Switzerland Part 2/3 Lucerne

We arrived in Lucerne without a hitch- of the wonderfulness of Swizz trains; on time to the second. Marc, our CS host met us at the train station and then we headed back to his to get rid of our bags. We hung out for a bit having tea and chatting and then Nicole and I headed into town. With a day and a half to explore Lucerne- a small city, we headed downtown without a plan. We mostly walked around, even in the rain, though being placed in Normandy I don't really mind or notice it anymore. From what we had read the Lucerne Art Museum seemed interesting but we thought we would leave it for Monday.


Sunday night was a relaxing night in eating pasta and chatting with Marc. Marc is a product tester for mountain bikes and he is insanely cooler than he reveals at first. He's traveled just about everywhere and we got him to tell us about his latest outing for work- where they flew him to the top of a mountain in a helicopter to do a mountain biking photo shoot!

We watch a movie together and then headed to sleep. The next morning brought more rain, but we decided to forge ahead anyway. We headed to the Art museum to find that it is actually closed on Mondays.... dang. So we headed on our next mission which was to find Nicole a pair of sneakers since her flats weren't cutting it in the rain. An H&M answered her prayers and we continued our walking. We ended up at the Rosengart Collection which has a great collection of Picasso and Clee. I really enjoyed the museum and was again stuck by Picasso's work.
We asked for recommendations from the ladies at the ticket counter for where we should get Fondue or Raclette. The one older lady didn't speak english, but pointed out a street and wrote down the name to hve us head there to eat. When we got there we looked around to find "The Fondue House." Yup, not even "la maison du fondue" or "die Fondue Haus," but just "The Fondue House." We decided that we could find something a little better, not even more "authentic" just not so ridiculously touristy. We found a cafe/pastry type place that also had lunches and was on the water. They had both fondue and Raclette on the menu, we figured fondue wouldn't be as hard to try another time so we went with the raclette.
Raclette was clearly invented by a crazy cheese farmer because I don't think anyone else could make up "plate of melted cheese with some mini gherkins, cocktail onions and 3 small potato halves." I think the inventor was carefully treading the line between insanity and genius and I'm not sure where he landed. Soooooooooo delicious. I think it's one of those things a stomach can only handle once a year but so yummy!


The rest of the day included more wandering, trying to digest the raclette, buying chocolate to bring home and the purchase of a strange dessert. I heard/saw this dessert from Rachel's blog- who we were visiting in Zurich, and figured I needed to try it myself. It basically looks like something between spaghetti and playdoh. It's chestnut marzipan with whipped cream. A new taste, I don't know if I would get it again but definitely worth trying once.
'
After packing up our things and saying goodbye to Marc we headed to the train station to get our 8pm train and continue onto Zurich!

Switzerland! Part 1 of 3

1. Getting there
Strikes continued through our departure, adding considerable time to it. I live about 3h30 from Paris, but with the strikes there's only about 2 trains in a day because I need to connect. To make the next day less stressful I spent Thursday night at Nicole's in Liseiux- about 1h30 outside Paris. The next morning we started off a little late which resulted in some running to the train station and our lucky arrival to the train. We go into Paris and from Gare St Lazare over to Gare de Lyon without a hitch. We had to wait a bit for our train, so we got some food in the meantime- also for train snacks. We got the Lyon alright- but a little late and our next train was due to leave in four minutes! We asked a conductor what platform our train was on since it wasn't on the board, to which he said "I don't know! Go ask the information center." So we hustled our butts inside and looked at the ensuing madness. The place was overrun with people, sitting anywhere they could find space, waiting for trains. Still frantically looking at signs hoping late trains were for once in our favor we also got on line to talk to a information clerk. When we got to the front she said "Oh, yes, your train was canceled. Take the one in 3 hours." Well, there wasn't much else we could do but agree. So we wandered outside the train station and found a park nearby. The weather was better even just being in Lyon and we were happy for the sun and greenery. We passed the time and hung out finally making it to Geneva around 8pm. As we were passing through the non existent customs an announcement came over saying "The trains from France to Geneva are late because of strikes." And the entire crowd of people just burst out laughing and bascially saying "oh well, at least now we're in Switzerland and things run properly and on time!" (which were basically my sentiments).

2. I didn't mention it ahead of time because I didn't want people to be nervous, but one this trip we couch-surfed. More so than just the informal term of staying at a friend's, it's an entire organization/ group/ community (couchsurfing.org). The idea behind it is getting to actually meet people of the place you're visiting. It seems like the creepiest intersection of craigslist and facebook possible, but it is actually quite awesome. Leo, our host for our 2 nights in Geneva gave us great directions to his flat. When we walked in he said " How was your trip, we are going to a protest and a party tonight, ok?" Ok, sure, why not?
Leo actually lives in a university flat and is an international relations major at the University of Geneva as an international student from Mexico. His friends who we would meet through the evening had some equally crazy backgrounds and interesting stories about how they had gotten to Geneva. Geneva is regarded as an international city in part because of the UN and many NGO's that are headquartered there, and while we were there I got the feeling that no one is actually from Geneva.
In anycase the evening started out with Salsa, Merengue, and other Latin American music with his friends who were over. Through the night we headed ot the protest downtown, which was against a popular alternative music nightclub that was being closed down- L'Usine- or The Factory in English, several bars and Usine itself.

3. The next day, Saturday, Nicole and I headed out around town to just walk and explore. The Red Cross and UN Museums and tours were closed for Saturday, but it wasn't a huge blow to me. Geneva is situated on Lac Leman, which is HUUUUUUUGE ( I would later realize this is a popular Swiz city feature). A pretty city, fairly large but it's still hard for me to conceptualize a city that isn't like New York, which basically doesn't exist anywhere else in the world.

We saw all the big sites- the water shoot, the old city, parks and the UN building. We walked all through the day and got to really see quite a bit. We also ran into smaller attractions like a market, another flea market and so on.

That night Leo was ready to party again, but we didn't have the same endurance as him. We joined him at a get together in the flat below his but bowed out when the party continued on from there.

He was a great host to us and a great first experience couchsurfing. But had to catch our train to Luzern for the next morning so it was an earlier night for me and Nicole.

Lac Leman

Outside the UN building