Left Bank Bonanza

Michel's and my ending our first Paris evening with a second stiff late-night caipirinha predicated a Saturday morning lie-in (British for "sleeping in"), also known as a mild hangover. Once motivated and clean, the group sallied forth across the 3rd arrondisement on a mildly cool but sunny day--unable to resist a neighborhood boulangerie stop for an absolutely stunning croissant--for a lovely outdoor café brunch. Not surprisingly, a Vélib station sat across the street, and after paying the check but before even wiping off our cappuccino moustaches we continued the previous night's city-cycling mayhem.

We cycled again into the 4th arr. past Notre Dame [links have landmark pics] and over the Seine, eventually discovering an on-and-off-again cobblestone path allowing a riverside ride; we abandoned the tour only after the bumpy terrain had incessantly jarred our teeth, hands and other seated body parts to an uncomfortably tingling numbness. We climbed the neighborhood hills of St.Germain (5th arr.) for a recovery binge at Michel & Celeste's favorite crepe vendor; the Nutella and banana crepes satisfied the day's requirements for both food groups, i.e., chocolate and fruit.

We remounted the bikes for a visit to the Latin Quarter and Pantheon before finally re-racking them (our extended bicycle usage cost an outrageous €3 apiece!) in the 6th arr. We sauntered through the inviting Jardin du Luxembourg, the greenery somewhat sparse pre-spring but charming nonetheless, and stopped for a much needed coffee break. Instantly weary of two-legged travel, we resettled for the two-wheeled variety, cruising into the 7th arr. past some old 17th century war hospital (Les Invalides), 18th century military school (École Militaire) and onto a wide dirt path in the Parc du Champs de Mars to gawk at some metal tower resembling a big antenna. Steph and I usually hang out more on the "Right Bank" (north of the Seine), but we certainly enjoyed our Left Bank (south side) tour. We briefly contemplated the long bike ride home until a cloud obscured the day's sun, the temperature dipped and we racked the bikes as quickly as possible at the nearest Métro stop.

After a much deserved nap, we hit a good local Italian restaurant for dinner (yes, Italian food is prepared in France) and--after much discussion of potentially going "clubbing"--instead fulfilled our dance fix at the local Bohemian seaside themed bar accompanied by additional caipirinhas and Mexican beer amidst a jovial cosmopolitan crowd. Here's a new blog feature...video!



Sunday morning, after bidding Michel & Celeste a wistful farewell, good journey back to California and thanks for the fun in Paris and Zürich, Steph and I rendezvous'ed for petit déjeuner (breakfast) with another friend in Paris, actually Steph's college roommate living in Essen, Germany (whom we've already met in Heidelburg and Zürich), but staying in Paris for the week with U.S. friends. During this rendezvous together we discussed plans for the following weekend's rendezvous...in Rome, of course, where she and her husband (M&M) have rented a villa. It's tough work, all this international travel, I'm sure hearts are bleeding...

Pics from Paris: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.1pnsqhhb&x=0&y=akkti5

The Best Gets Better

For several years, Paris has reigned as champion of Steph's and my favorite cities. Although at Christmas we ended our four-year drought of having not visited, we're always game for another trip. Our U.S. friends' two week apartment swap deal situating them smack center in Paris's Marais neighborhood presented just such an opportunity. Friday afternoon, only two days after Michel & Celeste departed from Zürich with stomachs distended from bratwurst, Steph and I followed their path aboard a high-speed train bound for La Ville-lumière, the City of Lights!

