Visitor from the Far Away Land

My dad, despite being in Switzerland for about 15 times already, decided to pay us a visit. Fair enough, it had been 2 years since we last saw him so it was about time he came here!

We picked him up on Friday night and decided to order in the dinner as he was suffering from 1 hour jet lag (!!) & airline food (=no food). We decided to try Iranian food and it was delicious! I also received my delivery of salt liquorice, dark syrup, Glögi spices, Finnish rye bread and 5kg, yes a five-kilo-bag, of multi grain porridge! Wohohohoo!

After a good (but short) night of sleep we woke up 6am (well, I woke up at 5am), had a feast of a brekkie with croissants, milk bread etc. and were out in the sleepy streets of Lausanne at 8am, ready to tackle the sights.

We had planned to make an excursion to another city after the morning walk but as my dad realised he remembered nothing of Lausanne, we decided to stay put and discover what Lausanne had to offer.

So we walked...oh BOY did we walk! We started at 8am, as I mentioned, and finished at 10pm. With the lunch & dinner breaks we ended up walking about 30km in 10 hours.

What struck my dad most, of course, was the sunlight.
We still have a proper day here even though it's winter. He was soaking up the sun rays like a lizard, refusing to use sunglasses in order to get some "light treatment".

We took him to the main cathedral (The Cathédrale Notre-Dame) and even though it's very bare from the inside, they were just building a miniature village there, probably for the Christmas period.
We were ooohing and aaaaahing for an hour as we were "look here, look there look look"-ing the details of the village.

As Switzerland is all about chocolate and cheese, we took my dad to the cheese market before continuing our walk. We had lunch at a brewery/restaurant Les Brasseurs and he, naturally, tried the le tartare de boeuf à la Provencale. "You want it spicy?", asked the waiter. "Spicy? Yes please!" said dad. And was then breathing fire like a dragon. Ah well! This is not Finland!

After walking around the city, we took  him to Ouchy (to the lakeside) before the sun setted. I wanted him to see where the Olympic museum is situated (even though it's being renovated) and say hello to the Paavo Nurmi statue.

As we lost the daylight and were getting hungry, we decided to get back to the city and have our dinner at Café Romand. We always take our visitors there as the atmosphere is wonderful (locals mix nicely with tourists), service is awful (I mean "authentic", old fashioned and slow) and the food is rustic but delicious. My dad and I shared a fondue and he was in heaven!

After dinner we digested the heavy food by a little walk around the city and laughed at the tackiest hotel in town. I mean laughed UNTIL we saw the Bentleys, Rolls-Royces and Ferraris parked in front of it. Rich seem to like it tacky.
We ended the night eating Ladurée macarons and downing a 40+ year old Port wine. Perfect ending for a perfect day.

Next morning we woke up (a little hungover) to a rainy and foggy day. As everything is closed (meaning shops and places) we decided to go to Rochers-de-Naye (2042meters) and say hello to the view and the "REAL" Santa Claus (ahem, cough cough).

It started promising. Looked like the gates of heaven were trying to open as we started our climb uphill in our little scenic train.

We've been up there 4 times before and each time we've managed to get on top of the clouds on the top. This time, however, weather was not on our side. Yes there was snow but.... Visibility was about 5 meters. 10 tops. And the clouds were so high up we never got on top of them. We decided to cut the visit short, eat a quick lunch, say hello to Santa and start to descend back down.

"Hello REAL Santa!"















On our way down we stopped at Caux, paid ourselves silly with an entrance fee and ended up freezing in the shittiest (pardon my fluent French) Christmas villages ever.

I do believe the low point of the visit was the man dressed up as a Sami person. And instead of reindeer, he had some authentic Lapland Donkeys. You know.

"Bonjour" he chirped.

As my dad and I were taken aback a little, my dad reacted as a true Finn abroad. "Bonjour. You know... we're from Finland."

"Ah yes, Faaahnlaaaahnd?" he said with a blank stare. "Welcome to Switzerland!" ...Ah yes...

