Cafe du Grutli — Montreux, Switzerland
Montreux, Switzerland 🇨🇭
I visited Montreux as part of my trip to Switzerland with my family. The trip was an amazing one by all measures. Montreux has been a special mini-trip for us while we were staying in an apartment house near Interlaken. We decided to take a trip to Montreux by the car, stay over for one night, and spend the day around the city. We also took the chance to have a boat trip to the French side across the lake, and visited Evian’s region (home of the well-known water bottling company).
Montreux is a municipality in the district of Riviera-Pays-d'Enhaut in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland. It is located on Lake Geneva shoreline at the foot of the Alps and has a population, as of December 2015, of 26,433 and nearly 90,000 in the agglomeration.
— Wikipedia
Cafe du Grutli — Pin📍
What a lovely neighbourhood cafe. I fell in love with the cafe front, especially the yellow shining color that speaks to your optimism. It looks like that local people just love going to this place for its local dishes and flavors. It also looks like that the lady behind this cafe is another reason for people to flock towards it. She looks very sweet and lovely. I bet she must be a very kind person, and a good cook as well.
The local street and the vintage painting, chairs and tables, and frames around the cafe is what gets me excited to visit it. I imagine myself staying at a local nearby hotel (3 stars would be good enough for me). I would wake up early in the morning, take a refreshing shower, and then head out. I imagine myself walking a good distance in the streets between my hotel and this cafe. I would then reach it, smiling as I say hi to the owner. She would revert with a genuine smile. I would grab a table in the corner, and order a locally flavored dish with a cup of coffee. I imagine spending a couple of hours there, sipping my coffee and reading a book.
Authentic Smiles
The owner of this cafe shows genuine smiles in almost all photos. A genuine smile is not a simple curve around the corners of the mouth. A genuine smile is one that emerges from the heart and reaches out to the face, playing with its features in an attempt to paint a beautiful drawing of goodness and kindness.
I once read about how you can detect a genuine smile from a fake one. Fake smiles are all around us. You can spot them easily in TV advertisements, for instance. Those who smile for a toothpaste or makeup or any cosmetics related to the face. Those smiles are using only the mouth. The secret of a true smile is that you can see how the eyes join the mouth in the smile. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be a genuine smile. Genuine smiles are detected by the heart and the sole. That cannot be deceived.
Smile: The Story of a Face
What if you lose the ability to smile because of some sort of illness in the face. This is what Sarah Ruhl depicted in her autobiography “Smile: The Story of a Face” (also known as “Smile: A Memoir”).
Smile: A Memoir
In a series of piercing, profound, and lucid meditations, Ruhl chronicles her journey as a patient, wife, mother, and artist. She explores the struggle of a body yearning to match its inner landscape, the pain of postpartum depression, the story of a marriage, being a playwright and working mom to three small children, and the desire for a resilient spiritual life in the face of illness.
I cannot imagine how one would feel, losing something as basic as making a smile on his or her face. It is just one of the many things we take for granted in life. It is something that reminds us to cherish our lives and our blessings no matter how difficult our lives can be.
Yet, this brings my attention to those who don’t smile. I wonder how much they are losing by not trying to smile. Are they waiting for an illness that takes that away from them? How much they would regret by losing something simple and beautiful as “smiling”.
“And in this day and age, we sometimes seem to care more about the record of joy than the experience of joy itself.”
― Sarah Ruhl, Smile: The Story of a Face
“Our culture values perfect pictures of ourselves, mirage, over and above authentic connection. But we meet one another through the imperfect particular of our bodies. Imperfection calls out for affinity—for the beloved to say, I too am broken, but may I join you?”
― Sarah Ruhl, Smile: The Story of a Face
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