Yesterday, my housemate Stephen and I went up Mount Generoso. This sounds like an achievement but it was really quite easy.
It was certainly a lot easier than the last time I did it three years ago. Then I took a train from Milan to Como, walked across town to another station, where I took a train across the border in Switzerland, then switched to a Swiss train which took me to Capolago at the bottom of Lake Lugano, where I boarded the cog train that climbs the mountain. Back then, the mainline train was scheduled to arrive at Capolago a minute before the cog train left. Given that this was Switzerland, where the trains really do leave and arrive on the dot, I assumed that this was all part of some slightly smug planning, a demonstration of immaculate time-keeping. If I’d been in Britain I would have planned to arrive in Capolago on an earlier train – a whole hour earlier – absolutely secure in the knowledge that if I didn’t, my mainline train would pull into the station a few minutes late and I’d be watching my funicular connection slide away from the station without me. And probably empty to boot.
Still, I did think that allowing just a minute for a connection was cutting it a bit fine, even in Switzerland. But far be it for me to tell them how to do things. After all, taking advice from foreigners doesn’t really seem to form any part of the national psyche.
When my train arrived I could see the cog train waiting, brim full of passengers. It looked much like a tram, standing on the street just outside the main station. I jogged towards it and was about to hop aboard and buy a ticket when the conductor fussily pointed me towards a ticket office and told me to get my ticket there. I ran into the office where a couple was at the ticket window, the man asking a string of questions about quantum mechanics and its effect upon the price of fondue, or so it seemed to me as I huffed and puffed and pointedly looked at my watch, the cog train, the impatient-looking conductor and my open wallet. Eventually the man finished his penetrating inquisition and I got to the window and asked for a ticket.
“The train is waiting to leave. Hurry up! No I won’t take your credit card! It will take too long and the train will be late! Quick, give me your entire last month’s wages!” was the general gist of the rather one-sided conversation. So I handed over a rather large wodge of euros (not having any Swiss francs), grabbed my ticket and dashed back to the conductor, who inspected it rather more closely than seemed strictly necessary given he’d just watched me buy the damn thing, shooed me onto the train and closed the door.
The train was packed, mostly, as far as I could tell, with elderly German-Swiss men – the type who wear short-sleeved shirts and beige cotton waistcoats covered in loads of useful pockets – who, to a man, treated me to some pretty poisonous looks for endangering the prompt departure of the funicular and whose pacemakers were working overtime dealing with the enormous anxiety about being Swiss on a Swiss train that appeared to be facing the very real possibility of leaving a minute late.
It does beg the question: why schedule the trains that way? Why not, say, reschedule the funicular to leave a good ten minutes after any mainline train arrives at the station, just in case it might carry someone like me who wants to buy a ticket and make the connection? Or would that be an affront to Swiss efficiency?

I decided to walk down the mountain that afternoon, even though I didn’t have a proper map. After losing the path on a couple of occasions and stumbling around in woods and on the funicular track itself (which is utterly forbidden) I made it back into rural suburbia, past the usual gauntlet of barking dogs, and into a different Swiss town which, it being Sunday in Switzerland, was more shut than a clam in a vice. I can’t remember what the town was called because in my head I was too busy planning a whole ceremony in which I was awarding it the Toblerone Single Most Boring Place On Earth Prize, and in which all its citizens looked rather pleased with the compliment. Not even washing machine doors are opened on a Sunday in Switzerland. Anyway, I found a station, caught a train and returned to the reassuringly wayward timekeeping of Italy.

This time around, Stephen drove us. Switzerland is but a fifteen minute drive from our digs – on a recent Italian public holiday we popped over there for a pint of milk – and Capolago just half an hour. We got there in good time and had no trouble buying tickets with a credit card. Just as well as the return fare for the 45 minute ride to the very top of Generoso is 42 Swiss francs, which is about £28 at the moment.
Still, it’s worth it. The views across the Alps are stunning, cows wander around clanking their bells and swifts zoom around in a swirling congregation. The sound of a swift whizzing within a few feet of your head is particularly special. These swifts don’t seem to chirrup very much, possibly as the result of some canton regulation against making noise on a Friday. What you hear is a high swoosh of air rushing past their feathers. It sounds as if someone is slicing the sky with a knife. And not any knife. A Swiss Army knife. The short blade. Not the big one. Not allowed. “The big blade is NOT designed for slicing the air and should NOT be used for this purpose!”

