The DadLadTour (Now Actually In Switzerland)

Day 3 (Part 1) – Genève. Smoke On The Water

The Match – The Italians come up against the Spanish

11^th July 2025

When I wake on Day 3, I realise I’ve forgotten a promise I made myself.

Yesterday, with all our wandering and mooching around by the lakeside, it slipped my mind to take a couple of moments. I had long been anticipating standing by Lake Geneva’s shoreline, plugging in my headphones and pulling up Deep Purple’s classic track. Yet, when I finally got there – I forgot. Typical eejit GrumpPa.

We don’’t have much time left in Geneva so we head back to the water to fulfil my promise to myself.

I played that rock record with my mobile. I hadn’t packed any headphones – they would have overloaded the teeny-tiny airline-friendly backpack I was travelling with. Instead, the sound of Purple’s 1971 classic came via my newly prescribed, 2025 technology laden, hearing aids. Never mind the bass, it’s all about the bluetooth, innit?

There wasn’t any smoke over the lake or any fire in the sky. Just a bench, warm morning sunshine, and a view over the beautiful water. It was absolutely perfect.

I’m not sure what #SonInLawNo1 was doing during my reverie. I think he was texting #DaughterNo1. He’s too young and hip for enjoying such musical interludes.

I played the track twice. I could have stayed longer but our Swiss time was running out.

My musical meditation complete, we’re off for a wee bit of exploring around the city.

We mooch – do a lot of that, don’t we? – around Genève. It is a wonderful city with picture-postcard streets lined with cafes and artisan shops. Liam is leading me to a coffee shop that doubles as an English bookshop. He’s come to know me so well (so well) in the decade since he started dating my daughter. “Page & Sips” has a wall lined with bookshelves full of carefully considered titles. I am astonished to se such a large mythology section in such a small store. I browse the title enviously but cannot buy any as – you guessed it – that pesky teeny-tiny backpack.

I settle, instead, for one of the best cappuccino’s I have ever had. We sit outside at a small tiled table and people-watch. My, aren’t #SonInLawNo1 and GrumpPa are so chic and cosmopolitan?

Continuing our exploration, we take in views over the city. The sound of continental police sirens drift up to us. Perhaps some dastardly villains are being chased by the law? I find the sound of foreign police sirens – French, Italian, and now, Swiss – to be very evocative and rather romantic. Doesn’t everyone? Well, maybe not those dastardly villains being chased. I suspect they hate the sound.

BantamMonkey sees some wooden rocking horses and wants a photograph on his very own “Trojan Horse”. I oblige and set the cheeky chimp rocking. He’s content, musing on Achilles, Paris and Helen, and of course, Odysseus. BM is happy and I snap away capturing the moment. Like me, The Chimp loves a bit of Greek mythology.

(You didn’t expect me to get all the way through Switzerland without referencing Odysseus, our old blog stalwart and favourite, at some point, did you?)

Soon we have to undertaking another part of our Euro odyssey. More trains.

Today we are off to Bern for the Spain versus Italy match. Then – with any luck! – we’ll catch one of the extra late-night trains that SBB have laid on to ensure fans can travel back to their digs after the game.

Stocking up with another picnic, we board the IR90 at Genève HB. We are taking the 1205 service heading to Brig. We transfer at Renens VD and change in favour of the IC5 bound for Neuchàtel, There we swap to the S5 into Bern. Told you it was an odyssey…and we have to do the whole journey again in reverse in the dead of night.

It is on the trains that our match tickets are finally checked. None of the trains or trams have asked for them yet. We show our match tickets and the ticket inspector, satisfied, moves along the carriage.

I am repeating myself but the Swiss countryside is beautiful. As the train carries us onwards, we pass Lac de Neuchâtel and catch glimpse of it. It is simply stunning.

The trains we board become increasingly busy as fans board at each new stop. Italian and, mostly, Spanish shirts begin to mass. The atmosphere and expectations build long before we reach our destination.

It is on one of these trains – I can’t recall which – that Liam spots a message on one of the Lionesses /Women’s Euro Facebook / Switzerland groups he has been following. Someone is asking if anywhere in St. Gallen – location of England’s final Group D match against Wales – will be screening the Preston v. Liverpool pre-season friendly on Sunday.

We are puzzled why a pre-season match would be televised. Even more curious why anyone would expect it to be of interest in the depths of Switzerland. We are chatting about this when a woman sitting near to us speaks up.

Earlier in the the journey, I had spotted the four letters inked – possibly self-tattooed? – just below her knee – “LFCW”.

“It’s ‘cos of Jota.” She said. “The match is a tribute to him.”

Diogo Jota – a twenty-eight year-old attacking Portuguese international – was returning to Liverpool, his club team, when both he and his brother, André Silva, were killed in an automobile accident. The fatal accident happened on July 3^rd, just one day after these Euros began.

Now it made sense why someone was asking if that match was to be shown on television over here.

We got talking to LFCW Lass. She arrived in Switzerland the day before our meeting – Thursday 10^th – and is out here for the rest of the tournament. She has tickets for all the later stages, including the final. She said the final tickets were the first ones she put into her basket when tickets went on sale and she worked backwards from that.

Like us, she is travelling light. Just one small rolling suitcase, and the shorts and tee she was wearing, to last her the next few weeks. Again, as with Liam and I, she attended the Switzerland / Finland match the night before. She’d been among the Finland fans enjoying the game. Then Finland got that penalty. Then Finland scored that penalty. Then Finland fans, and the beer they wear holding, went up into the air.

And LFCW Lass has just a few spare clothes packed into that one small suitcase. Heck!

We tell her about both the FanZones we have been to. You must visit them, we enthuse. Great fun.

But she doesn’t do FanZones. Oh!

She’s going to St. Gallen for the Lionesses after tonight’s game in Bern. Get yourself to the Free Lionesses HQ, wherever they have it, we tell her. Free beer!

But she doesn’t drink. Oh, heck!

Our travel tips, suggestions and recommendations are sinking fast. The conversation peters out shortly after.

I think all three of us are relieved when the train arrives in Bern and we can go our separate ways.