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Published: July 28th 2009
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Lausanne
On the train close to LaussaneHi guys,
Everytime I update the blog, I think I will be back sooner than before. But I guess evey 7-8 days is working for me now.
Maybe one reason for that is the fact that I almost have established myself here and living my regular life. Go to school, come back in the evening. Go out for a run or swim, have dinner, surf the internet, maybe read a book and go to sleep.
Luckily, I was informed at the end of the fifth week that my Visa to US was ready. Originally, they had told me to expect 8-10 weeks. 10 weeks would have been really tight. Exactly the day before my return flight to US.
Now, I should say that I feel much better. At least no worries regarding my Visa. Sometimes this extra process could take longer than you think. That way, your schedule would be completely altered.
Anyhow, I have just sent them the documents and hopefully I will recieve my Visa by the end of this week.
I have almost 1 month left here in Europe. Glad that my official vacation will start soon. I never asked for a real long vacation from my
Lausanne
Atomic-bomb proof basement. adviser. The last one was 10 days during the winter break 2008-2009. I really desreve this one then.
I would try to see some parts of Europe. And then, before heading back to US, I have one last important thing to do.
I will talk about it later once I found out about the details.
In this post, I am going to talk about this last weekend when I joined Alireza, my old friend in undergrad and Master's in Iran.
He is studying Mechanical Engineering at EPFL university in Lausanne, Switzerland. Obviously, this is the French part of the country, located in the south-west of Switzerland close to France and Italy.
I left Friday evening aronnd 6:30pm. It took almost two hours to get to Lausanne. Alireza said he would come to pick me up at the main station. The first thing that I noticed about the two regions was the language.
In the train leaving Zurich, the information regarding the stops were announced in the order of Germn, French, Italian and English. The same train when enterd in Lausanne, announced the infomation in French, German. Nothing unexpected, right?
Yeah, but to me, I felt like I entered
Geneva
The walkway to the Waterjet. another country. Although I do not undestand Swiss-German language spoken all the time by the people in Zurich, yet getting used to it makes me feel I am "living" in a familiar place. Or maybe "home". Once you enter an area where you can not recognize the words (not necessarily by meaning, just the tone and intontaion), then you feel like a stranger. Not my home.
I would say that the big minority in Zurich are Muslims (women wearing head-scarves). In Lausanne, the big minority is the African people. Alireza found the French culture more warm-blooded and lively than the German part. He has been living there for 3 years, so he has had enough experience to compare the two cultures.
All the signs and people speaking French. I still can not believe it was in the same country. Notice that I just traveled two hours toward south and not 6 hours.
We walked around the downtownish area for half an hour or so. The goal was a Persian restaurant! Yay!
I have not had Persian food for a while. In US, I have to drive for almost two hours to LA to have some persian food. Here, I
also traveled for two hours too. The owner of the Restaurant was an Afghan man who spoke pefect Farsi. I could not tell at the beginning until later in some phrases.
You might want to know that Farsi (persian) is spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikestan (and Central Asia). It seems that the people in Afghanistand and Tajikestan understand Iranian-Persian since it is somehow the Formal farsi they speak or may learn at school but they speak their own dialect which is somewhat challenging for Iranians to understand. I guess this is the same story for the German spoken in Germany and also Austria and Switzerland and even Netherlands.
Sitting in the Restaurant, I was talking loud my Farsi with Alireza since I am used to the fact the almost no-one understand me in US. But, I was in the wrong place for this habit. Two persian girls sitting next to us with some Swiss friends, the owner of the Restuarant and also the chef (and Iranian young man) all could hear us! That made life a bit hard for me to make sure I am using the "appropriate" words. :-)
Tons of rice, and Bakhtiari Kebab (a combination of beef
Geneva
Another Cannon in Switzerland (and they say this country has always been peaceful! :-) ) and chicken Kebab). With Doogh (Yogurt soda which you might not like it!). Yummy.
We talked for an hour or so in the restaurant.
Then we took the train to Alireza's place. For the first time in Switzerland, I saw the trains without any driver.