I’m a good packer. I make no bones about bragging about that. I have sought ways over the years to whittle down my travel necessities to a tidy minimum. Advances in technology have helped enormously. Sixteen years ago, if I was going abroad for any length of time, I would pack in my suitcase a small Canon printer and a fax machine. It seems extraordinary now, but back then email was in its infancy. We had no home computer. Who did? Who had a mobile phone? Barely anyone I knew. Who had a laptop before 1995? Back then, they were the preserve of the very rich or high-flying businessmen.

I did have a Psion organiser though, packed with 128kbs of memory. It was a nifty gizmo that could fit in a jacket pocket. I could type documents on its clamshell keyboard, which I then printed and faxed. The Psion could do basic spreadsheets too and if you held it up to the mouthpiece of a telephone it could tone-dial phone numbers in its address book. That seemed just so cool at the time. The more I think about it, the more I realise it was a truly advanced gadget. Palm Pilots came along, touch screens became all the rage and Psion stopped production, but if someone produced a similar-sized device with everything that such a gadget is capable of now, it would probably sell like hotcakes.

Why all the faxing? Phone bills were always a massive part of the expense of being abroad. I used to spend many hundreds of pounds on phone calls during every opera job I did. It was just something you had to do. There were no cheap phone cards, there was no Skype. There was rarely any competition between phone companies too, so prices were high and there was nothing you could do about it. International phone calls were simply very, very costly.

So when faxes came along it wasn’t hard to see how you could save a lot of money by replacing a fifteen-minute conversation with a one-minute fax. A printer and fax machine (which cost about £100 each) could easily pay for themselves in the course of one job. When I moved into new digs, the very first thing I would do was unplug the phone and replace it with my fax machine. Then I’d find somewhere to set up my printer. The mileage of cables I needed for all this staggers my mind today.

I always dreamed though that a time would come when I wouldn’t have to fill half my suitcase with office equipment and now… Well it’s easy, isn’t it? Except that luggage allowances have also tumbled so the pressure to miniaturise and cut weight has stayed the same. Gone are the days when I could bring a folding bike as well as my suitcase. After years of carrying around a laptop (as well as, in the early years, an external modem and all kinds of adapters) I’m not even doing that anymore. An iPad can do everything I need.

No, there’s no doubt, I’m a good packer. I like to steer well inside the weight limit. The missus, not so much. It’s the toiletries I reckon. I’m packed in 20 minutes. The missus, half a day. Toiletries again. And then, when we get to the airport hotel, she repacks all over again. Or so it seems. It’s possibly a Mars vs Venus thing.

And so it was today. Unfortunately she felt the weight of her bags compared to the weight of mine (damn!) and on the quiet I have become encumbered with a vast 2 kilo score of “The Marriage of Figaro”, a raincoat and a large bag of electrical stuff. All hers.

I addressed the Figaro issue. Didn’t go down well. I was rewarded with a look. So now I’m a luggage mule who’s in the doghouse.

She is en route to St Louis via Washington DC whereas I, going most of the way on Virgin airmiles, am travelling via Chicago. I’ve just got to remember to slip the bottle of cologne she had me buy for her at Terminal 3 into my checked luggage when I get to Chicago or I’ll have to negotiate it through security before my connection. I have no liquids in my hand luggage at the moment. See? Good packing that is.

Now the only issue left is: if I post this will she ever speak to me again?

Two days ago I shared a photo of my hotel room in Berlin on Facebook. It’s a small room, about 8′ wide, with a single bed, a desk, an armchair, a sink and a cupboard.  And a small welcome pack of gumi bears on the pillow.