With any travel, the worst part is getting there and we unfortunately took our dose double. For the Christmas trip, we had flown but were dissatisfied with the usual airport herding and luggage carousel crowding, but mostly the long commute from Charles de Gaulle Int'l airport into the city. On this trip via train, things progressed swimmingly until our first stop in Basel after an hour, the first of only two stops en route. Our car virtually emptied of passengers but then refilled entirely with French kids from 6 to 16 (the weekend marked the end of a two week school holiday), all apparently deaf judging from the hollering both across the car and to their seatmates, and all with enough luggage to cover three changes of clothes every day from winter to spring. The kids directly across the aisle played Slapjack nearly the entire trip, obnoxious and annoying even for the players (flip...flip...SLAP!! flip...SLAP!! bicker bicker...flip...SLAP!!) I likened the whole thing to being trapped at recess for three hours. Insult to injury was having earplugs in my suitcase, now at the bottom of a luggage pile higher than my head.

To maintain sanity, we retreated temporarily to the bar car for beer, which we discovered is the prime area for tattooed skinheads to ride on Friday afternoons, also enjoying beer. Quite the sanctuary. Luckily a good friend from Chicago happened to call right as the train pulled into Paris's Gare de l'Est station and--as I was complaining about digging through the kids' luggage pile--politely requested that I reconsider the big picture by saying, "You're in Paris for @#$! sake!". We sometimes need reminders like that, Steph and I, during this ongoing and often frustrating transition of ours.

The train vs. plane paid off with our instant city arrival; after a short Métro ride and brief walk we found the apartment on a great neighborhood Parisian street with boulangerie after charcuterie after wine store. The third floor apartment seemed "classic" European--gated street entrance leading to an intricately decorated aged building, a miniscule elevator and ultimately a somehow charming, old, single-bedroom apartment with sufficient space in the right places and all the necessities worked into the corners and closets. Not luxurious but eminently liveable considering its proximity to the heart of the city. Also gratifying was the comparison to our Zürich digs--our two-bedroom apartment is perhaps two to three times larger, much newer and more "solid." Yet the Marais apartment was perfect for the two-week trade Michel had orchestrated. They greeted us there at 7pm with--but of course--baguette, red wine and cheese.

Not long after settling in, Celeste posed a slightly leading question: "Do you have a credit card with a little gold chip on it?" An excellent query! Because we knew exactly where she was going. During our December Paris visit we did not yet have our permanent visas or European credit cards, only American cards and thus, no gold chip. But now our wallets indeed contained Swiss debit and credit cards with gold "smart" chips everywhere, the key to unlocking Paris's new phenomenal citywide feature--the Vélib system!

In summer 2007, Paris launched a nearly-free citywide bike rental program. Large streetside racking stations containing numerous bikes are now spread seemingly every two or three blocks across the entire city, 10,000 bikes total. For a 24-hour deposit of €150 (held on a European chip credit card), one can grab a bike at any station and return it to any station, absolutely free for 30 minutes, €1 for an hour and €3 for 1 hr 30 min. The heavy-duty bikes come with three speed transmission, front wire basket and lock, front headlight, rear red "brake" light and yes, a loud bell to warn hapless pedestrians that a VIP is coming through. The Vélibs are quite popular, with riders constantly seen all over the city. And wouldn't you know...a Vélib station sits in front of a busy little bar, a block away from Michel & Celeste's apartment...

Moments later, all suitably adorned with snappy scarves (luckily Michel & Celeste brought extra, because you can't go anywhere in Paris without a scarf), we were matching wits with the nearby Vélib kiosk. The completely full station held perhaps 20 bikes but we couldn't quite understand how to free them. Suddenly four young men (our age...young!) cruised in on Vélibs, amicably announcing they had dinner reservations at the bar, thus highly motivated to quickly educate us on the Vélib system in order to deposit their bikes and eat. They were from (ha!) Zürich of all places, so we briefly joked around in French (Michel & Steph) and Deutsch (Celeste) and Schweizerdeutsch (Steph & me) and mostly English (all) until our bikes were ready to roll.