"Yes, we are. Do you even know what you're wearing? Trying to be from Lapland? One tip, your shoes are all wrong" (he was wearing fluorescent green sneakers). I truly hope he goes home and GOOGLES who he is trying to be. You know... Research a little to get into the character. Anything. The man clearly didn't even know about Lapland. Well, why bother then at all, I ask. If he doesn't know, most visitors won't either so what is the point?

Even though the village was crap, the view down was wonderful.

After an hour freezing our butts off, we went down to Montreux to see their Christmas market and THAT was something alright. No entrance fee, plenty of people and pleeeenty of Christmas spirit.

Even had a chance to say hello to Freddy Mercury.

As the sun set and we finished our Vin Chaud, it was time to return home, have dinner and rest before taking my dad back to the airport in the morning.








Dad was very impressed with everything and I'm sure he will miss all the cheese and wine and most of all, our hospitality. We like to spoil our guests. ;) Can't wait to return the visit soon as we get to invade Finland!

Salut! Ça va?

Operation Integration, step one: learning tolerable French.

So it began, finally. My intensive French class. 

I was quite apprehensive about it as I was certain I would not enjoy it (read too many complaints about the classes being taught in French only...Which I sort of understood but sort of dreaded...). 

But as always, or as the Finns say: "Pessimisti ei pety" (freely translated: a pessimist can't be disappointed) I was anxious for no reason. 

I was positively surprised by the fellow classmates as well as the lovely teacher. She's not too proud to throw an English word here and there when everyone is completely clueless about what she's trying to explain. 

"Don't panic, I have only begun" she said in English to the teary eyed Japanese lady who was struggling to understand as the rest of us bursted out laughing. Why did we laugh? No, not at her. We were laughing because we were all relieved when we realised we were all just as spaced out as the poor Japanese woman. What an alien language French is! 

I'll be taking the classes now every weekday, let's see if I could at least order a cup of coffee in French by the end of it.

Other than learning French, we were hit by very Arctic weather front. I was pointing out to my husband that the Swiss are extremely precise: When the clocks are turned back to winter time, it starts snowing. Bravo!

The true heroes of the weekend were the runners who ran 10K/20K/marathon in the snow. I salute them.

We took the tube uphill to check out how the weather up there was. Indeed, it could only be described as...Wintery. 

Hungry Hungry hiker.
Had to eat before, during and after the walk.

Bern

An hour or so by train and we were whisked away to the Swiss capital: Bern.

Don't get me wrong. Where we live is ok. But oh my... I was hit by a severe case of Canton Envy when I saw Bern.

We've been pretty isolated where we live (for various of reasons) for a long time so now that we finally have an opportunity to discover Switzerland, the contrast is hitting home. Big time.

I had totally forgotten how nice it feels to understand and to be understood. I studied German in the past but thought it was long lost in the labyrinth of my limited linguistic brain as I never had to use it. Wrong! I do understand it, written especially. Swiss German sounds a little odd to my ear (even though one of my oldest and dearest friend is Swiss and speaks Swiss German so I've been exposed before) but I do get an odd word here or there every now and then. That's about 900% more than my understanding of French. And being isolated in a French speaking city with a very French attitude, being exposed to German made me feel like home. How odd!
....Or maybe it was all the Marimekko and Iittala I saw....?

I fell in love with Bern then second I stepped out the train station. So much so we made not one but two day trips there. First time (Saturday) was a very general one and then a more detailed tour on Monday. And both my husband and I were just sighing away as we fell more and more in love with the place the more we saw it. This was the kind of Switzerland I had in mind (and I was more familiar with) before we moved.

People were less pushy and grumpy, we got really good service everywhere we went, I wasn't the tallest/blondest woman around and I felt like I pretty much fitted in. :) The city was bigger but not too big, it was clean without feeling sterile.... Simply wonderful. I'm not surprised most Nordics end up in the German speaking part and love living in CH (which I never did, before this anyways) as it feels much more like home (only on steroids) than where we are living at the moment.

