Getting to the beautiful Swiss country on Friday proved to be my first real travel difficulty here. On the first of my two trains, heading to Basel from Frankfurt, an announcement came on in German over the train intercoms that made the people in my compartment very upset (I only know this because Victor made sure that the key German swear words were in my must know vocabulary). The woman sitting across from me who had seen earlier that I didn't speak English when the man came to see my train ticket leaned across the compartment and asked me if I understood what was going on. As I was delghtfully unaware of the situation, she informed me that there had been an accident on the train line ahead of us (involving somebody jumping in front of a train) and the train would therefore stop in Offenberg and go no further, a town about 90 minutes by train from Basel, where I had only 12 minutes to make my connection to Lausanne. The ticket man on board couldn't be
bothered to tell me what I was supposed to do when I arrived in Offenberg, where I had no idea what I was doing. Luckily, the other man in our compartment told me in his limited English to follow him when we got off the train. Not really sure what else to do, I followed him out of the train and into a mob of people around the information desk where he found another train to Basel, leaving in an hour. Clearly I was going to miss my connection to Lausanne, but Basel was a step further and hopefully there would be another train to Lausanne. An hour later, we crammed on the train with many other displaced passengers from the train before. Upon arriving in Basel, the German man sent me off towards an information desk, where I was easily reticketed to Lausanne on a train leaving in 15 minutes. I arrived in the Lausanne Gare only 2 hours late, and with no crisis. Wooooooooo!
After going out the back of the train station and getting myself temporarily lost (Sylvie's directions to her apartment were from the other side of the station), I finally found her apartment building, dropped my stuff, and flopped down on the bed, exhausted from a day of being lost in another language. The weekend in Switzerland was much better than the voyage there though. On Friday, Sylvie and I walked down to the huge lake that bordered Lausanne on one side and mountains on the other and stretched down to Geneva. I say "walked down" because the town of Lausanne is literally built on the side of one of one of those mountains. During the weekend, I think my calves doubled in size as a result of walking up and down the hills. After my walking tour of the area, we went back to Sylvie's apartment and made pizza and salad, my first non-Indian full meal in over a month. We also had this soda called Rivella, which is Swiss and which I found that I liked much
more than American soda because it was less sweet and tasted kind of fruity. After our dinner, we walked up the hill to La Festival de la Cité, Lausanne's city celebration around a huge cathedral on a hill that was lit up with green lights (making it look like a haunted witch castle, I kept pointing out to Sylvie). The celebration had a number of stages for music, spoken comedy, dancing, and other entertainment, as well as a number of bars and food booths all around. One of the things that struck me the most about the festival is that it seemed like something that would have been more geared towards a younger population in the US (20s and 30s crowd), but I found that even from 11-1 at night when we were there, the age range seemed to go from half my age to three times it, and most of the older crowd was still around when we left.
The next day we slept in a bit, me happy for a traveling break and Sylvie happy for a weekend break from work. She is interning at the Nestle headquarters this summer, using her dual citizenship with Switzerland to live and work in a region near family that her parents are both familiar with from their lives and travels. So after our late start, we headed to the metro (where I bought a day ticket so as to avoid some of the hills for a day) and went up to the farmer's market. Aside from the fruits and vegetables that one would fine at any other farmer's market, there was also a flea market style thing and tons of little boulangerie stands. We got hot cheese quiches with the best, most flaky and buttery crust that I've ever had, and walked through the cobblestone streets around town. Afterward, we went down to the Olympic Museum. Switzerland is the home of the International Olympic Committee, and from the Olympic museum and the occasion decoration of
olympic rings in Lausanne, the meeting place of the committee, this would be hard to miss. The museum was really cool and had exhibits with everything Olympics. Walking inside, we went under the world high jump record bar, which Sylvie couldn't even reach with her hands. There were displays inside of all the medals from the modern day games, as well as posters and advertisements dating back to the 1800s. A lot of equpiment and uniforms used in the Olympics were on display, ranging from running shoes that had been on the feet of some of the fastest people ever to the impossibly small ankle-length swimsuit worn by Michael Phelps in just one of his gold medal winning races in 2008 to sea kayaks and skis and ice skates and bobsleds. There was also am interactive section of the museum where we got to test our jump height, try cycling in a chamber that simulated being at altitude, test our memory, reaction time, and many other things. We left the museum and
walked out into the hot European sunny day, back to the apartment. We spent the rest of the day swimming in the lake (despite the seemingly imminent lightning storm), eating a pasta and salad and garlic bread dinner, and returning to La Festival for more music and dancing before bed.
