Yverdon is a typical Swiss town. Cobbled roadways run through its centre, there’s a church with spires, a town hall with an intricately decorated clock that competes with the church bells every quarter of an hour for air space and there is of course your standard medieval castle. 

It’s set just back from lake Neuchatel, the Jura mountain range behind it and the Alps in front. Its claim to fame is the natural warm springs that the hospital has been built around, thus the name, Yverdon les Baines. We haven’t ventured into the hot springs yet but have heard both the old and frail frequent them, offering relief and aiding in the healing process.

 

When we first arrived the days were still short and freezing. The temperature often didn’t get above five and it started to get dark at four thirty in the afternoon. The town in the late afternoon and early evenings was like something from a long lost elfin kingdom. As the sun disappeared the Christmas and New Year fairy lights, that were still strung down the streets and stretched from the town hall to the church, came on. Everybody, except for the crazy Australians, headed home to warm houses before the lights had a chance to twinkle. But it was the lights and cold air that kept us out. We stayed and wandered, down the quiet streets, staring in the windows that were still full Christmas displays. The florist shops were my favourite, holly and ivy, red berries and wood twisted into reindeers, tied into the shapes of stars.

 

But we weren’t tourists anymore. Late nights didn’t work for the kids school routine and children who were cold for too long meant we ended up with children that had snotty noses. Days off school were not something we wanted this early into the routine.

 

By the start of the second week Pete and had I started our French classes, squeezing them in around the strict taxi timetable that we had to keep for school pick up and drop off times. The pace was frenetic and we wondered how long we would be able to keep it up. At least to start with though, we had the excitement of being somewhere new, of living somewhere so different to home and the fascination of the French language to propel us along.

 

Both Pete and I were determined to take the French in to our everyday living and speak as little English as possible to the people we encountered, teachers, shop assistants, neighbours, from the very beginning. Of course at the start it was almost impossible. Even though we were managing to string a few more words together than when we first arrived, we had the problem of a very heavy Australian accent, me, according to the many who couldn’t understand me, much more so than Pete. It was very frustrating when you knew you had the right word but just weren’t able to twist or flick your tongue in a way that would make it sound acceptable.

 

There was one time in those first few weeks when Poppy and Kai had nits. I had innocently thought with all the cold weather over here that nits wouldn’t be an issue. I thought for sure the pesky little creatures would need a bit of heat to get them going, but apparently not. I tried to treat the nits myself with hair conditioner and the finest comb I could find but was having minimal success, I needed the right tools, a proper nit comb for starters. This meant braving a pharmacist and trying to explain to her in my broken French that my kids had nits. Not only was there the language problem but there was the whole cultural thing as well. I mean the Swiss are a pretty neat, tidy and fastidious lot. I was surprised that they hadn’t come up with a way of stopping nits at their boarders. What if the word nit wasn’t even mentioned here? What if you were supposed to suffer in silence and sort it out yourself? What if the last thing in the world you would ever do here is march into a pharmacy and say you needed a treatment for nits? And anyway how the hell do you say the nits in French?

 

I waited until I was in a particularly brave mood; a day full of confidence and courage and then found a small pharmacy right in the centre of town with no other customers in it. I took a deep breath, walked in and went straight up to the counter. To my relief a young girl, probably in her early twenties, came out from the back room to serve me.

 

‘Bonjour Madame?’ She said and then added on a few sentences that I didn’t have a clue about, but assumed she said something along the lines of, ‘Can I help you?’

 

I launched into the spiel I’d been reciting over and over in my head outside on the street.

 

‘Avez vous une treatment pour les petites animaux que habite les cheveux?’

 

The girl behind the counter looked at me a bit anxiously, like she was worried that she might have to come and grab me by the elbow and lead me outside. I started thinking ‘OK, so nits are not the sort of subject you can just bring up here.’ And then I was sure she was looking at my hair searching for little animals, maybe she’d misinterpreted the whole ‘petit animaux’ thing and thought I had sparrows or baby squirrels in there. Then, she said in perfect English with an American/French accent, ‘Do you speak English?’

 

‘Yes,’ I said and thought, ‘Is it that obvious?’