"Oh what the hell... Close enough, I say!"

Right there and then my husband swore that we'd only "suffer" (we're not suffering, really) in our surroundings for a year/two years more and then we try to settle in the German speaking part or go back to the Nordics as we feel more comfortable there. I guess my smile was so wide he had to say it. ;)

....Or maybe it was these random little guys that stole his heart:

When we get a few more days off again, we continue discovering this beautiful little country. Stay tuned!

Location, location, location....

There is one novelty thing I never seem to get used to while living here in the continental Europe:
all the other countries are so damn near. 

I've always lived in quite excluded/logistically challenged countries and it always took some effort (read: blood, sweat and tears) to travel from/back to.

When I was a kid back in the days when travelling was still considered as quite a luxury (80s and early 90s), my parents would pack us 3 kids & camping gear and we'd either take the ferry to Germany or we'd drive through Sweden to reach the continental Europe.

While all the others retrieved to their cottages for the holidays, we'd spend our summers on the road. Driving all over the (Western) Europe by car, sleeping at the camping sites. Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, UK....You name it. I literally grew up in the backseat of our family car watching the blurry, ever changing landscape through the window. We were like travellers, restless, always needing to be on the move. It was the time before navigators, Tom-Toms and such. It was just us, the car and the Michelin map of Europe. We only knew the day we'd have to go back home but everything before that was organic. We went where the wind blew us (as long as there was a camping site nearby).

When we started growing up, my parents ditched the tents and we began staying at Guest Houses, B&Bs and hostels. As we grew even more (both horizontally and vertically) the next logical step was staying at hotels. When we reached that point, though, it was simply cheaper to start flying to places. Road trips became a thing of the past. We discovered the convenience of air travelling. And solo travelling (which I began at the tender age of 15).

Flying was never that cheap and it always still took some time to reach the destination, however. It was still "somewhere there" far far away. Continental Europe back then was what China is today.

And things never really changed when I left Finland. When I lived in UK, it was a damn island. And Australia was far from...Well... Absolutely everything.

Where am I going with this? What does this all have to do with Switzerland?

Now knowing my history a little, try to imagine my feelings when my husband tells me that he's off to France for training. The training takes 3 days in total.

My heart automatically sank, of course. France... The country of baguette, red wine and garlic. Au revoir mon amour, send me a postcard...

It's only when my husband continues "so, it's closer to home than the office I go every day so I'll be home for dinner earlier than usual" I realise....

Effin' hell....

Everything is so.....damn.....CLOSE.

Day Trippin'

After finishing the morning sport session, my husband and I decided to venture to Vevey. Weather was good, Vevey is near and there would be retro cars on a display for free. Hey-ho, let's go!

It's the first time I actually went to Vevey instead of only passing through. What makes my dirty confession even more shameful is the fact that my childhood idol Charlie Chaplin used to live there for decades and yet, I had never visited the place. So close, yet so far away....10 minutes by train can sometimes be a lifetime away.

It was a hot and humid day, there were many storm fronts circling us but like most of the times, we never got the actual storm/thunder/rain, just the sticky promise of it. Grrrrr....
Unlike at the Geneva Car show, this time I heard no Finnish spoken. Usually those two go together. Oh well!

My husband loves the "vrooom vrooms", like most of red blooded men (I've noticed), and he was like a little kid in a candy shop seeing cars like Morgan while there were some quirky ones for me, as well.

Morgan

BMW

Messerschmitt KR200

Can you tell I don't drive....? What tipped you off? Messerschmitt KR200? Are you CRAZY? Who WOULDN'T want one???

Anyways, after we got enough of the retro car display (well, after I got enough of the display) it was time to take a little walk around Vevey, eat some ice cream and enjoy the hot weather.

What a beautiful place it turned out to be! Definitely have to come back very soon.

And there we have it. Yet another pearl discovered from our neighbourhood and another super Sunday spent.