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Oh goodness, where to begin? I finished my ISP, survived my presentation, officially completed my junior year of college (scary!) and left Switzerland. The last two weeks of the program we had presentations and then had the afternoons off. Lots of exploring in Geneva and Nyon, including one last hurrah at the UN library, the Botanical Gardens (they have the coolest carousel ever!), Geneva plage, Old Town, explored Versoix and Coppet, CERN (saw the computer that first used the World Wide Web), got lost looking for a clock that then turned out to be under repair, found La Jonction (where the Rhone and the Arve rivers meet – they don’t mix because of the silt in one and not in the other so there is a very distinct line – Julia and I also found the urban jungle of Geneva on this adventure), played cards, and just hung out enjoying our last days together. Unfortunately Switzerland chose these two weeks to be cloudy and rainy, but we managed to avoid most of the rain while we were in presentations. On the weekend I took day trips, to Annecy on Saturday and Montreux on Sunday. Annecy is a little town in France
and is gorgeous! It is on a lake of course, as all little towns in this part of the world seem to be. There are little canals running through it, lots of flowers, a castle (every town has one of these too), and cute little buildings. We had a picnic on the lake front then wandered the city. The sun was even out for the whole day until the very end when it started pouring. It was a great group that went and was probably one of my favorite days of the semester.
Sunday my host mom took me to Chateau Chillon in Montreux. Supposedly it is the most photographed castle in Switzerland. It sits on a little spit of land out into the lake with a backdrop of the Alps. Once again the weather cooperated and the sun even came out for part of it! Then we walked along the lake to Montreux, had some hot chocolate, and took the boat back. All the flowers were blooming so it was absolutely lovely. On the way home we stopped at the tulip festival in Morges. So many flowers!
The last Friday of the program the whole
group plus professors went to Yvoire, a little medieval town in France across the lake from Nyon. We had a lovely lunch on a terrace overlooking the castle and the water (I’m telling you, every town has a lake and a castle) then went for a walk through the town. Then the hardy ones took the little meandering trail along the coastline back. Saturday a group of us went to Gruyeres and went for a little hike which quickly turned into an adventure when we realized the directions we had were not very specific or correct. We ended up making friends with some cows as we cut through their pastures (sanctioned by the neighbors, don’t worry) and unintentionally reenacted the Sound of Music. Gruyeres is perched up on a hill and is home to the famous Gruyeres cheese. We explored the cheese factory and had the traditional cheese fondue for one last Swiss hoorah. Alps, sunshine, cows, cheese, chocolate, and trains – everything Swiss on our last day. Then Sunday was goodbyes (I now own three Swiss army knives – the present of choice here apparently) and Kavya and I headed off to Spain!
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