Mostly avoiding busy streets, we rode through the Marais, to the Île de la Cité and past Notre Dame, over the Seine to the Left Bank and into St.-Germain. We deposited our bikes just that easy at another Vélib station a block south of our chosen restaurant, Le Relais de l'Entrecôte, where we waited outside in a short line before being ushered in. The restaurant serves only one thing: all-you-care-to-eat steak frites, that is, an entrecôte or thin, grilled rib-eye steak covered in melted tarragon butter served with a heap of French fries. The restaurant operated in assembly line fashion, every table with several rotating servers each playing a small quick role, shuffling between tables and whisking in and out with silverware, salad, bread, bottles of red wine, steak and fries, more streak, more fries, and finally my favorite profiteroles for dessert. After sauntering a bit post-dinner, we grabbed another glass of wine at a nearby bar before hailing a cab for home.

As was now our custom, Michel & I tucked the ladies into bed and headed back to the streets for a final drink. Now past midnight, we were drawn to the original nearby happenin' bar with bikes out front, called Ave Maria, among the few neighborhood places still happenin'. The bar had a Caribbean/Mediterranean/Central & South American/New Orleans theme, basically attuned with any hot, wet destination where visitors might wear beads and/or flowers. The loud sound system blared an eclectic mix of mostly catchy, sometimes silly sing-and-dance-along songs from a variety of beach cultures. We each knocked back two strong caipirinhas while taking in the young local singles pickup scene until they closed the bar and booted everyone out at 2am.

Don't miss the exciting conclusion with...pictures! Coming soon.

Cool Inventory

A quick note regarding the occasional opportunity to step back and observe oneself...I was cleaning out the fridge after our visitors departed and before our trip to Paris, slightly amazed to count:

o Eight kinds of cheese--six Swiss, one Italian and one Mexican (!)
o Five kinds of ham, dried meats and sausages
o Five various fruit and vegetable juices (very Swiss)
o Five types of yogurt and ice cream

Then I recalled that our total seven meals with Michel, Celeste and my boss had consisted of cheese, pastry, sausage, pork loin (healthy!), pastry, sausage and sausage.

So although some cultural adaptations take longer than others, for example, learning a language, I'd say that our fridge inventory has already adopted a rather Swiss character. And our dining choices with visitors appear to have a high saturated fat character. And I'm surprised that Steph and I aren't already much larger characters. So if you're weighing the pros and cons of a visit, our menu options should outweigh the dollar's abysmal slide--book your tickets now and consider booking two seats for yourself on the way home.

Visiteurs de Paris, Pt. Deux

Egads! I finished the previous post too early, neglecting to mention Michel's and my extracur-ricular activity late Tuesday night, after dinner and drinks and tucking the girls (and dogs) into bed, venturing back to the Old Town through lightly whirling snow to Steph's and my favorite Spanish bodega for an absinthe nightcap.

Absinthe may ring a bell as the distillation of a plant called wormwood with a shady reputation for addiction and causing madness, banned for most of the 20th century but recently re-legalized in Switzerland and Europe due to reassertion of its safety--it seemed like a good thing to try (still unavailable in the U.S.). The waiter performed a brief tableside ceremony, burning/caramelizing a sugar cube above each glass before dumping it into the clear liquor and then diluting and stirring with water, turning the drink a cloudy opaque white. I'm uncertain if Greek and/or absinthe distillers would be insulted if I claim it tasted mostly like Ouzo, yet leaving a slicker film of intense anise flavor on the tongue. After the wait staff politely booted us out at midnight, neither Michel nor I recall going completely bonkers, although we were both slightly tortured by vivid psychotic dreams that night (just kidding). Perhaps complete psycho-addiction requires more than just one drink, we'll have to test that...

I also failed to recount our important sleuth work at Zürich's main train station where we stopped for its public restrooms. During previous visits there, I had been befuddled by a restroom station that appeared to sometimes require different coins for entry--on one visit I'd not had the correct 2 Franc coin although swore remembering entering previously for 1 Franc. Through collective observation and deduction, we realized the pissoir or urinals indeed cost only 1 Franc, whereas the WC or full toilets cost 2 Francs. Now that kind of attention to customer price sensitivity is what makes a country rich, my friends! Showering there costs 12 Francs, by the way.