 

It turned out that it was OK to talk about nits in the land of everything nice, and that yes, children over here, like children everywhere, do get nits. It was a relief when she handed over the fine toothcomb and bottle of poison to finally have the right weapons in my hands to fight against ‘les petit animaux que habit les cheveux.’

 

Pete, who was able to make himself understood a lot better than me, had an equally funny episode at the shops in those early weeks.

 

He was in a newsagency one afternoon with Noah looking for just the right pen to take to French lessons, when a man came up to him and said, ‘You speak English don’t you?’

 

Pete looked at him and wondered how the man could have known that he spoke English, then he remembered he had Noah with him and realised their conversation had probably been over heard.

 

‘Yeah, I speak English.’

 

‘Good English?’

 

‘Yeah, pretty good, as English goes.’

 

‘That’s excellent,’ the man said.

 

Pete smiled and thought maybe the guy thought he was French or German and was giving him some sort of weird congratulations on having learnt English so well.

 

Pete turned back to the pens.

 

The man tapped him on the shoulder.

 

‘I’m looking for some silver paper. I need it to wrap up a special present for a friend.’

 

‘That’s nice,’ Pete said, turning back to the pens.

 

‘You know, don’t you? You know what silver is.’

 

‘Ah, yep,’ Pete said moving his body so his back was angled slightly towards the man. but the man walked round to the other side of him.

 

The man who was impressed with Pete’s English walked around to the other side of Pete, ‘So, the silver paper.’

 

‘Ah,’ Pete said, thinking he’d finally figured it out, the guy thought he worked in the shop, that was it. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t work here.’ Pete said. Pete smiled at he guy, put the pen back that he was looking at and walked out of the shop. He headed to the specialist paper shop for a comparison on pens.

 

The pens in the specialist paper shop were better. They were heavier and ran across the page smoother, more expensive of course. Pete was scribbling with one when the silver paper guy from the newsagency came up behind him.

 

‘I’m looking for silver paper.’

 

‘Really?’ Pete said.

 

‘You speak good English don’t you?’

 

‘Yes I do.’ Pete answered, thinking haven’t we already established that fact.

 

‘I need silver paper.’

 

Pete was about to tell the guy that he didn’t work at this shop either when it dawned on him that what the guy wanted was an interpreter, someone who could ask the shop assistant for silver paper.

 

‘Ah, you want me to ask if they’ve got any silver paper here?’

 

‘Yeah, yeah could you? I can’t do this whole French thing.’

 

‘Sure,’ Pete said, feeling like the local who had the lingo happening, at least more than the guy who wanted the silver paper.

 

Pete walked up to the cash register, ‘Excuse moi Madame, avez vous…’ And then Pete stumbled to a stop realising he didn’t know the French word for silver. His mind raced searching for the word he was sure we’d done in class, but the harder he thought the further away the elusive word got.

 

The guy, now standing beside him was smiling and nodding as if to encourage Pete. Pete cleared his throat and started again. “Avez vous le papier de colour…’ and then Pete pointed to the wrist band on his watch.

 

‘Ah oui monsieur,’ the assistant said coming from behind the cash register to show Pete where he could get the paper from.

 

The guy who was after the paper gave Pete an odd look as if to say, ‘I could of pointed to my watch band,’ and then, without a thankyou, went followed the shop assistant.

 

So obviously, the French wasn’t quite happening yet.

 

Four weeks into our stay there was a break in the get in the car and race routine. Jack and Noah went to ski camp. Neither of them were overly excited about going. We told them they didn’t have to go, that the decision was theirs, but then added all the reasons why we thought they should go. We told them it would probably be the only time they’d get to go cross-country skiing, told them they’d get to see places that they otherwise wouldn’t see and of course it would be fantastic for their French. What I didn’t tell them was that when I was their age, if my parents had suggested I go to camp with a group of kids that didn’t speak my language, a group of kids I’d only known for three weeks I would have told them they were insane. Would have told them that they had more chance of getting me to swim in a shark-infested lake than go on the camp.