I posted the photo asking friends to hazard a guess as to who was paying for my hotel expenses; me or the promoter of the concert. Plenty of people cracked jokes about the size of the room (and the gumi bears) but no-one actually took the plunge and guessed. Or if they did, they didn’t say so.

It isn’t the easiest call to make. Some promoters are more generous than others and in these straitened times the five-star treatment on concert trips is less likely. But I’ll come clean. I booked the room. 

Berlin is rare amongst European cities. Normally when you’re booked by an orchestra (but not an opera company) they cover your travel and hotel but every job I’ve done here has paid a “global” fee from which I have to pay all my expenses. It’s also the same in the States, in my experience, but I’m no expert.

Now call me a cheapskate if you like but I have never seen the merit in spending a vast percentage of fees in needless expenses. It’s a bad business strategy. Surely the point is to take home as much of your fee as humanly possible? And people who say that business expenses are “tax deductible” are, well, wrong. Business expenses allow you to reduce your taxable profit, not the tax itself. £1 spent on expenses isn’t £1 saved in tax. Not by a long shot.

But that’s niggly stuff. The broader picture is this: there’s no point in earning a living as a singer if you blow everything you earn on hotels and travel. You’re just feeding an insatiable beast. That’s fine if you have nothing else in your life except flying on planes and sleeping in hotels but, nope, that’s not for me. I have other fish to fry and the less I spend in expenses on the road means the longer it is before I have to go on the road again to top up the piggy bank. Of course it’s not quite as simple as that; that makes me sound like some sort of medieval troubadour, but the principle is the same.

So, I never let my agent book my travel because they always budget far too dearly. I do it all myself and I delight in finding good deals and interesting places to stay. And this hotel – though it’s really a small “pension” – is no exception. The room may be small and sparse but it is as clean as a nun’s conscience, the staff are lovely and best of all, including a decent breakfast I’m paying only €38 a night. The pension – it’s called Hotel Modena – is on the second floor of a “belle epoque” style house at the very poshest end of Kurfürstendamm, Ku’damm to the locals, and is surrounded by loads of fancy shops – Prada is on the corner – and fun restaurants. It’s a great area.

I’ll stay here again, though probably in a room with a bathroom (though I’ve had the one down the hall entirely to myself) next time, if there’s a next time. There’s no telly but that’s something of a bonus and with free wifi, who needs it? It’d all be in German anyway…

And now to wander the boulevards in search of a good dinner-for-one.

I already know I’m a loony magnet but now it seems I’m an obvious target for con artists too.

I’m just wandering along the side of the Philharmonie when a car pulls up next to me and the driver leans over and winds down the passenger window. I assume he is in need of directions and in my best German I tell him I’m English.

“Ah eenglish! I am Italiano, from Milano.”

We continue the conversation in mixture of Italian and English, though he’s doing all the talking.

Well, you’d never believe it but this guy, very smartly dressed, has just finished a fashion fare in town and not only that but this friendly and total stranger wants to give me two leather jackets! Free!

“You know Emporio?”

“Er, no…”

“Emporio Armani?!”

“Well, yes…”

The bag he is showing me doesn’t say Armani anywhere. Just Emporio.

He takes out the jackets and my first thought is “yuck”. The black one looks plastic and the other, a suede job (antelope? Is that what he said?), doesn’t look much better. He tells me to feel them. I’m not convinced but I’m no expert. He’s pointing at labels and telling me they are exactly my size. He puts them back in the Emporio bag and stuffs its handle in my hand. “They are present for you!”

Oh yeah?

“I just need to ask you a leetle favore.”

Here it comes…

“I was in casino in Potsdammerplatz (he has a leaflet from said casino and I’m thinking “why would you have that?”) and my credit card, five thousand euro, he is feeneesh. Basta. I need to buy da gasoline to get back to Milano. Look!” He points to the petrol gauge but I can’t see it and besides, he has switched off the engine.

Ah, so that’s the scam.

