My friend and I went for a hike up in the Swiss slopes yesterday with another friend of hers. W took the little cog train from Montreux via Glion and Caux to Rochers-de-Naye wand walked back down. Those trains are amazing. There bits of track have been around for nearly longer than the existence of Hong Kong. You go up and wonder what on earth possessed the people to look up at the mountain and think it ought to be conquered. Particularly when you look down and see a coat line that is not exactly overpopulated - particularly not by HK standards. A great need for a lot of personal space? A feeling that now that cogs have been perfected in watch making there has to be further application in the wider world? Or did the train cogs come first and then the clocks and watches? Whatever the reasons - we have a beautiful legacy suiting locals and tourists alike.
My friend is Nigerian and her friend is Kenyan. Since we'd just met we were asking the usual questions about how long we'd been in our respective countries, family etc. I asked how she like Switzerland, to which she replied they she couldn't wait to get back to Nairobi. She said problems, warts and all, being away had made her appreciate her homeland infinitely more. The lack of hustle and bustle was the one thing, but worse still was the lack of human warmth. As we boarded the train on the way up, a very old, very frail lady struggled down on her own lugging a huge trolley bag. The conductor courteously offered her a hand, and the chap behind her reluctantly put the bag down the stairs. I assumed he was with her, but he wasn't. She was completely alone. You see what I mean, M exclaimed, that would never happen in Kenya. Nigeria neither said my friend. HK neither I exclaimed. Is no one going to help her down the stairs? I was ready to jump to her aid - she was bent double with osteoporosis and the stairs looked so daunting to me. We need to board, and she'll talk the lift or escalator said M.
The walk was lovely, but as loud cover was low, slippery. At one point I fell rather badly, breaking the fall with my wrist and hitting my ribs on my camera. It was OK - a bit tender. But on the way home really started aching. So we went past the Urgence. By then it was agony. A few X-rays later (really painful as the moved the hand into the right position) - ribs fine albeit bruised, but a suspected fracture on my hand. Suspected? Well the X ray showed something, but the doctor on duty was just a GP and it would need scanning by an orthopaedic surgeon to know for sure and she didn't think it e\urgent enough to call one out - let alone the cost factor. They'd put it in a cast and I could have it checked out properly in 10 days, by which time it would either be the same, better or worse....
Oh, and here is a note for airport security. I'm barely following this as my French is pathetically worse than my Chinese. A note for the security. Yes, that you've been treated by us and the cast is real. We look baffled. Drug smuggling she explains. Oh, we say. The bandaging and cast specialist arrives. He has an accent. I try guessing at his encouragement. Not Italian, Portuguese, Spanish - warm, but wrong continent. Blow me down if the guy isn't from Columbia. M and I look at each other and can barely stop ourselves from laughing as she clutches the note for airport security. Oh, Spanish I way, i can manage that better than French, and I try. It's been a year and I've spent 4 days trying to make myself understood in French. What comes out is a mixture of French, Chinese and Spanish. He's not impressed. You spent how many years in Spain? 4 I mumble. when you were a child? No, 3 years ago I humbly offer. And this is all you have to show for it? I protest that I've been learning Chinese in the mean time and haven't spoken it in a while, he pushes the drying cast down extra hard to tell me just what he thinks of that lame excuse. I yelp. He turns to M - sensitive little thing isn't she? M rises to my defence, well she's in quite a bit of pain and the drugs they've given her don't seem to be kicking in yet...
We go and pay up - more expensive than my son's episode for a lower level of expertise (GP vs. Orthopaedic surgeon) and it took a lot longer.
1 comments:
I sympathise - i fractured my wrist last year when living in China. Not only was it cast in fibreglass but also had a metal support through the centre...
I fly around 2-3 times a week for work and as difficult as it was to manage handbag,latop bag and travel trolley with a cast ( to add to the complications this was during the Sichuan Earthquake so no hospital in Beijing could provide me with a proper sling as they'd all been sent down to sichuan so had to make do with pashminas to support my cast :-) the security procedures were crazy. For every flight it took me around 40 mins to clear security and even with a doctors note and explanation as to why i had a metal 'weapon' cast to my wrist it caused no end of fuss and stress.... hopefully you'll find the security in Europe less stressful!
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