Friday morning; we have our last breakfast at the hotel in Interlaken, check out, then haul the bags back to Interlaken West station.

We hop on a German Railways train headed for Berlin (tempting, but we don't have the time) and manage to secure ourselves a quiet compartment all to ourselves.

We get off the train (which is, surprisingly for the Germans, about 5 minutes late) at Bern. Unlike Swiss railways, German trains don't necessarily land on the platform across from your connecting train so we have to make a dash across to the other platform. We see a beautiful red Boxer coming up the ramp at Bern station as we are going down. I quickly plot how to steal her but unfortunately there isn't enough time and I don't think she'd fit in the carry on luggage.

We make the connecting train to Zurich, just. It's still crowded but unlike the one from Zurich to Bern that brought us part way on our journey to Interlaken three days earlier, we do manage to find a seat upstairs instead of having to stand with our bags in the vestibule.

We get to Zurich Airport. Remember that leather jacket that I bought in Firenze, tax free? Well, I did. They told me that I had to get a stamp at customs on the way out of Europe. I pointed out that I was leaving through Switzerland which is not part of the EU. No problem, I was told, a Swiss stamp will still work. Yeah. Except that Swiss customs will not stamp anything that is not bought in Switzerland. Many weeks later I found that there is a customs office in Tirano (the Italian town in which we boarded the train to go to Switzerland) and that the stamping had to be done there. Net result? My credit card got slugged with the tax last month. So now I have a hugely expensive jacket which... to be honest I'm not that wild about anyway. Granted Firenze is Leather Central but I think if I had my time over I would have just waited to see if something else came up when we were back there later. Or tried to get something in San Marino, where the taxes are nearly zero in the first place. Live and learn.

Then we try to get something to eat in Zurich airport. Restaurant? "Wait to be seated", not that we can see any seats anyway. Nobody turns up to seat us. Buffet next to the restaurant? They don't speak English or Italian. That thing that was "chicken but not"? Had you said "Turkey" I would have understood. Had you said "Tacchino" (in that official language of your country, Italian), I would have understood. But sadly my German was not up to "Truthahn".

We end up finding another place to eat after wandering around the terminal lost (for what felt like) forever; that place has an incomprehensible ordering system but we finally get something anyway despite the fact that again nobody that we had contact with could speak either English or Italian. For me, an over-oily veal schnitzel and some decent Rosti.

After that we try to do some duty free shopping, only to find that the prices are higher than they would be for buying exactly the same goods in Sydney anyway. As a final farewell to Switzerland we go to get some hot chocolates at the Lindt store. That takes care of our remaining Francs, the equivalent of 20 or so Australian bucks. Ah, Switzerland. I'll never forget the Bernina Express. I'll never forget Jungfraujoch. I'll never forget the fact that despite Italian being an official language the only ones who speak it north of the Alps are me, Inspector Montalbano reruns, and the guy who runs the Italian restaurant near our hotel in Zurich where we were charged twice the price of the real thing for a travesty of Italian cuisine. I'll never forget my stomach heaving at seeing horse meat on the menus. (My German does cover "Pferd", though admittedly I had to look twice to confirm what I was seeing.) But above all I will never, EVER forget the prices and exchange rate.

We go through the usual security rigmarole and get on the plane. This here is our last on the ground view of Europe for I'm not sure how long. Soon enough we take off on the next leg of our journey (Zurich to Dubai). By this point we've been on the move for several hours. The total journey (Interlaken to Illawarra) will take us over 30 hours door to door.

Side-note: It is absolutely frapping awesome to watch the sun set over Turkey, with the lights of the towns coming on as the sun turns the sky orange. Even if you're doing it from an economy class seat in an A380.

We land in Dubai and start walking to the other gate. But first we have to go through our security check and get rid of our bottled water even though we have come straight off a plane where these checks have already been done. A few kilometres later (yeah, the terminal is THAT big) we find the gate for our Dubai - Sydney flight and buy some coffee and fresh water, and meet up with the other two who had gone to Paris instead of Switzerland. Then the boarding gate opens about an hour earlier than I'm expecting. "What gives?", I ask. "Oh, this is just to get down to the lounge. We aren't boarding yet." So we go down there. And have to get rid of our water again. I am told that we can take the empty container in with us and fill it up at a fountain inside. Another (a female, and given that this is Dubai I wonder if that might be the difference) is told that the container has to be handed over.

I never liked Dubai. I like Dubai even less now. If I never had to see that nasty, overheated (even the water in the toilet bowls is hot), brutal, theocratic, women-abusing and imported-worker exploiting hole-in-the-sand-masquerading-as-a-shopping-mall again I would be very happy. Unfortunately the way things have worked out it has become the only practical hub to get to Europe through unless you want to fly Singapore Airlines, which I don't. (I prefer airlines that don't take off down closed runways or land on the grass alongside them.)

So we get on our flight back to Sydney, which seems to last forever. We land late on Saturday night local time, make our way back to the other two's place (where my car had been left) by taxi, and begin a midnight drive home. When we get there Lilly freaks out and forgets how to breathe, simultaneously hyperventilating and choking in the way that little (I mean, BIG, very BIG) dogs often do. Lucy freaks out because our bags have been brought into the loungeroom and this is an unauthorised change, and cats don't do unauthorised changes.

Next time I go home to Rome, I'magonna stay there.