After the absinthe episode, the next day dawned to much excitement--Hobbes's 8th birthday! Overnight he'd received the best possible present...snow accumulation! Zürich city with its mild winters doesn't see much snow stick, in fact we hadn't seen any since November living in Kloten. He and I celebrated by bringing a tennis ball to our favorite small park alongside the local Neumünster church, running and playing around and the first to disturb the scant half-inch of snow.

With clouds giving way to sun late morning but the temperature still quite chilly, Michel, Celeste and I walked down to Bellevueplatz and the Globus café for a morning Mohnschnecke (poppy-seed cinnamon roll) and coffee. We then sauntered to the head of Lake Zürich hoping with the clearer weather to catch the oft-elusive distant Alpine mountain view, but alas the cloud cover afar hung too low (a good reason for them to return, yes?). We toured the city's other, west side Old Town at random and stepped inside another notable church with a slightly improved but mostly equally somber interior as its cross-town competitor. Michel suggested consuming another grilled bratwurst for lunch before departing, which we did alongside a pair of sausage-eating, beer drinking, mink-clad octogenarians--absolute classic Zürich. Our guests departed for the Hauptbahnhof and their Paris apartment in the early afternoon to prepare for playing host to Steph and me in a mere 50 hours.

Apparently when it rains visitors it pours, as the following day my boss from my previous-and-again Chicago employer stopped overnight in Zürich on a work trip layover to South Africa. We met to discuss details of my current contract project, then rendezvous'ed with Stephanie after work at the Hauptbahnhof. From there we briefly toured the Bahnhofstrasse highbrow shops and then stopped for a glass of wine at the cool Jules Verne panorama bar--our first visit--ten stories above downtown with excellent views of the fading sun, city lights, hills and lake. We spared no expense at dinner, leading our guest to one of several Old Town German beer halls serving inexpensive traditional food and free cigarette smoke in an open room of raucous, crammed communal benches. We each ordered a slightly different combination of sausage, potatoes, butter and beer from the simple daily menu.

We escorted him back to the Hauptbahnhof before jet lag set in entirely, armed with a valid train ticket and a vague idea of his airport hotel location; I'm certain he arrived in Johannesburg without mishap. That night we packed for Friday's departure to Paris to reconvene with Michel & Celeste for the weekend...!

Photos from the visit:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.bh64ncfz&x=0&y=-3jgwdt

Visiteurs de Paris, Pt. Un

I perhaps misrepre-sented a few blog facts recently to heighten the ever-present sense of drama. Although our first official U.S. visitors canceled last weekend's visit to Zürich from Paris due to Eurail issues, they successfully rebooked for a Mon-Wed visit instead after a detour through Germany. So Steph and I indeed hosted our first trans-continental visitors on March 3, a mere 18 weeks after our arrival! [Note: We actually hosted our first American visitors back in January as Stephanie's college roommate and her husband--we'll call them M&M, not to be confused with the chocolate or infamous Caucasian rapper--visited one weekend for a bang-up time. Their trip occurred during my computer (and espresso machine) outage, so I never recounted it appropriately. However, we maintain strict house rules and since M&M currently live in Essen/Frankfurt, they count as German visitors and not U.S. visitors.]

Michel (his French alias) is a good friend from our Chicago soccer-playing days of yore who moved to Los Angeles about eight years ago (primarily due to dissatisfaction with the Chicago lakefront beach volleyball scene, I believe). We last saw him about 18 months ago during a summer trip back to Chicago and keep in touch via email and through other common friends. Via an online worldwide "house swap" forum, he traded time at his Santa Monica nearly-beachfront apartment for a similarly well-situated apartment in Paris's central Marais neighborhood--the tenants simply switch residences for a few weeks at no cost. What will those crazy Internet users think of next?!

