Welcome to Switzerland!
After only an hour's flight from Amsterdam, I was in Geneva, Switzerland. Davide and Amy live in Lausanne, about 45 minutes awayy by train, and so I hit the rails and in no time Amy and I were bear-hugging at the Lausanne train station. After a quick stop at a local cafe (I needed it!), we went back up to their place where I finally, after almost ten years, met Davide. All I can say at this point is that he was as warm and welcoming as Amy, and as the next week or so wore on, he and I became fast friends in our own right.
From the very start, Amy was like, whatever you want to do, let's do, but as she and I always do, and with Davide in the mix, we had wine and cheese and meats and talked through till the wee hours of the morning...a perfect relaxing start!
Lausanne
Now I'd been to Switzerland a couple of times before, but on both of those trips I was in Luzern and Zurich and both times it was in April. Those two cities are in the German speaking part of the country, more to the east. Amy and Davide live in Lausanne, which is in the French speaking region and more to the west. The city is located on the shores of Lake Geneva (which they call lac Leman), across from Evian, France. It is also home to the International Olympic Committee. I'd never been to Lausanne before this trip, and so my first full day was spent checking it out...
Amy and Davide live in the vicinity of the lake, and the major portions of Lausanne are located up the hill from there, so bright and early Saturday morning, she and I headed to the city's one subway line to get to the city center. Maybe because it was a Saturday and maybe it was because it was the height of summer vacation season, but the city reminded me a lot of the city of my father's birth, Trieste, Italy, with the appearance of a mid-sized city, but with few people. We meandered through the quiet streets, checking out the sites as well as the produce offered up on Saturday farmer's market day.
And of course, there was shopping! Amy brought me to this very cool, Century 21-like department store where she helped me do some damage, but I am gonna look oh so good this year, lol.
Let's Get French
All in all, the day was a fun one, and again, just spending time with my buddy was what made it so. Later on in the evening, the three of us had been invited to the home of a gay couple (who's names escape me at the moment), one of whom was cousin to Amy's friend Sylvie. Neither of them spoke English, and so most of the evening was spent with the four of them speaking French and David and Amy stopping every once in awhile to keep me abreast of the conversation. It was really a lovely evening, with good food and wine, and pleasant company, though admittedly for the first time in my life I wished I'd known French.
I do speak Spanish fluently and a little bit of Italian, but I French always confused me. The rules of pronunciation in Spanish and Italian are pretty steadfast, but French is a whole other story, Luckily, Amy had learned the language quite well in her nine years in Switzerland, and that day she slowly began teaching me both how to say words and what they meant. That night I was also introduced to a little bit of French Swiss culture, which turned out to be a funny little sidebar to the rest of the trip.
Before heading out to the dinner, both Amy and Davide showed me that when you first take a drink of your wine and do a sort of cheers, you have to look the other person in the eye and say the word "Sante," which I took as "shantay," a la Rupaul. Well, that was something I couldn't seem to get quite right during the rest of the trip and made for some pretty funny moments.
So that was my first full day in Lausanne, definitely one to remember and the rest of my time spent there was equally as delicious! Stay tuned...
In the meantime, check out my other posts on Europe 2018 below:
