Les derniers jours en Suisse...
My goal with this one is to cover all the small little trips, random activities, and other adventures that I had in my last weeks in Switzerland - essentially everything from when my ISP was turned in on the 27th of April to the day I left on May 8. It'll be a lot, and it will be random and scattered, but hopefully it will make some sense and follow some kind of chronological order. I know that I have already forgotten some of the small, little things, but hopefully I can remember enough, because that's one of the reasons I'm doing this - to get it all down, so that I won't forget.
Ok, so: the ISPs were due on Friday, April 27th, and since I also gave my 30-minute oral presentation on that day, I was completely and totally done with the program on the 27th. I didn't take any major trips, though, since we had to go see all of the others students present their ISPs from Monday through Thursday of the following week, though only in the mornings. In the afternoons, we had to take 15-minute ACTFL (American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages) tests in order to gauge our proficiency at French, but they were literally just conversations with the Academic Directors (ADs), so they were nothing at all to worry about. The point of all this is: we had the afternoons off the week after the ISPs were due.
But before we get to that week, we have to get through the weekend: the Saturday after I turned in my ISP (the 28th), I got together with a bunch of other students and went to the beach in Rolle, a town right on the lake. One of the other students had been told by their host parents that the beach in Rolle was the best in the region, so we took their word for it and took the train late in the morning to get to Rolle around noon. The beach was about a 15 or 20-minute walk from the train station, just on teh other side of the "camping" - Swiss for "trailer park." Yes, they do have them in Switzerland, but they're still a little nicer than the backwoods trailer parks that spring to mind when you think of trailer parks in the U.S. In any case, the beach turned out to be rocky (like most beaches on Lac Leman), but there were large grassy areas behind the beach proper, so the nine or so other students and I lay down on the grass, played frisbee, ate the food we brought, and otherwise just chilled at the beach all afternoon. At one point, the three other guys there and I rented a paddleboat for 30 minutes - you could just take it out on the lake, as long as you didn't go more than 300 meters away from the coast and you had it back on time. It was fun, with the two Richmond men peddling and the other two lounging in the back. We almost didn't get it back on time, though - the exchange with Deel (the other Richmond student) was hilarious:
Me: "Deel, how much time do we have left?"
Deel: "A half-hour."
Me: "No, we had a half-hour total."
Deel: "Yeah, so we have a half-hour."
Me: "We've been out here a while already... We left at 3:45. What time is it now?"
Deel: "4:10."
Me: "And we had a half-hour. So we have to be back in five minutes??"
Deel: "Oh, shit, yeah!"
That is just a summary - it took a little longer than that to get the point across, but I can't remember exactly what the exchange was. It was hilarious at the time, though... maybe you had to be there.
In any case, after an afternoon well-spent at the beach, I caught the 5:15 PM train back to Nyon because I had to be home by 6:30 PM in order to go to dinner at my host brother's apartment with my host parents. He and his boyfriend have a really nice apartment in Gland (where a bunch of other students in my program lived) and he makes amazing pizzas from scratch. We got there around 8:00 PM and stayed until just after 11:00 PM, having enjoyed a good evening of pizza, conversation, and Swiss German rock music (including one song that really REALLY plagiarized the music from an American song, though I forget which one it was at this point...).
The next day, I went hiking with my host parents in the mountains behind the city of Montreux. After my adventures on la Saleve (see the last post), I was a little leery of hiking at the tops of the big mountains, but they assured me that the path we were going to take would be really easy and not at all dangerous. We took the autoroute until we were past Lausanne, and then we got off and took the backroads through the vineyards of the Swiss Riviera (as the area between Lausanne and Montreux along Lac Leman is called). The towns there were beautiful and old, and the vineyards were built into the hillsides using vast systems of terraces that were absolutely breathtaking. The Swiss are best known for their white wines (Chablais from Valais, for example), but at that point, the wine could have been crappy and I wouldn't have cared because it was just that cool-looking.
We started up into the hills behind Montreux and the roads quickly became very narrow and extremely serpentine as we headed up towards the top of the mountains, which I think were still technically the "pre-Alps." The Swiss refusal of guardrails again made me a little nervous, and it was necessary to honk the horn every time you went around a blind corner because the roads were only wide enough for one car to pass at a time - there were little pull-offs every so often that were used to pass oncoming vehicles. The area we were in was actually right around the train line that my friends and I had taken from Montreux to Interlaken, and we saw the same train both while driving up and while returning.