Accompanied by his girlfriend Celeste (alias), they arrived in France early last week, acclimated to intensive pastry ingestion for several days in Paris and then ventured to Germany last weekend to visit her childhood town and relatives (Celeste lived her first 2 years in Germany before moving to California and speaks fluent Deutsch). Their train pulled into Zürich's Hauptbahnhof early Monday evening and I met them on the platform with red carpet unfurled. Mother Nature was unfortunately not as welcoming, as Zürich's temperatures dropped to their lowest in over two months accompanied by intermittent rain, sleet and snow.

Determined to provide an authentic Swiss experience--and because the winter fondue season is expiring and Steph and I hadn't yet tried it --we twisted our guests' arms into visiting a truly local-yokel neighborhood restaurant specializing in authentic Swiss fondue and raclette. The unassuming restaurant Chässtube Rehalp (Chäs is Swiss-German dialect for cheese and also conjures a particularly interesting spoken sound) came recommended by our friendly German neighbor who, after testing many citywide fondue joints including the more celebrated downtown spots, proclaimed it best so far. It's located out towards our tram line's end (near the celebrated Schwimmbad) in a purely residential setting.

The Chässtube indeed delivered authenticity, from its old wooden and vaguely Alpine decor to genial proprietor and low-key clientele to our gallon-sized red ceramic pot of bubbling cheese. We selected the classic moitié-moitié (half-n-half) blend, 50/50 earthy Gruyère and Vacherin Fribourgeois spiked with kirsch, accompanied by a modest palette of white French bread cubes and small steamed potatoes. Swiss white wine or beer are appropriate complements (we chose the former), whereas selecting red wine or Coca-Cola is grounds for being bounced. We ended the evening with a few beers (now appropriate) at a bar near home.

Steph was naturally obligated to bring home the bacon on Tuesday, so Michel & Celeste were stuck with me as sole tour guide. I forced them to earn breakfast by walking up the somewhat steep Lake Zürich eastern hillside to one of our favorite city viewpoints, after which we kept walking to my local favorite Hottingerplatz for food and coffee at the preferred cafe, sharing big slices of unsweetened apricot, apple, and rhubarb tortes. We trammed to and toured the Old Town's shops and sights, including a few minutes inside the fairly sparsely adorned Zürich-skyline-iconic Grossmünster church, a first for me. Back at Bellevueplatz, we stopped for the mandatory lunch of world-class grilled bratwurst, crusty rolls & beer, then toured no fewer than four local groceries and wine stores for the evening's dinner supplies. After Steph's return home, we all jointly prepared a nice succession of appetizers, salad, dinner and dessert amidst blowing sleet and snow outside.

Part 2 and all-important pictures to follow...

Bottom of the Lake

We suffered a big disappoint-ment this weekend as we were anticipating receiving our first U.S. visitors...but the plans were canceled late last week due to Eurail overbookings. A good friend is unexpectedly (for us) visiting Paris & Germany for nearly two weeks and planned to swing by Zürich, but our consolation plan is to visit him instead (more on that in an upcoming post).

So we moped a bit on a rockin' Friday night--visiting the monstrous suburban IKEA (hey, we never did that at home!), attempting to finally furnish our remaining apartment rooms, but were logistically stymied in nearly every department--the couch we wanted delivered isn't available for delivery, the bureau we wanted to carry home could only be delivered, various desired items weren't in stock, etc. One decision did pay off, that is, we passed on IKEA's delicious in-store Swedish meatballs & fries for dinner and instead later discovered our Stadelhofen neighborhood's restaurant equivalent of Perkins--a major score.

Most of Saturday we moped in our sleep, as we woke late and then grabbed an early afternoon nap. All (mild) winter we've both felt constantly more tired than seems justified, either thanks to the malign effect of strange Alpine föhn winds or some lagging subconscious stress or both (although I'm kidding about the föhn, the winds in Switzerland and Germany were actually particularly nasty and gusty all weekend). We grocery shopped Saturday afternoon then grabbed appetizers at our new favorite Old Town tapas restaurant to debate Sunday plans. We've been dying to ski, but we were watching our friends' dog over the weekend and couldn't stretch the necessary time. We fell asleep Saturday night with the laptop computer in bed, still searching other short daytrip options...zzzzzz...

