Episode 2 of Seattlest's Swiss Adventures: "Never Caress a Calf"

Last week, Seattlest confided that we'd left the confines of this country for places afar. We've got mountain-lust, and are making a vain attempt to trod upon at least a handful of amazing ranges as we see mid-lifeness lurking somewhere around the corner (OK, way the hell around the corner but so be it). And no, we're not talking some misguided "bag all the highest peaks in the world" kind of nonsense, but adventures more of the "get to know the nooks and crannies, don't care how tall they are" variety. So off to the Alps we went.

And lo, there were cows. We hunkered down in the small town of Les Gets, in a region of France right near the Swiss border called the Portes Du Soleil. In the winter it is an incredibly popular ski area, notably a real friendly, family type of place. When spring rolls around, the huge crowds all disappear for the most part, and the cows amble in. Here, they have the luxury of grazing and wandering huge expanses of grass; huge expanses that are no doubt some damn enjoyable open bowls and big groomer runs in the winter.

Though you might have thought it a romantic or bucolic embellishment, in fact these cows do have those insufferable, gigantic bells shackled to their necks. Their clanging is inescapable; we drifted off to sleep via cow-bell lullabies only to be serenaded again by their drunk clanging melodies as we stumbled downstairs to tangle with the coffee machine. You never worried where the cows might be, that much was evident. The downside was you did worry about actually running into them, quite literally, when riding a bike in the area.

With a deft sense of timing, a Swiss hiking organization has apparently just published some guidelines suggesting that hikers (and by extension, bikers) might want to keep their distance. Why you'd want to hug a cow, we'll never know. They are fugly and they smell bad. The only trick was, again, their omnipresence. The Swiss suggest you keep your distance, and move away from the cow, slowly. However, unlike the U.S. where rarely the twain shall meet, in neutral Swiss terriotory the cows have the run of the roost and we're just passing through. They're on every trail, and we mean ON EVERY TRAIL. We had two very close encounters, one we managed to capture in the above photo, the other being a sternly aggravated, snorting bull who was none too pleased with the husband pausing on the trail nearby. Granted, they're not grizzlies, but we vainly tried to keep our distance just the same.

Up next: Thar Be Mud, Everywhere and further adventures of Seattlest in foreign lands.