I release the handle of the bag containing what I am now absolutely convinced are two five-euro jackets, look at my watch and exclaim that I’m late for a meeting. I walk away while he yells something which leads me to think he isn’t my newest, bestest mate anymore.

I have been in Geneva a week now and I think I have the measure of the place. Let’s skip quickly over the excruciating prices and the rash of impossibly chic designer shops that make me want to raise the barricades and start a revolution. Oh, I’m not that radical but the vile smugness of them drives me mad. And where do their employees get off on looking so snooty and disdainful? Don’t you dare try and sneer at me! You work in a bloody shop for God’s sake!

You see? That’s the trouble with Geneva. You just want to yell at all the self-important bankers, financiers, jewellers and spoilt-brat Porsche drivers that you find around every corner.

So, moving swiftly on, I have found a few things that can make the cheapskate, like me, reasonably happy.

A couple of transport tips for the Geneva neophyte:

When you arrive at the airport, there’s a ticket machine in the luggage hall that will give you a free ticket, valid for 90 minutes, enabling you to use any form of public transport to get to your destination in town. So you can take the train and then a tram or whatever, absolutely free. Very civilised.

If you’re staying at a hotel, the hotel will give you a free travel pass for your entire stay!

As we’re staying in digs we don’t benefit from this but there are all kinds of passes you can buy for not much money. I only discovered a few days ago that there are various ferries that ply across the lake which are also part of the public transport system. It is perfectly feasible on a sunny day like today, to plant yourself in the stern of a boat and potter back and forth all day, all for seven francs (about £4.40), the price of an all-day pass after 9 a.m. And the boats don’t seem to stay on just the one route, but switch their routes every time they arrive at a pontoon, so you’re not repeatedly covering the same stretch of lake. (If you’re hotel hasn’t given you one, you can buy a day pass from the machines at every tram or boat stop. You need coins though; exact change.)

The other day, just because I could, I took a tram to France. I got on by our flat and took the 16 for about ten minutes to the end of the line at Moillesulaz. I got off, walked about ten metres and crossed the unmanned border. I love doing that. (In Strasbourg once I did a very dreary walk out of town just so I could invade Germany on foot. Well, it makes a change eh?)

Not that there was much to see the other side. Just more of the same really, which was pretty dull. I ended up buying some groceries in a Casino supermarket, which was a bit cheaper than doing it in Switzerland. I did feel oddly furtive though as I recrossed the border (even though I’d spied several Swiss doing the same thing) and walked the half hour back to the flat.

There are some decent museums in town which are free and oddly empty. I like that though. I’d rather see some good paintings in a quiet gallery than fight the crowds to glimpse a celebrity piece elsewhere. Though some joy in the latter can be had in opining loudly on the ghastliness of Renoir in front of a bunch starstruck tourists. It can be a bit like going into a MacDonalds and saying at the top of your voice that you think the Jonas brothers are talentless twats, but so very worth it.

The last tip is a restaurant we stumbled upon in the Paquis. It’s a scruffy Italian place with indifferent service, but it’s homely and authentic. Pavarotti’s name is emblazoned on the outside and the chef, who waddled in from time to time, doesn’t look dissimilar.

I had the 32 franc menu (about £21) – a mixed salad generously topped with anchovies, rigatoni with pesto, saltimbocca with sautéed vegetables and a slice of strawberry tart – amazing value for Geneva (or Milan for that matter), while Lucy had what we thought was going to be just one course, but turned out to be two, for 22 francs. She had a mixed salad then two scaloppine served with linguini in a fantastic tomato and garlic sauce. She had some of my tart, of course, and the waiter anticipated this by bringing her a fork. If I went again, I’d do what Lucy did and choose a so-called single dish as the portions are massive. My only quibble was that we weren’t shown a wine list, just offered some suggestions, and we only found out our half-litre bottle of Nero d’Avola cost a disproportionately expensive 24 francs when the bill came. It’s cash only and we just scraped by with what was in our wallets.

I’d definitely recommend it for chic-weary visitors and it’s called La Locanda Toscana, and is at 61, rue de Berne.