Steph awoke Sunday with an inspiration--an idea originally suggested by our Kloten landlady and repeated several times by me over the months but which she now took credit for--we'd go to the south side or far side or "bottom" side of Lake Zürich to a reportedly cute lakeside town called...Rapperswil! Despite clouds, wind and intermittent rain forecasted more or less all day, nothing dissuades us from an inspired walk, so we donned our bomb-proof Patagonia rain gear and bid the dogs Tschüss!.

An express commuter train runs from our nearby Stadelhofen station down the lake's east side to Rapperswil so we arrived in a quick 45 minutes door-to-door. The town sits on a small cape jutting into the south tip of Lake Zürich; the (mostly Italian) restaurant- and shop-lined quay a short walk from the train station indeed provided excellent lake and nearby bluff views despite the blustery weather; I'm certain the summertime is gorgeous as the town is also known for rose gardens and widespread flower displays. We left the looming churches and notable old town castle for exploration another day and headed almost immediately out of town, southwest across the lake on Switzerland's longest wooden bridge, a relatively recent reconstruction to reproduce the original bridge that existed as early as the 1300's (!).

We followed the always-perfect hiking signs for slightly over an hour and 3.5 miles of steady wind and intermittant drizzle and sunbursts, over a small canal system to the town of Pfäffikon on the south and west side of Lake Zürich, or the "opposite corner" from our domicile. Interestingly (to us) and unknowingly, we also had crossed in and out of three different Kantons (counties), those of Zürich and Sankt Gallen and Schwyz, which doesn't mean much for non-residents, so I'm not sure why I mentioned it (St. Gallen makes the best veal bratwurst and Schwyz is one of the oldest four communities that established Switzerland). Nonetheless, we were quite tickled.

In Pfäffikon we tested some espresso and cappuccino to ensure consistency across cantonal lines; Stephanie convinced me to catch the earlier train home before I could similarly test the french fries. We chalked it up as yet another great Swiss "backyard road-trip" excursion, not a bad one in the bunch so far. And a not so subtle feeling keeps growing that Switzerland will be absolutely awesome in the summertime...

Pictures and the always-fun terrain map (grab and drag a little to the left to see Rapperswil):

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.7v43xy47&x=0&y=ms2nw0


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Random Swiss Pics

Call this a brief pictoral blog entry. During our recent trip back to Chicago, I received a request for more blog pictures, so I'm nothing if not attentive to my fan base (I also received a request for an updated pastry list, which I have indeed been amassing and will script soon). Back in January, my precious laptop took a tumble followed instantly by its hard drive, which I thought had obliterated (among other things) several sets of pictures. For example, those of you attentive "Where's Waldo" virtuosos may have noticed the picture displayed from our trek up the Uetliberg in January looked awfully summery vs. my rather ice-clad description; that wasn't my picture. However, a Chicago computer genius named Dragos recovered my data, including my Uetliberg picture snapped from virtually the same spot.

It's in the set below, as well as some additional "beauties" I dug up from our past four Swiss months, back to that previous life in Kloten in the late fall. Warning: the featured subject for most pictures is Hobbes, so only follow the link if you enjoy lots of dog pictures:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.8y8w8k0n&x=0&y=vcwzyr

Birthday Border Crossing

Luckily Stephanie and I aren't hung up on celebrating exact birth days, especially if the day falls on an uneventful Monday or Tuesday. Although my birthday last week was Thursday--not a bad day--a work event had unfortunately occupied Stephanie that evening. Not content to rest on my dual celebratory success of Schwimmbad/Döner Kebab, we planned an even bigger birthday excursion for the weekend.

