Lausanne (prounounced, "Lau-zanne"), with a population of 128,000, is a smaller city on Lake Geneva (Lac Léman in French), not far from Geneva. I only spent a day there with Matt & Allie, but it was enough to decide that it is a place I would like to live! The town is big enough for a small metro system and buses, but not too big that is overwhelmed by the business architecture, crowds, and dirtiness that can overcome big cities.
I arrived to Lausanne on the morning of Wednesday, September 8th and right into the arms of my greatly missed brother and sister-in-law. We dropped my bags off at their hotel and ventured up a big hill to a museum called Collection de l'Art Brut, a museum full of art by so-called "fringe artists:" schizophrenics, peasants, and criminals. It was interesting to see the different kind of pieces: scuptures, paintings, drawings, etc. It was not quite as disturbing as I had expected. Each artist has a little placard with their story on it, and what I found interesting was that for at least 75% of the people, their parents had left them or had died when they were a young age.
After the museum visit, we caught a train to Grandvaux, a small village outside of Lausanne, and then proceeded to walk from there along the lake through a few other little villages. This is Lausanne's little "wine country," as there were vineyards covering the acreage in between the little villages. It was one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen! The sky was blue and sunny, there was a little breeze coming off the water, and rolling hills of vineyards with grapes ripe for the picking surrounded us. We could not have asked for better weather as I was content with a t-shirt and a scarf! Despite his fear of Swiss guards popping out of the vines, Matt sneaked a taste of one of the grapes! Unfortunately, there were not any wine tastings along the way--the men I spoke with said they don't start until after 5pm. We walked through the along through the vineyards for a couple of hours, then headed back to Laussane to take a train to Interlaken. What a lovely afternoon!
The train took two hours to Interlaken, with nice mountain and countryside views along the way. We got off at Interlaken Ost station to this absolutely beautiful town in a valley among mountains, and in between two lakes (hence the name Inter-laken). We had now ventured into German-speaking Swtizerland where my French-speaking skills would be rendered useless, but most people we came across spoke English, anyway. I know English is not exactly pretty, but the German language is just plain rough on the ears! Perhaps I am used to hearing silky smooth, romantic French. They even break grammatical rules in French if something does not sound good. This makes the language hard to learn, but nice to hear!
After we got settled into the "Funny Farm" hostel, with its retro orange and brown curtains and carpeting (not to mention the floor lamp in our room with fringe on it), we headed out to get some dinner. Near our hostel there was a little Thai resaturant that had some good smells to it, so we decided to eat there. First, we ordered "3 big beers," (this would become a theme of our trip together), and then the usual noodle/rice type dishes. It was very yummy - typical Thai food. A group of about 7 Australian guys sat at the table next to us, which was really close, so it would have been difficult not to talk to them. Plus, they were the typical, fun and rowdy Australian travel types. I have to admit they were all super good looking and made me curse to myself in my head, "Why didn't I study abroad in Australia??"
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