The sun and I were moving in opposite directions as we pulled into Walsenhausen. It was headed for the horizon as our cogwheel train crawled its way up the mountainside. A mile outside the village lay our destination. The Art Ministry School commanded a sweeping view of the Bodenzee, otherwise known as Lake Constance, with the flatlands of Germany on the far side and the mountains of Austria to the east. At twilight, the tinkle of cowbells in the pasture mingled with the churchbells from the town.

            After supper, I retired to the common room to read. My leisure did not last long. A couple of students had already pulled their guitars out and invited me to do the same. I followed along as they played from their hymnal. Then someone asked if I knew any Johnny Cash. Within a couple of minutes, the whole room was singing along to “Ring of Fire.” Everyone knew the words.

            Nothing transcends the barriers of language and culture like music. That’s my most vivid memory of three weeks in Switzerland. Seven concerts, and every audience  but one went wild for the Texas tunes of Danny Santos and Steve Brooks. The tough crowd was a smoky bar gig in the mountain resort of Grindelwald, which proved that playing for drunks is the same the world over. At the other gigs, they asked for encore after encore. Danny generally threw in the towel after number three. It didn’t hurt that I knew the most-requested American song in Switzerland, which was “Country Roads.” I’m told we got rapturous reviews, and hope I can find someone to translate them.

             I was never sure how much of our lyrics our listeners understood, but the music seemed to need no translation. The rest of the time, I met plenty of folks who spoke English. With those who didn’t, I could sometimes call up my French, as I did with Doris' landlady and with her mother. Switzerland is home to four languages, so if you keep trying, you’re bound to find one that works. I picked up a couple of dozen words in Swiss German, just enough to order a sparkling mineral water, or wasser mit gas. Most of what I heard was too dense to figure out, thanks to the German fetish for squeezing four or five words into a single word the length of a sausage.

            Yeah, I ate plenty of sausage. That was part of the standard breakfast, along with bread and cheese. What kept it from getting monotonous was the cheese. It’s slathered onto every dish, with an abandon that puts your average Tex-Mex joint to shame. Melt it on hash browns and you have rosti. Melt it on pickles, pearl onions and potatoes and you get raclette. Like French wines, every valley has its own varieties, with subtle differences of flavor that reflect the soils and the grasses that grow on them. No feedlots here. The cows spend their days in the sunshine, noshing on Alpine pastures and turning them to sweet milk. “Happy cows,” say the Swiss.

              On my days off, I got to share some of those Alpine pastures. Danny’s Swiss girlfriend, Doris, lives in Interlaken, which is like Colorado on steroids. It’s nestled between two glacial lakes and two mountain ranges. I strolled down the main drag with Wagner playing in my head. Looming to the south, two miles in the air, were the triple peaks of the Eiger, the Monch and the Jungfrau: the Ogre, the Monk and the Virgin. Beneath the peaks lay countless Yosemite Valleys, buffed by glaciers into tall cliffs with waterfalls tumbling a thousand feet to the floors.

Unlike Colorado, you don’t need four-wheel drive to get close to the peaks. We  took a train that tunnels into the mountain and emerges just below the summit of the Jungfrau. Throughout the region, a cat’s cradle of trains, cogwheels and free-swinging gondolas whisk you to your favorite resort or hiking trail. You can hop off a train and hike from one village to the next, or walk across the whole country, on the network of footpaths or wanderwegs. Their intersections are marked with helpful yellow arrows that tell you the strolling time to the next destination. But don’t expect a wilderness experience. On a sunny day, a popular path looks like MoPac at rush hour.

The trails play cat-and-mouse with the clouds. One sunny morning, I left Interlaken by bus, in the company of a blonde fraulein who had become my hiking companion. We rode a gondola halfway up the Niederhorn, then got off to stretch our legs. We found we had ascended into the fog. We started walking. Within 15 minutes, we were looking down on the clouds and up at a panorama, the triple peaks ahead and mountains from horizon to horizon. After we’d reached the summit, we rode a gondola, a tram and a bus to get home.

Fact is, you don’t need a car in Switzerland. Public transit stretches to every corner of the land, and what’s more mysterious, it all runs on time. If a train is two minutes late leaving the station, the engineer apologizes to the passengers. I could see why the Swiss make watches. It’s a nation of Virgos, an entire civilization built on obsessive-compulsion.

There’s a dark side, of course: Everything is measured, and nothing is free. You want to use a public toilet? One Swiss Franc, please. Want water with your meal? That’s three or four Swiss Francs. Inexplicably, you pay about the same for a glass of water, a glass of beer or a cup of coffee. The Swiss seem to drink more of the latter two.

My first train ride, out of the Zurich airport, I had my first cup of Swiss coffee. It was perfect: smooth, fragrant and strong, in a small mug with an amber froth on top. For the next three weeks, every single cup was a variation on perfection. Upon investigation, I learned they use espresso machines but not espresso roasts. They brew one cup at a time, with a coarse grind that gives up its flavors too quickly to extract much bitterness. They call it café crèma. If all the world could drink it, all wars would surely cease.

I had my final cup at the Zurich flughafen or airport, after taking a 5:25 morning  train out of Interlaken. It was purchased by the fraulein, who surprised me at the airport on her way to work and helped me figure out where the hell to check in. From now on, whenever I sing “My Pretty Fraulein” at a Texas beer joint, the song will have new meaning for me.

As we parted at passport control, she reached into her bag and handed me a blue cylinder. It looked like an oversized pepper shaker, but festooned with tiny Swiss flags and sights I had seen: waterfalls, peaks and paragliders, coffee, cheese and cows. I surprised her in return. Thanks to all the nights I’ve spent at Camp Stupid at Kerrville, I knew exactly what to do with the cylinder. I flipped it upside down, then right-side up, and it went, “Moo!”