be leaving for Italy's Milan and Pisa. But there was much more enroute to write on. I will describe the following events in my subsequent posts.

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