Fram Discovers the Swiss Landscapes…
Or: all roads lead to Montreux…
A smooth easyJet flight out of Nice Terminal 2, on time and drama-free, and the “Queen Mother” lands at Geneva airport. I did get a little lost. Was I supposed to exit on the French side, being French and all? Not at all. That’s only if you want to go back to France…
I was heading to Montreux, to the Mona, the tournament hotel, which has a breathtaking view over the gorgeous Lake Geneva (Léman for the French Speakers).
Finding the train station inside the airport was child’s play. Finding the machine to buy a ticket was easy. Finding the right train was a fail. Not a single member of staff in sight, so there was Framboise asking left and right how to get where she was going. It made me smile: for a moment it felt just like France. Someone told me to go to Lausanne and change there… Off I went.
Unlike France, though, everything is spotless, and the escalators and lifts in the airport and the station all work. All of them. Yes, really, I swear.
Once on the train, some fellow passengers pointed me to an app that told me, yes, there were direct trains. It also told me that the train I’d finally found in Lausanne, thanks to two lovely Swiss Railways employees, was a stopping service that halted literally every two minutes. I kid you not.
But as François Mitterrand once put it, on board a Eurostar crawling through Kent at 60 km/h because the high-speed tracks still hadn’t been built months after the launch, he got to enjoy the beautiful English countryside. Same for me in Switzerland…
And what landscapes! The variety of vegetation and architectural styles between Geneva and Montreux is something else. I had a ball.
On the platform in Montreux, I asked for directions from a young woman who works at a hotel near the Mona. She walked me to a lift that saved me from a staircase worthy of Montmartre. And as if to welcome me, the sun broke through the clouds as I walked along the lake towards the hotel.
The reception has a stunning view, and so does the room. But above all, above all, there was a meeting.
Well, a reunion, with Dominique Landry.
By day he runs the hotel’s food and beverage operation. By night he’s a squash fanatic: not just a player, but a high-flying photographer with real talent and a world all his own.
We first met a long time ago, in 2008 I think, at the Sky club in Cairo. Feels like yesterday morning, as my grandmother would have said… I’m preparing a big feature on him for the coming weeks, but here’s a little taste…
Dominique Landry, the Accidental Squash Player
Some squash careers start in an academy, with a coach and a ten-year plan. Dominique Landry’s started on a day off in Kuwait, when he was bored out of his mind.
Back then, this Frenchman born near Saumur was a chef. His hotel rented him a flat in the Salmiya district, and right downstairs there was a squash club. He went down and came across an old man with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, and told him he’d like to learn. The old man looked him up and down, put his cigarette aside and took him on court.
Five minutes later, the verdict was in: “You go to play with the kids.”
Bear in mind that Dominique had just finished sixth in the Kuwait half-marathon. He swallowed his pride and went to play with the kids.
The old man was Ahmed Tabhet, a former top Egyptian player who had competed in the British Open. Years later in Cairo, Ibrahim Asal took Dominique to the Gezira Club. Ahmed Tabhet was there, still coaching children. He recognised him, burst into tears and hugged him: “Landry, what are you doing here?”
In the meantime, Dominique had done the grand tour of the hotel world: Saudi Arabia, seven years in China (with almost no squash, what a thought), Nigeria, Yemen, Egypt.
In Nigeria, he met his future boss… on a squash court, naturally. Years later, that boss called him to come and work with him in Switzerland, where Dominique now runs the restaurants of the lakeside hotel Mona.
Just goes to show: squash leads everywhere.
A Photographer with the Magic Touch
And where does photography come in? Through the kitchen. He started by shooting his chefs’ plates. Then his youngest daughter’s concerts: she’s 12, plays guitar, and plays Miles Davis. Then birds: he can spend seven days in the water, hidden in a hide, waiting for them to come to him. And of course squash: the Grasshopper Cup, Monte-Carlo, Paris…
A little anecdote: straight after his seven days in the water, he went off to shoot the last tournament in Paris, contorting himself into impossible positions. The result was a bad case of sciatica. No regrets…
His photos have something different about them, and that’s deliberate. “I like to take a critical look at my own work. I try to do things a bit differently.” In his shots you notice details no one else sees, like the player who closes his eyes at every impact – that’s Aly Abou Eleinen…
Squash is a family affair in the Landry household too. His son, a former high-level ice hockey player, took up the game two or three years ago. Dominique managed to beat him two years ago. Since then, it’s the son who “wipes the floor with him.” On Saturday, both the son and the youngest daughter are entered in the Lausanne amateur tournament.
And Dominique? He’ll be behind his lens, sciatica or not. And under pressure, too, because Framboise is making him work fast. This is a man who takes months, even years, to sort through his photos and never throws anything away. “Like a squirrel,” he says with a smile.
There are moments that remind you why you’re in the squash world. Thank you, Montreux. Thank you, Dom…