 

Noah, who unlike Jack, had made no friends, surprised us both by saying that he wanted to go. Jack was more hesitant. In the end we told Jack that he had to go to keep Noah company, and we finished with the line, ‘It will be good for you,’ avoiding the line ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’

 

Both of them were very quiet the morning of departure. Breakfast was eaten while it was still dark outside and then there were hurried kisses goodbye. Jack, who had decided for some unknown reason the night before, that suitcases were uncool, squeezed all of his clothes into his school backpack. This left him carrying his back pack, his jacket, a sleeping bag and pillow. Noah, who still thankfully can’t care less what’s cool and what’s not, managed to fit not only his all of clothes including ski jacket, but also his pillow and sleeping bag, into one small suitcase. Jack walked out the door arms full of luggage; Noah pulled one simple wheelie bag.

 

Pete took both of them to get their bus, while I organised the little two for their day at school.

 

By the time we met up back at the house it was almost lunchtime. I was anxious to hear how Jack and Noah had got on.

 

The departure, like most things so far, hadn’t gone smoothly. It turned out that Noah and Jack were actually going to separate camps. This meant separate buses and separate drop off places. In our limited French we’d only read Jack’s note and had thought it applied to both of the kids. The fact that Noah’s note had stayed buried at the bottom of his bag didn’t help.

 

Jack was fine. He was on time and had friends there waiting for him. Noah though was a different story. Pete asked the teachers with Jack where Noah was supposed to be but no one seemed to have a clue. When he finally did find someone who knew, Pete struggled to understand the French directions that were given and ended up driving to the wrong place. He then had to retrace his steps before he finally found the bus that was taking Noah to camp. He arrived fifteen minutes late, well behind Swiss schedule.

 

Pete bundled Noah on to the bus and gave his bag to the bus driver to put under the coach with the rest of the kids bags. Then Pete went to explain to Noah’s maths teacher the reason for the late arrival. While he was in the middle of explaining a woman came over, obviously a teacher, and started and raving in French. When she realised Pete spoke understood English a lot better than he did French she flicked over to English.

 

‘So, you happy with yourself, you’ve made everybody late, everybody. Sorry’s the word you want isn’t it? Sorry’s what you want to say. Sorry. Sorry for being late, sorry for making everyone wait.’

 

Pete said he just stared at her waiting for her to stop and then when she didn’t he turned his back on her and ignored the rant that continued behind him while he continued explaining to Noah’s math’s teacher what had happened. By the time he’d finished he said the other teacher was red in the face and marching up and down the side of the bus, her English ranting having returned to French.

 

‘Did Noah see any of this?’ I asked him.

 

‘No, don’t think so. He was safely on the bus.’

 

‘And this teacher was going on the camp as well?’

 

‘Yep.’

 

‘And Jack’s not.’

 

‘Apparently not. Completely different camp.’

 

‘Do you think she’ll take it out on Noah?’

 

‘I’m not sure, but I don’t think so. My guess is that she’s one of these people who rants and raves and then feels guilty about it later. I reckon that by the time they get to camp she’ll be feeling sorry for the way she carried on and will go out of her way to make it up to Noah, won’t be able to do enough for him.’

 

‘Shit, I hope so.’

 

Neither of us slept well those first couple of nights. Every night before we went to sleep Pete and I said to each other, ‘Only three sleeps to go, only two to sleeps go.’

 

It was a long quiet week of which the end couldn’t come fast enough. When it was time to pick the boys up we went and got Noah first, this time knowing exactly where the pick up point was. When we got there the bus was already there, the kids were off pulling their bags out of the pile that the bus driver had made. I spotted Noah standing on the outside with his suitcase. I waved. When he saw me a big grin spread across his face and I kept saying to myself, ‘I’m not going to cry, I’m not going to cry.’

 

He laughed when I hugged him and ruffled his hair. ‘How’d you go?’ I asked, not sure if I wanted to know the answer.

 

‘Pretty good,’ he said. ‘I missed you guys heaps, the first two nights were really hard, but after that it got better. In the end it wasn’t really that bad.’

 

‘Bet you didn’t miss us as much as we missed you.’ I put my arm around him as we walked back to the car and he didn’t try and shrug it off.