Overdue for a good roadtrip after spending too many weekends homemaking since our original November Sunday daytrips to Bern and Schauffhausen and our brief mid-December German Heidelberg weekend, we selected a Saturday daytrip west across Switzerland for a taste of the unknown...past that mysterious purported invisible border between Swiss-German and Swiss-French culture, the infamous Röstigraben or "Hash Browns Ditch".

Allowing Hobbes a day of napping, we hopped the bus just before 9am Saturday morning to the main train station purposely early, lacking advance tickets and needing to confer with authorities regarding possibly purchasing a special Swiss transit Day Pass. Within two minutes of arrival, the automatic teller graciously spat out the desired discounted passes, no questions asked. Although the "bargain" seems initially dodgy, the 54 CHF (ea.) Day Pass or "Transit Bomb" (my new pet name) justified itself in spades and afforded us an uncharacteristically spontaneous day's journey. Over the next 10 hours we glided from a high-speed cross-country train to a local train and bus to up, up, UP on a funicular to eventually another local train to ANOTHER train to ANOTHER funicular down, down (shorter funicular) and TWO MORE bus trips before the final high-speed train home, stopping in four cities/villages. The weather cooperated better than a blackmailed boss with an unseasonably warm and sunny day, 59°F on Feb 23 (yes, we're still in the Northern hemisphere), 11°F higher than average.

We practiced German comprehension on the initial overland train journey, window-seated next to a talkative 2-year-old curly blonde Swiss boy who, amongst other cutely incomprehensible guttural vociferations for 80 minutes, excitedly exclaimed Hier ist die Post! ("Here's the post office!") while leaving town, Fährt es schnell! ("It's going fast!") as the train accelerated, and Grosser Rauch! ("Big smoke!") at an enormous cloud of nuclear power plant emmissions in the countryside. The journey's second half transpired more quietly, facilitating my unblinking focus on exactly where amongst the passing hills and trees the invisible border began. Once leaping upright as I almost certainly spied it, Steph assured me that ditch was for a new rural drainpipe and not the Röstigraben. Then suddenly, before you could pinpoint exactly when, the train announcements and station signs had transformed from from German to French! We'd arrived!

Our destination was the Vaud region's string of villages composing Switzerland's winemaking epicenter, bordering northern Lake Léman, or Lake Geneva, with French Alpine views beyond. Truly amazing vistas, but pictures (hey! finally pictures again!) can do the talking:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.77nscoxj&x=0&y=c76wy1

We started in the town of Vevey at a lakeside farmers' market, with an array of fantastic French-influenced breads, cheeses, meats and baked goods. I'm certainly not faulting Zürich's markets, but the French just have that extra je ne sais quoi. Hungry from the train ride, we shared a small, hot cheese tart--possibly among the best food items in our four months here--and a powdered-sugar covered éclair full of vanilla cream and with its inner walls somehow "painted" with dark chocolate--I missed the exact name (French, not German) but rank it as the new #1 undisputed heavyweight pastry of Switzerland.

We ate a lovely simple French lunch complete with rosé wine at an old-fashioned chalet-looking restaurant, then found a funicular way up to nearby Chardonne, one of many tiny wine-making villages strung along the steep Vaud hillsides. Not a soul stirred in the village that sunny Saturday afternoon with even the community weinhalle for local tastings closed. We hiked steeply down through the slumbering vineyards to another adorable, tiny deserted village, St. Saphorin, before deciding to catch the train(s) back towards home but with a final stop in one of the quintessential "borderline" towns, Fribourg (or if you're German, Freiburg). We navigated our way into Fribourg's snakey, lowland, "Bern-with-a-French-twist" old town area in time for a quick bistrot dinner, returning to the train station just after nightfall with an incomplete appreciation for the town. (The picture heading this blog is the Freibourg train station bookstore.)

Tired but happy after a long day, we shared a large can of local Fribourg brew Cardinal lager on the ride home to Swiss-Germany, determining to return soon to this "other side" of Switzerland.

Here are two maps from the day:


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View Larger Map