Also, Alireza warned me not eantering one area since it was not safe. Well, I thought Switzerland would be one of the safest places on this planet. But I guess there would be problems everywhere. I even go out for runs around 12 in the night in Zurich without worrying for anything (Please don't say it is crazy. If you know how much energy I sometimes have and dealing with millions of thoughts in my mind, in order no to "diverge", I prefer to go for a run even if it is that late).
When we entered his place which was right next to the lake Leman, he showed me something that I could not believe my eyes.
A basement with a crazy 1 foot thick metal door and walls made of half a meter concerete. Maybe you have heard of it.
These places are supposedly built to give people shelter against Atomic
Lausanne
Gorgeous rainbow. Bomb! Yes!...
Now, it is almost full of beer. A shelter for beer :-))
But seems like they do not build any of those anymore thanks to the no cold war times.
Since the weather forecast on Saturday was cloudy sky, we decided to go to Milan in Italy. We planned everything.
Ineteresting to know, to see the "The Last Supper", one has to reserve it before. We gave it a shot and sent the request. Sure about the train going to Milan, we woke up around 7:30 and got to the station with the hope that we could get the discounted tickets. Unfortunately, all the tickets were sold out excpet for the First Class which were super expensive. I am not working in an Oil company yet. I am still a grad student.
Plan B. We took the boat on the Lake Leman (or Geneve). For some reason the people do not like it if you say Lake Geneve. On one of the boards, they even crossed it out (see the pictures).
I did not regret missing Milan. The cruise on the Lake was so fantastic. Such a nice weather. The weather was much better than
the forecast (this is when I like the forecast goes wrong). The first boat was really fast since it was a small one carrying almost 50-70 people. The next stop, we sat outside. Just see the pictures and the movie took. So gorgeous. The wind in my face. One of the feelings I have not had for a while.
We stopped at the city in France. Yes, officially I was in France at this point. The name was "EVIAN LES BAINS". Good luck with the correct pronounciation. It was a little village with old-style design. I guess the pictures speak better than I do.
I should admit that Alireza's French was really good despite himself denying it all the times. He pretty much could ask any questions and communicate with the people without any noticable problem.
People in the German speaking part can communicate better in English than the people in the French part.
We had our lunch in a the restaurant in the French style. So, I had my first real French food in in France.
I should say that the way the food was "decorated" reminded me the movie "ratatouille". :-)
We spent almost 3 hours in
Lausanne
My old buddy, Alireza. this small town. Then, we decicde to go back to Switzerland and go to Geneva.
It took about 1 hour and half to get there since this boat was really big and much slower.
The first thing we noticed was the famous water-jet known as Jet d'Eau. "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_d'Eau"
The 500 Liters per second water goes as high as 140 meters in the air (Please do the conversion yourself. I am in Europe guys!)
We walked along the main street (forgot the name). Geneva generally looked much more touristy than Zurich. One could also see most of the people walking around were tourists (at least in that area close to the lake and the downtown area).
Music bands, painters, illusionist and dance groups. The street was packed with many people.
Alireza told me that Geneva was either the last or one of the last cantons in Switzerland that joined the unity and became part of Switzerland. Hence, this has been always a subject to make fun of the people there amongst other people living in Switzerland.
I think in the country with this diversity, one has to expect these joked floating around. This is the least thing that could smoothen
the atmosphere.
We did not have neither time nor that much interest to see the big international organizations located in Geneva. Those buildings were somewhat far from the place we were.
Restroom. I had to pay 10 CHF indirectly for that. We gave up on finding the public restrooms after walking for 20 minutes or so. Then we decided to go to COOP (big chain stores in Switzerland selling products, foods etc).
I bought a drink and chocolate cake. That was my permission to use the restroom too!
We took the train back to Lausanne in the evening which is luckily bright in Summers. It does not get dark until 9:30pm.
This post is now much longer than I thought. Hope I did not make you bored.
I will talk about Sunday in the next post where we went to a hike.
Ciao,
Momo
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Rozmin
non-member comment
Persian restaurant in Lausanne
Hello! I'd be very interested to know the name of that Persian restaurant you went to, if you remember it! The food looks quite good. :-)