The next morning we woke up early (7:45 is unthinkable during the summer) and took the train about 30 minutes away to Montreux. From there, we boarded La Train du Chocolat ("The Chocolate Train"), a scenic train tour that climbed through the Swiss mountains up to the town of Gruyère, home of the cheese. After our tour of the cheese factory and learning about the cow and milk to cheese and baguette journey, we got samples of this amazing Swiss cheese, and then hiked up to the Gruyère Castle. A small part of the castle now serves as a museum for modern art, but the majority is still preserved as it was for the knights and nobles. We had some time in the little village that looked like it was still stuck in the time and architecture of the nearby castle, and got pickle and cheese sandwiches on baguette and sat on a little wall looking out across the valley. I think that it was then that I noted to Sylvie that it seemed like we couldn't go somewhere in
Switzerland and not have an amazing view. Following this trend, we next went to a little restaurant in town and sat at a table on a porch hanging out over a cliff and overlooking another valley where we had fresh cream and strawberries and ice cream and meringue. Already feeling sugar happy and full of cheese, we then boarded a bus that took us down the windy road to the Nestle Chocolate Factory. Our tour included the history of chocolate from the discovery of the cacao bean to the modern factory, and ended in an "all you can eat" chocolate sampling room. After trying most of the chocolates (probably over 15 pieces) and feeling kind of sick, we took a little break before reboarding the chocolate train and heading back down to Montreux.
We made a brief stop in Montreux to walk down to the lake and see the expanse of the world-famous Jazz Festival, which over the past week had featured familiar names such as Norah Jones, Regina Spektor, and Tech N9ne. We were too early for any of the music that day, but enjoyed watching some break dancing and parasailing, and spotted the TV5Monde party boat at the pier.
After a long day of walking and standing and eating, we finally made our way back to the apartment and took a little break before going down to the lake area where, similar to Frankfurt, a huge screen was set up in the square for thosuands of people to pack into and watch the World Cup Final, where Spain defeated the Netherlands 1-0 in two extra periods. The Spanish fans were even more insane, rowdy, and loud than the small contingency of them had been in Frankfurt, and it was probably the mosh-pit environment and rudeness toward the Dutch fans than made me find myself secretly hoping for an orange upset. When the winning goal was scored though, after almost two game hours and three standing hours, packed in between all the Europeans and their cigarettes, I was just happy that it was over and even with the eruption of the city on that Sunday night, I still slept like a rock on the couch next to the window facing the street.
Monday morning I was up before 7 to catch my train to Paris, where I somehow managed to miss the critcally important memo that I had to turn my reservation form into the ticket office to get a boarding pass for the train (it didn't mention this anywhere on the reservation form). So the Swiss train ticket man made me pay an extra 120 CHF (Swiss Francs, about equal to the dollar), which he told me I could have reimbursed in Paris. This was only partially true, because after I got to Paris and waited in line for an hour, I was able to have my original ticket refunded, but my original ticket was like half the price. Expensive lesson learned I suppose.
Paris is different than I remember it. Obviously all the sights and sounds and smells are still here, but seeing it on my own is quite a bit different than seeing it with my French teacher when I was 16. I managed to find my hostel without too much getting lost (although I suppose some getting lost is necessary, and I seem to be getting my daily fill). I also was able to conduct all of my interactions from dealing with the ticket refund to buying a metro pass to finding and checking into my hostel in French, a big step in the right direction compared to when I was here in 2006 and the Parisiennes would only speak to me in English because they refused to respond to my bad accent and poor grammar.
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