Nebelsuppe

In Switzerland, the fog that often settles over the central plateau is known as the Nebelsuppe, a fog soup. It is a thick, gray broth that swallows the lowlands, yet it is often so shallow and dense that a mere hundred-meter climb allows you to rise above it, emerging into the warm sunlight above the sea of clouds.

Last Thursday, while taking the morning train from Bern to Geneva (and eventually toward Barcelona), the soup swallowed us whole. At first, it was just gray around us, then the sun started performing a kind of slow diffraction through the haze, shattering into golden splinters radiating through the trees. For a while we waded through the haze, watching the world blur into a series of memories.

Then, the rupture. We emerged into air so thin and clear, and the fields were a green so vivid it felt like a shout. A faint, lingering haze permeated the distance, softening the edges of the world until it felt less like a landscape and more like we were journeying through the wet oil of a painting, still drying.