In Switzerland, I kept thinking about Yosemite.

Switzerland has much better chocolate than Yosemite, though. Clocks, banks, cheese, and charming villages, too. On the other hand, Yosemite is a park. Switzerland is full of Swiss people.

I was almost broke, so we (my two buddies and me) cut back on fruits and vegetables and instead ate three big 100-gram chocolate bars every day. A fine thing – I strongly recommend it. Good chocolate was much rarer in the States at the time – now, of course, you can find a good variety of excellent chocolate everywhere, but in 1980 it was pretty special.

One buddy was a serious chocolate connoisseur with very high standards. He watched me open one of these with a critical eye.

“Are you really getting into fruity chocolate?” he asked me, with the same tone he would use for “Do you really eat dog food?”

“It’s good,” I answered. “My approach is experiential – I plan to try every variety in the country before I’m done.”

“In a week? Forget it. You need to be a lot more discriminating.”

I recommend hiking to a high Swiss meadow with a plentiful supply of high-quality chocolate. If you’re like me, you will find yourself grateful to be alive. Then you’ll probably take a nap.

In Zurich we visited friends, and stayed with their parents in a big house by the river.

In the park I encountered my first big outdoor chess set. I’ve always loved chess, so I had to do it. People in Zurich will stop their strolling and watch a while, murmuring comments to each other on the quality of play. It’s a little intimidating. When I made a mistake and tried to take back my move, a Swiss gentleman sharply reminded me of the rules. I tried to explain that it was “just a friendly game, not a f**king international tournament, and besides, we’re playing, not you…” but it was no use. The Swiss are, by and large, a Germanic people. Very conservative in most regards. Women were first granted the right to vote there in 1971.

After dinner, our gracious host invited us into his den.

Every night he ate a selection of six fine, expensive cheeses for dessert. Most of them were unfamiliar to us – unavailable at home due to US pasteurization laws.

One by one, we tried them. After the first three, my friends dropped out.

“They’re gooey and slimy, and they smell like dog shit,” my friends whispered to me.

“I don’t care – I can’t wimp out – I need to try them all,” I whispered back.

The cheeses got progressively nastier. Our host was enjoying our discomfiture immensely. He knew Americans would have no experience with cheeses like these.

“And now, for the finale,” he chortled. “It’s something of an acquired taste, even for me.”

He handed me a blob. You could smell the rot from six feet away.

I nearly made it,  but then I started thinking about dog shit, and threw up in my mouth a little. I choked it down, my eyes watering.

“You need to be a lot more discriminating,” my friend told me again.