We got to a parking lot at the top of the hills, and started our hike along a path that was actually a road for Jeeps. The road was built when the Swiss constructed avalanche barriers on the sides of the mountains - large metal frames that stick out from the mountains at 90 degree angles in order to support the snow in the winter and help to prevent large avalanches. The walk was very easy and the views were amazing - both on and off the mountain. There were large snails, the largest I've ever seen, everywhere on the path. These were the kinds of snails that the French use for food from time to time - les escargots. As we proceeded, the path began to narrow, though, especially after we got past the point where the avalanche barriers stopped, thus losing the road. The path went from Jeep-sized to, well, a couple feet wide, and then a foot wide. From there it would kind of momentarily disappear and then come back - it was quite an adventure - especially the area when we had to walk across the snow that still stayed on the mountain. It was a little slippery, notably for me since I was the heaviest member of the group. I was getting really, really nervous by this point, because while the hill wasn't a sheer cliff like on la Saleve, it was still a really steep grassy grade, and it was a LONG way down to the valley, perhaps 400 meters. I was also a little unnerved by the woman who came back in the opposite direction because there was another large patch of snow across the path, and she didn't want to cross it because she was hiking alone. That instilled some very dramatic images in my mind. When we got to that patch of snow, I finally spoke up and said that I needed to stop because I was simply getting too stressed and freaked out (though truthfully I had been stressed for a while before that, but too proud to say anything). My host mom was also a little leery of traversing the next patch of snow, since it was much bigger than the former. They saw I was pretty freaked out, and they were really nice and supportive and got me back across the first snowfall to where the path widened a little bit, and that's where we stopped to eat the picnic lunch we had brought with us.
It was good we turned back when we did because it was starting to cloud over really quickly. The weather on the radio had said that the atmosphere over the mountains was really unstable that day and called for rain the late afternoon. I wasn't prepared for the instability that they described, though, and watching the clouds develop was absolutely amazing - it was like someone had hit a fast-forward button. The clouds erupted like mushrooms and just boiled and grew exponentially, and it was moving ridiculously fast. It was incredible. We finished lunch and headed back down, and once we got back to the road-like part of the trail, I was absolutely fine. We got back to the car after stopping to check out a refuge (a building maintained by a hiking club that is always unlocked so that hikers can stay overnight in the mountains if they're doing multiple-day hikes), and right as we walked into the parking lot, it started to sprinkle.
On the way back down the hill, we stopped at a little rock-climbing wall that had been prepared on a section of rockface and watched people practice their skills - including 6- or 7-year olds. It was pretty amazing, though not at all my kind of outdoors activity. On our drive back, we drove through the wine country again and it was still beautiful, even in the clouds. We hopped on the autoroute after getting stuck in a traffic jam on a back road, and it started to drizzle rather steadily. The contrast between when we entered a tunnel and when we exited it, however, was astounding: when we entered, there was steady drizzle. When we came out, there was hail, wind, heavy rain, thunder and lightning - essentially a massive storm. It slowed traffic down a little bit and lasted until we were on the other side of Lausanne. When we got home, though, it was sunny at our house. If what I understand is true, the other end of the lake is always a lot more unstable weatherwise because of the mountains and also the lake itself... perhaps kind of like lake-effect snow off of the Great Lakes, though that specific phenomenon doesn't happen off of Lac Leman.
So that was the weekend after the ISP - a very good and very entertaining time to follow a very stressful and almost miserable week. The hiking stress was a good thing in retrospect, and it felt good to be able to say that I had pushed my limits regarding the vertigo/fear of heights. I think I'm ready to call it vertigo, because there were a few moments that I looked out at the other mountains and valleys, and my eyes did some weird things with depth of field that was kind of disconcerting. In any case, I lived, and I'm better for the experience. My host mom was really understanding about the fact that, as she pointed out, they had been doing this all their lives, and it wasn't my "habitude" - something I was used to. She was certain that if I had two more months, I would be completely over it. She cited the example of the friend with whom my host dad climbed Mont Blanc (the tallest mountain in Europe) who had been even more afraid of heights than I was before he trained for Mont Blanc - which he climbed without any problem. So, it is possible!
