Re-entering the EU through the back door – no liquids checks either.

I burnt some Air Miles at the weekend and went to Geneva – one of Europe’s duller cities.

I immediately boarded a train for Northern Italy. The spectacular train was spot on time, incredibly clean and very fast. The man at the bar cooked fresh pasta, and the two-and–a-half hour journey was gone in a spellbinding flash, through the rock and snow of the Alps, until finally the tunnels and gorges gave way to the wide stretches of Lake Maggiore.

The lake boasts several islands – Isola Bella sports an outrageous over-the-top rococo palace that seems to have engulfed every square inch of land; but Pescatori is a dream of a place.

A narrow passage threads down the spine of the island, with shops, houses, and cafes looking out onto the water either side. You can walk right round the island in nine minutes.

The foul north wind howled across the lake, the temperature never exceeded 13 degrees, and the water was eternally choppy – bombarded from time to time by tropical downpours. Past mid-summer’s day is this global warming – those lower temperatures provoked by the melting arctic?

Flying home on a packed British Airways flight I thought again of the Switzerland I had spent but a few hours in.

I thought how easy it is to leave non-EU Swiss territory and enter the EU with no border checks – a perfunctory wander through the train by a Swiss immigration man aboard the train on the way back from Italy.

He got off at the next station after the border. No one checked my passport either into or out of the EU until I got to Geneva airport.

None of the wretched checks for liquids at Geneva (although the Swiss airports do maintain the need for such checks) – I have snowblogged on this matter before – particularly the inconsistency and the illogicality of he “liquids search” render them little short of a farce.

But nothing can detract from the beauty of Northern Italy, and Lake Maggiore in particular.