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Published: August 8th 2007
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Lucerne
The covered bridge crossing the Reuss river that runs through Lucerne This from my journal while riding the train from Montreux to Luzerne: "Switzerland is the kind of country I would have invented if it didn't already exist." It's Disney-esque. It's Heidi-esque. It's even a bit Python-esque I realized when I noticed that some of my fellow travelers were dressed in suits but wear hiking boots and have ski poles sticking out of their rucksacks. I want to know where they work.
Don't like mountains and lakes? Then move here for the progressive attitude. Take the car sharing system, for example. If you need one, just come pick one up. If it's below a third of a tank, top it off if you have a chance. Oh, and try to leave it tidy for the next fellow. But of course we don't really need to tell you that.
The cars are always spotless, naturally. "But why don't people defecate in them?" My stunned students and I ask our host, Juergen, who has come to pick us up in one. He's puzzled by the question. "Because that would make it more expensive for the rest of us," he answers. We blink several times like Stimpy after Ren explains the use of
Plague
Paintings on the bridge tell of harder times cat boxes, and then in unison, "So?"
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I'm in one of those enviable situations where I am getting more credit than I deserve. It's a perk of old age I guess. At the opening ceremony the mayor of Yeverdon, the Minister of Education for the canton of Vauv, the organizers of the "Summer University," and my students repeatedly thanked me for all of my organizational efforts. They even interviewed me for Swiss TV!
Don't worry about me, though. I hold an advanced degree in false humility. "It's really the little people that make it all happen." I say. "My part was really negligible." I blush and give the ground an "aw shucks" kick as if this last statement weren't literally true.
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None of us knows where we are, what we're doing here, or why our hosts are being so nice to us. Maybe it's like that Twilight Zone episode where in the end we find out that we are the main course in some alien barbeque. I should have checked Lonely Planet to see if the Swiss still practice cannibalism. I know it was rampant a few years ago.
Basically, the Swiss
tatoo you
Sneaked a photo of this woman making a call in a Bern phomne booth. government, actually the government of the Canton of Vauv, wants English speaking playmates for the students of University X. I call it University X because none of us can pronounce the name, including the Swiss! "Just call it the Engineering school," they say, "that's what we do." In return, we are given air fare and three weeks of four star accommodations. In addition, each of us receives a Swiss rail pass.
The Swiss rail system is the circulatory system of Switzerland. Clean shiny train corpuscles run from one end of Switzerland to the other every ten minutes. Smaller trains service tiny villages high in the Alps. Do goat herders really need trains? Probably not, but they are there in case they do. With a rail pass the trains, ferries, busses, and museums are all mine. I arrived on Bastille Day, dropped my suitcase at the hotel, and hopped the next ferry to Evian, on the French side of Lake Geneva, to help them celebrate. (Evian, for those of you who don't obsess on such things, is naive, spelled backwards.)
The next day I took the train from Lausanne to Aigle. From Aigle I took a tram to Leysin.
Big Chess
Men playing giant chess in the rain in Bern. The climb was so steep that I had to hold myself into my rear-facing seat by putting my feet on the wall in front of me. I saw mountain goats right outside my window! From Leysin I took a ski lift to the top of La Berneuse. To add to the adventure the lift mysteriously stopped long enough for me to formulate an escape plan that involved busting open the door, climbing onto the roof, and then shimmying down the cable to the previous tower. At the summit I thought it would be a good idea to count the peaks I could see. I kept losing track after 40.
On the hike back to civilization I passed through herds of grazing cows. Each cow wears a distinctive bell and so a heard of them makes an agreeable racket reminiscent of the wind chime store at Nepenthe in Big Sur. The farmer who owns the cows makes cheese that he sells to hikers. I stopped in his barn and had my fill. (For $13, though. Switzerland is expensive.)
While I was eating, a group of Russian hikers stopped in. I could tell they were Russian because they were wearing
Don Martin shoes (c.f. Mad Magazine issues 1 to infinity). They were struggling to communicate with the farmer's French-speaking wife. I intervened and with my high school French and my ten word Russian vocabulary managed to translate the phrase "we want apple juice" from Russian to French. My head almost exploded from the effort!
So what's the catch? What's the downside? Aside from possible cannibalism, it's this: living in Yerevan has conditioned me to not be hungry for dinner until after 10 PM. When I was visiting Laura in Barcelona a 10 PM meal was breakfast. Europeans eat late; except the Swiss. Here everything is shut tight no later than 9 PM. I have missed dinner twice. Tonight I dine in my room on biscuits I stole from the breakfast buffet, a bottle of wine I bought at Coop (which they pronounce "cup") and, of course, chocolate bars.
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This afternoon everyone—professors and students—went on the Montreux Jazz Cruise. This is a ship that circles the Eastern end of Lake Geneva while drinks are served and live music is performed. The Blue Dolls, an Italian version of the Andrews Sisters, magnetized everyone on the ship. Speedboats followed
time
Einstein walked by this amazing clock every day on his way to the patent office. Supposedly it inspired his relativity theory. us in case drunks leaped off the ship. I thought this was a joke until we reached port in Montreux and about ten people dove off!
P.S. I posted a clip of the Blue Dolls at the top of the blog.
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Next week marks the end of solitary confinement. Debra will join me in Switzerland. I'm nervous. I feel like I have two very different lives, my life in the US and my life overseas. When she arrives the two lives will collide, collapse into one. Matter and anti-matter. I feel like a different person here. I imagine myself a Graham Greene character, or perhaps a Joseph Conrad character, maybe Kurtz or Lord Jim. In reality, I am an illiterate mute. What if she doesn't like illiterate mutes?
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Sylvia
non-member comment
Fondue!
Great to hear you're having fun in CH! Don't neglect to eat some fondue with viande sechee before you leave! My 2 centimes. Sylvia