The majority of the following week was spent doing little things in the afternoon - I spent one afternoon souvenir shopping for friends and family and taking my ACTFL exam. One afternoon, a group of us went to Gland after the ISP presentations to go to a Vietnamese restaraunt and then go to the beach in Gland, which was much rockier, shadier, and secluded, but still had a lot of charm. The rocks there were also INCREDIBLE skipping stones, and I was able to consistently get more than five skips. While walking to the beach (a little hike from the main area of Gland), we also passed something my host dad had mentioned a long time before - the toblerones. These are cement anti-tank fortifications that the Swiss built during World War II to help fend off a feared (and planned) Nazi invasion. Since it would have been impossible to defend Geneva, the Swiss Army built a solid line of anti-tank fortifications stretching from the lakeshore in Gland to the town of Begnins, at the base of the Jura Mountains. They would fight a holding action there and then retreat up into the "Reduit National," the massive system of fortifications that the Swiss constructed in the Alps. From there, they would fight a guerilla war against the Nazis in a terrain where tanks or airplanes would be useless. I already knew all this, but it was really cool to see the actual fortifications that still stand to this day.
The two other weekday afternoons were very relaxed and non-stressful. The ISP presentations in the morning were hit-or-miss, with some being really good and others being...well... not (specifically one that everyone in the program would immediately identify just by the description I just gave). Thursday evening, there was an aperitif (essentially a combinations of drinks and appetizers) at a little restaurant in Nyon for all of the students and their host families, and that was fun, if sometimes awkward. Some host families didn't come, so there were a number of student "orphans," but it was rather awkward in that the host families didn't know each other, so we were having to try to introduce them, and yeah. It was just not the most comfortable social experience. Aftewards, I stayed in Nyon with a bunch of other students and hung out at the Chateau and a bar in Nyon until the last train of the evening at 10:53 PM. A good time was had by all (though some students had far too good a time if you know what I mean...).
We had made plans to go to Yvoire, France, the next morning. It's a medieval town across the lake that we had heard was really cool, and ferries run regularly from Nyon to Yvoire. The plan had been to meet at 8:30 AM in Nyon in order to buy lunch at Migros before heading over on the 9:30 ferry. Well, of the 8 or so students who had said they would be there, only one other student was there when I reached the gare in Nyon. We didn't quite know what to do, so we started calling people with limited success. We managed to piece together that a bunch of students had stayed the night at the apartment of one of the students who lived in Nyon, so we went over to his place and knocked on the guest bedroom window, much to the surprise of the two students who had been sharing it. There were a total of three students at that apartment, so we got them rallied and going and eventually got everyone coordinated to meet for the 11:20 ferry across the lake.
The ferry ride was nice, though a little chilly from time to time, and Yvoire itself was a very nice old, medieval town. We had lunch there, and in the process, I managed to cut my finger slightly with my brand new Swiss Army knife, so I started going into shops asking if anyone had a band-aid. The first shop - a convenience store - provided me with a paper towel and the guy gave me a weird look. The second shop had nothing and told me that the nearest pharmacy was a 2-km hike away, but referred me across the street to a restaurant, where a very nice woman rinsed my finger in alcohol and then put a band-aid on it. In return, I thanked her a lot and bought a cone of gelato. The French people in Yvoire are very nice and accomodating, fyi. We lingered in Yvoire for a couple hours and then took the mid-afternoon ferry back to Nyon. There, I chilled in the apartment of the student who hosted the previous night's sleepover before meeting everyone else in the group for a ferry to Geneva that was organized by our ADs. They paid for it, and we all clamored aboard for the hour-long ride down the lake to Geneve, where we had a group dinner at the same Italian restaurant on Rue de Lausanne that we had eaten at during Orientation. We racked up a hefty bill - CHF 1600.00 (I peeked). It was also awkward in that their credit card was denied, but we were on the way out the door by that point, after having said the first in a long series of goodbyes since some students were leaving on Saturday.
Saturday, the same student who hosted the previous night's sleepover threw a dinner party at his apartment, so I went to help during the afternoon with the preparations. Nine students were invited and it went really well - he served raclettes, and made some incredible hors d'oeuvres. After dinner, we were all feeling a little sick to our stomachs because of the sheer volume of cheese we had all eaten (raclettes is essentially melted cheese put over pickles, onions, potatoes, or meat), and the majority of students crashed into a food coma. I was still feeling ok, and felt better moving than just sitting and feeling the cheese settle in my stomach, so I helped the host with clean-up. We then all watched Little Miss Sunshine and then went to bed - four of us stayed at his apartment that night.
