Parlez vous Anglais?

On December 10th, Kate and I flew to Switzerland, known as Schweiz in German or Suisse in French within the country.  It has four official languages: German, French, Italian and Romansh.  We spent time in Geneva and Torgon, located on opposite sides of croissant-shaped Lake Geneva (known locally as Lac Leman) and both very near the French border.  We were mostly forced to communicate in rudimentary French, combining the very few words we already knew with a few things we picked up along the way.  We got away with as much English as we could, often beginning conversations with "Parlez vous anglais?" and a few times I dared to try speaking Spanish with a French accent since there are so many similarities between the two languages.  Surprisingly, people understood me and most of the time I got the gist of what they were saying too... except for that one time in a cafe when I pointed to what I thought was fish and asked the chef, "Poisson?" (that means fish, not poison) and he nodded affirmatively while saying something I didn't understand.  When I got to the table I discovered that what he said to me probably contained the word "poule" because what I had on my plate was chicken.

I loved Switzerland!  I think it must be a Utopia.  It's clean, everyone is ridiculously polite, the public transport runs on time all the time, and public restrooms are impeccably clean (Spain could take a few pointers in that department.)  I would go back in a second.  My only complaint was that it was very expensive.  We were lucky that the dollar was worth a little more than the franc.

When we first got there, we spent a day and a half in Geneva, very excited the whole time, mouths agape at everything, and managed to spend way too much money on various things, primarily chocolate.


View to the southwest from our balcony in Geneva.


Cathedral St. Pierre, Geneva.


Good morning, Geneva!


"What would your father say if he knew you were climbing on the roof of a 8-story building?"


"Hi Dad!"


While we were wandering around in the city, Kate saw this giant fountain spouting up over the tops of the buildings.  It's called Jet d'Eau and spews out of Lac Leman - it was originally a simple security valve at the Coulouvrenière hydraulic factory but has grown to be a symbol of Geneva and appears on almost all the postcards.


Here is Kate, demonstrating the size of the fountain.


There was no shortage of shops offering nothing but chocolate.


These cauldrons stood about 18 inches tall and were made completely of chocolate, even down to the chain provided so that you can carry them.  They were also filled to the brim with an assortment of wrapped chocolate truffles.  As you can imagine, these works of art were very expensive.


Nothing but big, fat slabs of chocolate.  Drool.


This organ grinder nonchalantly read his paper while entertaining the passersby.  Instead of being accompanied by a monkey, he had his kitty with him (seen sleeping on the cart.)  It seems that people really like cats in Switzerland.  There were lots of cats pictured on cards, books, and artwork.  There was even a studio specializing in cat photography.


This is a small part of a giant animated window display made entirely of what appeared to be bubble wrap.


Kate was overjoyed to find a sporting goods store bearing her surname.  She went in a bought some socks just so she could get a bag that said "Ochsner Sport."  She declared, "I'm an Ochsner!" excitedly to the nice young man behind the counter who we could barely communicate with.  He understood and smiled.


Kate looking adorable and happy while resting on her suitcase at the Geneva train station.


Looking like a total badass while modeling my new red hat.


The sign on the platform showing which towns we would pass through before reaching our final stop in Aigle.


Brimming with excitement!


Look!  A real life train station!


Expressing extreme excitement about being on our way to Torgon.  We accidentally sat in first class on this train.  When the train people came through to check everyone's tickets, a very nice man asked us whether we spoke French and then very politely explained in English that we were in the wrong place.  We apologized, to which he responded, "No problem" and directed us to the right place.


One of the many charming little villages we passed on the way to Torgon.  The majority of the ride was alongside Lac Leman and we had a great view of big, blue, snowy mountains and green pastures the whole time.


The living room of our posh one bedroom apartment at the Les Cretes ski resort in Torgon.  No, we did not ski.  There wasn't enough snow, but even if there had been, we had resolved to do absolutely nothing the whole time we were there.  And we stood by it.  The hardest thing we did was go walk up the hill to the grocery store.  We filled the rest of our time by eating a lot of bread, cheese and chocolate, playing Sudoku and Rummy, swimming, sitting in hot tubs, getting a massage and drinking hot chocolate.


Dipping into a big pot of gooey Gruyere cheese during my first ever fondue experience.


Bliss!


Hot chocolate, a pile of francs and good company.  What more could you want?


The view from our balcony.  Is this paradise or what?


Torgon village by day.


Torgon village by night.


Mountains galore.  These suckers were huge, but I'm told that they're nothing compared to the Alps.


My favorite geological feature in the mountain scape was this big slab of rock jutting out of one of its peaks.  Despite being at one of the highest points, due to its odd shape it managed to remain snowless.


Holy shit!  It's Switzerland!


A big hunk of snowy gorgeousness way off in the distance.


Kate's mittens.  On our excruciating 5 minute walk to the grocery store she suddenly placed her hands in mine without explanation and I was terribly confused, thinking she wanted me to hold them for some reason, and they just disappeared out of the gloves, leaving me visibly disconcerted.


Jacky Discount, the only store around where we bought lots of bread, cheese and chocolate from a nice little lady who was absolutely impossible to understand - we suspected that French wasn't her first language either.  She was so nice, in fact, that one day she hooked us up with some bread even though the store was closed.

We were extremely isolated this trip and it had the potential to turn out like a sequel to The Shining.  Instead, we just got a little silly.  For example:


I really have no idea what compelled her to suddenly crawl under the table, but she got her picture taken for it.


Rocking out to Tori Amos requires fervent lip-syncing and some mean air harpsichord.


Kate has a bad Sudoku addiction that she had plenty of time to devote to on this trip.


Sudoku addiction is contagious.


Swiss currency is neat!  The people on the paper bills all have something to do with the arts.  This is the 100 Franc bill with the face of sculptor Alberto Giacometti on the front and some examples of his work on the back.


On the 50 franc bill is Sophie Taeuber-Arp, a Swiss artist, painter, and sculptor.  The 20 franc bill bears the face of Arthur Honegger, Swiss composer.


The flipside.

After five days in this amazing country I went back to Spain to meet up with Colin in Madrid while Kate stayed behind and spent another two weeks traveling around and visiting her family there.

So that's that.  Sorry it's been so long but I promise I'll update again very soon once I sort through the 910 pictures Colin took while he was here.  Blogs usually take me at least 2-3 hours and it has been hard to do them while I have been traveling and having people visit.  Happy Holidays and thanks to everyone who has sent me Christmas and birthday cards, e-mails and care packages.

Marie