 

We piled his suitcase in the car and Kai slid across to make room for Noah. On the way to get Jack Noah started on camp stories. He told us all about Carlos crybaby, one of the so-called tough kids at school.

 

‘You should have seen mum, he cried like a little baby, firstly because the teacher was going to take his mobile phone off him and then, when it got dark, he said he wanted his mum. Said he couldn’t sleep without his mum. He was crying like he needed a dummy.’

 

‘What’d the teacher do?’

 

‘She doesn’t like him; don’t think she can stand him, so she rang up his mum as soon as he said he wanted her. His mum had come and got him even before the lights went out.’

 

‘So Carlos is not so tough after all.’

 

‘Nah, Carlos crybaby ain’t so tough. Then, after he left Edwierdo started.’ Edwierdo was another kid who had been hassling Noah at school.

 

‘Started what?’

 

‘Crying, just like Carlos.’

 

‘You’re kidding? Did he want to go home too?’

 

‘No, he was scared because he was in a room all by himself. He doesn’t like being by himself.’

 

‘Poor Edwierdo.’

 

‘Yeah, poor Edwierdo. So guess who was the lucky one that got to go and sleep with him? Me. The teacher said, “It’s OK Edwierdo,” well she said Edwardo not Edwierdo, “Noah will come and sleep with you.” I’d just unpacked my bag and snuggled myself into bed when she said, “Won’t you Noah?”’

 

‘So what’d you do?’

 

‘I went of course. And Edwierdo was like, “Noah you’re my best friend, my best friend in the whole world.” Yeah right, until we get back to school.’

 

‘Was he nice to you?’

 

‘Yeah, like for the whole time.’

 

‘Maybe they’ll be nicer at school now.’

 

‘Doubt it, but it’s cool that I’ve seen them cry.’

 

Jack took a while to find. He’d walked off with his bag thinking that he’d seen us. When he realised it wasn’t us he was too embarrassed to walk back to the crowd of kids and teacher so we had to go looking for him. We found him hiding out behind a building.

 

He was full of stories too. Which kids had said what, how late they’d been allowed to stay up on the last night of camp, two am according to Jack. Jack, who is very precious about his sleep, couldn’t understand that. How are you supposed to not be tired and grumpy the next day if you stay up that late? And they both had stories of skiing, how different the cross-country was to the downhill. Neither of them could understand why you would pick cross-country over downhill. The cross-country was too much like hard work, although they both admitted that they did get to go to some pretty spectacular places. And both of them were very proud to tell us that they were easily the best skiers in their classes even though they hadn’t done it before. The fact that the other kids who came from countries like Brazil, Africa and Portugal and had probably never had a pair of skiies on their feet had nothing to do with Jack and Noah’s being able to ski so much better than the others.

 

It was noisy and squashy and busy having them back, but simply lovely to all be together again.

 

One of the best parts for Jack and Noah about being back was the bikes Jean-Paul had found for them. It meant they no longer had to rely on us for lifts to get too and from school but could ride to school and back. It also meant they could ride out to the skate park and the soccer field in the afternoon. We rigged up lights for the handle bars so they could be used in the dark mornings and had an endless discussion about whether they should wear a bike helmets or not. In the land of fastidious Switzerland, helmets are surprisingly not compulsorily. So none of the thousands of school kids who ride their bikes to school wear a helmet. My kids already felt like the odd ones out being, the new kids in town and not being able to speak the language. It was difficult to force another thing on to them that would make them stand out.

 

At the end of long discussion I told Jack and Noah to go to bed and said Pete and I would talk about it and let them know our decision in the morning. Jack said if we decided he had to wear a helmet then he wasn’t riding his bike.

 

Pete said he’d always rode his bike without a helmet growing up and didn’t see it as that big a deal if they kept off the road. I wanted to argue, the nurse in me knowing better, but I knew I was fighting a loosing battle so left it up to democracy, one against three.

 

There was much excitement the first day of the bike riding. Noah in particular was thrilled to have the freedom of wheels that could take him wherever he wanted to go. The layers of clothing were put on, ski jacket on top and ski gloves to stop fingers from going blue.

