Around 12 years ago, Samuel Bail and Abel Samet were working in finance in London in mergers and acquisitions advisory. They sat across a desk from each other, travelled together for work and to running races, and one day they realised that there were no bags that they felt suited their needs. This led to a side-hustle plan to create a bag that had the comfort and function of a hiking backpack, but was designed to be used in the city and for travel.
After taking a bag-making course at Central Saint Martins, and travelling around Europe to find the best factories, they made themselves a couple of pieces and found that friends and colleagues wanted them too. Troubadour was born. Today Bail and Samet run the company and have become specialists in travel bags. From his home in Switzerland, Bail shares his secret tips.
I live just outside of Zurich, and one thing that’s really special about being on the lake here is these places called Badis. They’re gathering spots right along the lake that everyone from the local town goes to – teenagers, little kids, older people… just everyone’s there.
They’re always beautifully maintained. People just hang out on the grass, jump in the lake and go for a swim, or dive off the diving boards and have a play. They bring picnics to have by the water; I think it’s a little bit like the way pubs in London are social gathering spots for everyone. These little Badis are spotted along the lake and it’s a very special scene. They’re easy to find and it’ll be a few quid to get in. Some have more fancy cafés than others.
I’m Canadian, and I love the outdoors. The reason we moved to Zurich from London is because I can go for a swim in the lake before work; I can go ski touring at lunch, just 20 minutes away; in the summer, my lunch bike ride is over a mountain pass, dropping down to a lake and then climbing back. There’s also an unbelievable trail network for running that’s sitting right on the doorstep of Zurich – it’s a playground for outdoor stuff.
There’s a mountain nearby called Hoch-Ybrig. It has lifts, but from the parking lot you can ignore the lifts that take you over to another mountain and just start skinning up the side of the mountain. There are infinite ways to get up and infinite ways to get down, and if it snows, you’ll find fresh powder for a week. It’s really deserted, you might see one person in a morning of ski touring. And the views are epic, you get to the top and you’ve got 360-degree views.
As for hiking, one of my favourites is a pretty special knife-edge trail that’s really quiet, called Stoos Ridge Hike. Again, amazing 360 views. It’s probably roughly a four-and-a-half-kilometre hike, and if you don’t want to walk you can take a gondola up. And when you get to the top, the views of Lake Lucerne and the surrounding mountains are awesome.
There’s lovely cycling around here, too. You can cycle over a mountain pass called Sattelegg. It’s about 1,100 metres elevation. There’s a little restaurant on top for lunch or coffee, and then you drop down the other side into a town on a lake called Einsiedeln.
And there’s a great coffee shop in that town, which is called Dreiherzen Kaffee, which is right on the steps of an abbey. Apart from the amazing location, it also makes great coffee. They roast their own beans and that’s where we get all the beans that we use to make coffee at home.
Another thing that’s quite special is that the farms here are all small and family run. The government supports farming well and the farms are all dotted right on the edges of town. So, wherever you’re living, your meat and cheeses and vegetables can come from within five kilometres. If you go to the weekend markets, the produce is amazing.
We’re in a town called Wädenswil and there’s a great Saturday market here. The farmers come in and set up – there’s a guy who grows organic vegetables, and his farm’s just a few kilometres away; there’s another family and they just do wild meat, all from the area. It’s delicious.
A lot of farms also have a little shop, and it’s just done on the honour system. There’s no one there, so you go in, you pick what you want, you calculate how much you owe, and you send it to them electronically or just leave some cash. The eggs are fresh, the vegetables are picked that day. It’s a pretty special way to get your groceries.
Peter Howarth has been the style director of British GQ and the editor of Arena, British Esquire and Man About Town. He is the co-founder and CEO of London creative agency SHOW and managing director of Secret Trips
