Traveling through Switzerland with SBB is the ideal travel,
seen from a tourist point of view. In a safety environment of the cozy, fancy
and expensive train-compartments, the tourist is able peacefully to contemplate
the idealistic Swiss landscapes. These landscapes look almost unrealistic as
they fit perfectly into the organized and super-clean urbanized areas where
usually tourists end up their tours.
Coming from a country where one of the prevailing nature
attribute is certainly wilderness, I always have problems to accept, with complete adoration, these perfectly organized landscapes. Not that I don’t agree
with the sense of proportion, where the ratio of the parts to the whole
reflects harmony. But, somehow, in perceiving the Swiss harmony, at the bottom
of the capture, there is a sad recognition that nature has been subjugated to humans. The submissive human influence, behind the idealistic Swiss
landscapes, is hidden, along the same analogy, as the tourist experience is
hidden behind the windshields of the train. I have the impression that Swiss
people (or should I say authorities) have designed the landscapes, so that they
can offer the perfect tourist product.
However approaching cities, the trip introduces the tourist
with the industrial areas of the country. These areas are somehow magically and
in a perfect balance with the rural and wild regions. I have never witnessed
such sense of balance in any other place of our planet. Approaching cities,
besides the urban seaside of smaller and bigger factories, workshops, shopping
malls or recycling stationeries, every city has its own gardening area. It is
an area highly regulated within the organized whole, as everything else. The
special thing about these areas is that I really, really love them. They are
the only space that I somehow perceive as authentic and free. With other words,
whenever I see them, my first immediate perception, translated into words is:
home! It looks like back home!
These areas are somehow part of the urban paradox. They are
restricted by fences, divided in small parcels, and they all belong to someone,
who I guess pays money for owning his/her private small garden. Yet, they
breathe with individuality, or one can say authenticity, that is not common to
see on other places in Switzerland. The love and dedication that each one of
these owners invests in his/her private gardens spreads the feeling of
something worth to enjoy it, much more than any perfectly organized tourist tour.
They all look similar, which is the repeating step, but at the same time they
are somehow different. This difference, again in a highly controlled space,
attracts attention, first of all because it radiates imperfectness. It shows
the naïve abilities of the owner to create its own garden.
The garden becomes an escapist project for each of these individuals,
which try to balance the necessity of modern everyday experiences in the urban
cities. These gardens, where the individual expression of the owner can cope
with the nature, mark the space as authentic. They are not typical for
Switzerland, situated at the margins of the prevailing vision of the
authorities, how to organize and sustain successful interaction with nature.
The most interesting parts of these gardens are the small
and unpresentable, noteless huts and national flags next to them. The garden
areas represent the essence of the marginalized groups of immigrants. Thus one
can see in space, smaller than a football stadium, dozens of flags from Mexico,
US, Spain, Albania, Russia, Serbia etc.
The garden parcels become national spaces of the immigrants. They
deliver the vital touch with the soil that gives the notion of connection with
the roots, one left in search for better life. Gardens become materialization
of the feeling of nostalgia. They are small, pleasant oasis nourished by owner’s
sentiments for the country he/she left. Paradoxically they are the most
beautiful part of the landscapes SBB offers me through the windshields, during
my rides from one city to another.
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