 

The first day back at school Noah rode in by himself in the dark, Jack didn’t start until later. It was hard to let him go off by himself when the sun wasn’t even up yet but I had to trust in this country that lets its children wander free more than any country I’d ever been to. I had to remind myself that this was what children did everyday here in Switzerland, children younger than Noah.

 

When he came for lunch I asked him how it had gone. He said it was fine, the bike was great and then he added, ‘But you’ll never guess what happened.’

 

‘Try me,’ I said.

 

‘Well you know how dad and us spent hours fixing up the lights and putting them onto the bikes last night?’

 

‘Yeah.’

 

‘Well, I get there this morning, chain my bike up so no one can pinch it and then start walking away, but as I’m walking away this group of big kids, much older than Jack come over to my bike and make a circle around it. And I know what they’re doing mum, they’re taking the light that dad and I spent ages putting on last night, and they know that I’m watching and they don’t care, they think it’s funny.’

 

‘Oh, Noah, that’s horrible, what did you do?’

 

‘Well what could I do? There was about twelve of them and all of them were twice the size of me. I just kept walking to school. At least they couldn’t get my bike.’

 

So Switzerland wasn’t squeaky clean after all. We changed the lights over to ones the kids could take off their bikes and put in their backpacks.

 

But light drama wasn’t to be Noah’s only bike adventure for that week. There was another, ‘Mum you’ll never guess what happened to me’ story. It was on another morning when Jack and Noah weren’t riding together. This morning Jack was the one who had to be at school early, Noah was the one who went a bit later.

 

‘It was really weird mum. There was this guy in the middle, you know, that road just before school with the bridge on it, the road with hardly any cars on it? He was standing there flapping his arms up and down.’

 

‘Yeah I know the road. What was he doing?’

 

‘Well I could tell he wanted me to stop even though I couldn’t understand what he was saying. So I stopped my bike and he’s saying all this random French to me like people here do and I said to him ‘Je ne compron pas, Je parle englais,’ then he said ‘d’accord’ and I thought he was going to go away but he started speaking English instead and telling me that he was going to be late for work and that his boss was going to kill him. He said he really, really, really needed my bike. He put his hand on the handle bars as if he was going to take it.’

 

‘So what did you do?’

 

‘Well of course I told him he couldn’t have my bike, and I started laughing because I thought maybe it was some weird kind of joke. But he was all serious like and said that he had to have my bike and that his work wasn’t very far. He said he’d tell me where his work was and leave my bike out the front so that I could come and get it. He asked me what time I started school and when I told him he said I would have heaps of time to come and get the bike and then get to school.’

 

Noah took a mouthful of the sandwich he was eating. ‘And?’ I said trying to ignore the sweat that was gathering on my palms.

 

‘And I told him no again of course, told him he couldn’t have my bike. But then he got all excited and said he had a better idea. He said I should get on the handle bars of the bike while he rode to his work then I would know the bike was OK and I could ride to school from his work.’

 

Noah had a drink of milk and another bite of the sandwich.

 

‘And?’

 

‘Well I got on the handle bars, he was so worried about being late for work.’

 

‘And where did you go with him?’

 

‘To his work of course, where else.’

 

‘Then what happened?’

 

‘He got off the bike, shook my hand and told me I’d saved his life and went into his work and I rode to school.’

 

‘Noah, you never go anywhere with anyone you don’t know.’

 

‘Yeah I know, but he had his hand on the handle bars and I couldn’t get round him and he seemed nice enough.’

 

Jack who had been listening in said, ‘I know, I couldn’t believe he’d gone with him either.’

 

‘What would you have done?’

 

‘Told him to get stuffed and kept on riding.’

 

‘Yeah but your bigger than me, it wasn’t that easy.’

 

‘You two need to ride together from now on, no matter what start or finish time, understand?’

 

‘Yeah OK.’

 

‘And Noah, you never go anywhere with anyone you don’t know, got it? It’s that simple.’

 

‘Next time I’ll just ride really fast and stick my leg out and knock the guy over if I have to OK?’

 

Needless to say the stranger danger talk went on for weeks after that.

 

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