The next day, I got up early and went home, taking a brief nap and then starting my day. Essentially, I met up with two other students and bummed around Geneva and Nyon that day. Not much to tell - there had been a marathon in Geneva, and so some of the main roads were closed and there were all kinds of free things available - granola bars, shampoo, CHF 30.00 to use at Migros's sports store... the weather was beautiful, and we sat on the rocks that jutted out into the lake for a while, then went to Old Town and got gelato on the Bourg-de-Four. It was just a very chill, pleasant afternoon.
Monday, the day before we left, the group of us decided to have one last group event, and so we all met at the Gare Cornavin in Geneva for a picnic by the lake, in the same place where we had done it previously. It was good, but bittersweet. Oh, but on the way in, when my train arrived, the student I was with and I saw, literally, about a hundred riot cops in the train station in full armor, but they were just standing around. We couldn't figure out why they were there - the only reason we could come up with was the fact that Nicolas Sarkozy had just won the French presidential elections the day before and they were afraid a riot would break out in Geneva as had happened in some French cities. That didn't make any sense, though, because the Swiss don't riot. They just don't. My host father later explained that they were probably practicing for the Euro 2008 Soccer Championship, which Switzerland is co-hosting with Austria. That made sense to me, because I had read in the paper the week before how the Swiss police had practiced storming a train car in Lausanne.
The picnic went well, and then we wandered Geneva one last time, doing some last minute souvenir shopping and a little clothing shopping for those students who were traveling around Europe for a while instead of immediately leaving for the U.S. Then, I went home for my last meal with my homestay family (my host mom put on a really good spread of food, including roast beef, lentils, salad, rosti-like potatoes, and red currant ice cream) and then finished my packing.
I didn't have to pack all that much because I had already sent two boxes of material back to the States - I determined that mailing the stuff would be cheaper than paying baggage overage charges on two bags with two airlines. Mailing the boxes, though, turned out to be much more difficult than I anticipated. I had decided to use the post office in Trelex, one of the towns along the route of the Little Red Train, because the post office was immediately next to the train station, and that would have prevented me from having to take the boxes all teh way to Nyon or Geneva. So, I took an earlier train one morning the week before I left and got off in Trelex, and filled out all the paperwork to get my boxes through customs. The gentleman behind the glass gave me the total postage of CHF 136.00, and I pulled out my Visa, only to find out the hard way that La Poste doesn't take Visa - they only take their own credit cards. I also only had CHF 10.00 on me. And, unlike most post offices in Switzerland, La Poste in Trelex doesn't have an ATM. I was royally screwed. He started to describe how to get to the ATMs in Genolier or at a gas station near the autoroute (which was closer than Genolier), but then I stopped him and pointed out that I didn't have a car. I tried to call the student who lived in Trelex to see if she had enough cash to cover me, but she didn't pick up her phone. Luckily, there was an English-speaking man behind me in line who offered to drive me down to the gas station (about 2 km away) and then said I could hitchhike back.
It was the only option on the table, so I left my backpack as collateral at the post office and hopped in the guy's minivan. He dropped me at the gas station, and I got my money, and then decided to just run back to Trelex. It was a little bit of a run - it took about 15 minutes - but I managed to make it back, pay, and still make the next Little Red Train to get to Geneva on time. I was out of breath for a while, but it was an adventure if nothing else. That guy who gave me a ride was also a godsend. Yay for kind, non-sketchy Swiss people! When I mentioned this story to our homestay coordinator at the aperitif that night, her jaw dropped so hard that I thought it was going to fall off and she proceeded to give me a little lecture about accepting rides from strangers, but I felt perfectly justified, and it was safe, so yeah. I got my boxes mailed, and that made packing a lot easier.
In the morning, my host mom gave me a ride down to the Nyon train station so that I didn't have to lug my bags on the Little Red Train. The weather was patchy, with rain here and sun there. There was a massive rainbow that stretched across the entire valley and the lake and the mountains... it was incredible. Switzerland didn't make it easy to leave - not at all. But I got to the train, and we said our goodbyes, and from there, it was a train to the aeroport, a plane to Paris, a plane to New York-JFK, and a plane to Dulles in DC. An uneventful trip.
So that chronicles my last days in Switzerland, but I'm not done yet. Look for a couple more postings recounting more academic things. Thanks for putting up with my long travelogue-style postings to this point, but we're getting into the home stretch, so stick with me. You won't regret it. :~)
