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

I'm so on vacation right now.

Sorry it has been a couple weeks since I updated the blog.   After the DELE exam was over I still had a 10-page paper to write in Spanish and some other work to finish up before the end of the quarter.  Now I’m officially on vacation.


This is one last photo taken right after the exam, showing the effects it was starting to take on my fashion sense.  I splurged on these way too expensive red shoes that are so high quality that you can feel every stone in the street as you walk.  This particular day I wore them with a lime green shirt and the rainbow colored scarf you can see here.

Kate’s parents and brother came to visit the last week of November so they kept her busy while I finished up my school work.  I went up to Madrid with them on the 1st so that I could get Charlie from the airport.  While in Madrid we just did a lot of wandering around and shopping but didn’t really take any pictures.  Sorry.

On Sunday we headed back to Úbeda and on Monday attended a school excursion with David.  He drove us out into the middle of an olive grove so we could check out the ruin of a monastery that was carved out of the hillside around 600-700 A.D.  This monastery was particularly special because it had decorative designs carved into it unlike the other simply constructed structures of its kind.  We wandered in and out of the building, checked out what was left of the monks’ garden (mostly incense and fig trees), and I did my best to translate David’s explanations of it all to Charlie.  During the visit, one of the Austrian ladies that was with us decided to try an olive straight off the tree and ended up gagging and spitting for a while.  I, of course, forgot my camera.

On Tuesday we headed down to Granada to have the BEST food ever at a Lebanese restaurant and then see some really good flamenco singing and dancing at a schmancy theater.  That night the receptionist at our hotel managed to get us a last minute reservation at the Alhambra for Wednesday morning so we got up bright and early to do some ultra tourism.  Here come the pictures...

First of all, in case you didn’t know, “The Alhambra is the old Arab fortified city in Granada where the Arab kings lived before the Christian Kings defeated them and forced them to leave Spain, ca. 1500 AC (they had been there for 800 years).”  That’s a very simplified version of the story that I found on the internet somewhere.  It may or may not be completely accurate.


Our hotel was only a 15-minute walk from the Alhambra and we discovered that to get there you have to go down this lovely shady path.  It was a good way to start the day.


As you can see it was a beautiful day but still managed to be cold as hell.


Charlie observing the other tourists... well, not really.  He was at first and then he stopped when he saw me get the camera out, so I made him pretend like he was still observing the tourists.


The Alhambra is one of the most beautiful places in the world.  I really wanted to live there so I decided to try to take it over with some good old-fashioned guerrilla warfare.


While waiting for an hour before we could go in we found this poem by Borges on one of the walls.  I made the mistake of trying to show off by translating this poem to Charlie.  It didn’t work out so well because I didn’t know one key word that was repeated several times.  Supposedly, Borges was blind when he visited the Alhambra and wrote this.  Here’s the poem:

“Alhambra”

Grata la voz del agua
a quien abrumaron negras arenas,
grato a la mano cóncava
el mármol circular de la columna,
gratos los finos laberintos del agua
entre los limoneros,
grata la música del zéjel,
grato el amor y grata la plegaria
dirigida a un Dios que está solo,
grato el jazmín.

Vano el alfanje
ante las largas lanzas de los muchos,
vano ser el mejor.
Grato sentir o presentir, rey doliente,
que tus dulzuras son adioses,
que te será negada la llave,
que la cruz del infiel borrará la luna,
que la tarde que miras es la última.

And here is a fairly reliable translation of it.  I don’t agree with it completely but I’m too lazy to do it myself right now:

Alhambra

It is sweet the voice of water
to whom black sands have overwhelmed
it is sweet to the concave hand
the circular marble of the column,
sweet the fine labyrinths of water
between the lemon trees,
sweet the music of the zéjel,
sweet the love and sweet the prayer
to a God that is alone,
sweet the jasmine.

Vain the alfanje (1)
against the long lances of the many,
vain being the best.
It is sweet feeling or having the feeling, pained king,
that your sweetnesses are farewells,
that you will be denied the key,
that the cross of the unfaithful will erase the moon,
that the afternoon you are looking at is the last one.

(1) Alfanje is a kind of arabic sword.


The place where the poem is written is outside the entrance to the Alhambra in this covered patio.  There are all these cool leafy vines that crawl up the columns and all over the ceiling.


See?


The light was gorgeous that morning.  I told Charlie this picture he took wouldn’t turn out because you can’t photograph into the sun.  I was wrong.


Looking like a couple of thugs defending our turf.  No wonder people kept looking at us weird.

After waiting for an hour, we finally went into the Alhambra.  If you see the entire thing and actually pay attention to what you’re looking at, it could take an entire day.  I saw a good portion of it last year and it took several hours.  The morning we went there were a b’zillion people there already and tourism isn’t really our thing, so we managed to see just the parts we wanted in about an hour and a half.  We didn’t have a tour guide or read any signs so we ended up having to use the book about the Alhambra that Charlie bought to identify just what we had taken pictures of later.  So here goes:


Entry bridge into the Upper Alhambra. Has been described as one of the most advanced military structures for its time


These were just some cool white trees that I liked.


Garden of the 'Secando'. View of the Convent of St. Francisco.


Me looking at some fish in a water pool in the Garden of the Secando.


Charlie says, “As far as I an tell, this is one of many ‘Torre de Capitán’. The outside wall of the complex.”


Inside the Mexuar Oratory, part of the old royal house, looking over Granada.


The Albaycín, the oldest part of Granada outside the Alhambra, as seen from Mexuar Oratory.


Fachada de Comares (built in between the 13th and 14th centuries. Completion attributed to 1369)


Same, with view of doorway.


Charlie doesn’t remember where he took this, but it’s a close-up of the design on some wall.  Anybody read Arabic?


Patio de Arrayens (south gallery).  Greek and Roman influenced, commissioned by Mohammed V. View of Sala de la Barca (north gallery).


Sala de la Barca


Entry into the Sala de Embajadores, the last and greatest Muslim court in all of Europe. This part of the wall is highlighted with gold leaf. All the designs have great meaning, incorporating astrological motifs with Qu'uran quotes, bestowing the Caliph with Allah's blessings.


Wall inside Sala de Embajadores


Entry into Sala de Embajadores


Entry into Sala de Embajadores (close up)


El Patio de los Leones, the main part of the harem.


The interior wall and ceiling of one of the rooms just off the Patio de los Leones.


El Patio de los Leones as seen from the Sala de los Reyes.  The cool thing about this patio is the heavy Benedictine influence. It was built in 1362.


Ceiling of the Sala de los Mozárabes.


Floor of Sala de los Abencerrajas, the fountain runs out into the Patio de los Leones.


Mirador de Lindajara


Fountain in the garden of the Mirador de Lindajara


A reflecting pool in front of Palacio del Partal in the Jardín del Partal.


We decided to block the view of this cool fountain in Jardín del Portal.


Posing near this shrubbery structure in the Jardín del Portal.


Can’t a girl tie her shoe without having her picture taken?


Some little birds enjoying persimmons.  If you zoom right into the center of the picture you can see a little brown bird with his head all the way inside the fruit.


Outside view of Sala de los Abencerrajas.


A pretty fall tree on the path leading out of the Alhambra.

The rest of the week we spent hanging around in Úbeda, checking out the monuments there, eating Spanish food and looking at the view off the terrace.  Then we went back to Madrid so that I could see Charlie off and get on a plane to Switzerland.  To be continued...