Easter a la Suisse

Okay everyone: I am finally ready to talk about what happened in Switzerland. I know you're on the edge of your seats.

Today's entry will be especially unique because it includes no pictures whatsoever. There is a good reason (well, a devastatingly sad reason) for this, which I'll come to later. You'll just have to use your powers of imagination to conjure up images of all that I saw during my little vaycay.

Day -1: Thursday

At 10 P.M. on Holy Thursday, Lena and I were sitting outside the Paris Gallieni Euroline and Metro station, waiting for our overnight bus to Geneva. After a mere two-hour delay, it arrived and we were off on a European adventure! Sleeping on the bus proved difficult, but it didn't seem long at all until we were pulling up to the Swiss border, the first blue lights of morning illuminating the sky. It was at the customs point that we met a guy named Matt, a Canadian college student studying in Paris, who had relinquished his seat at the back of the bus in order to get away from some woman who spoke neither French, German, English, or Italian and was thus having trouble communicating with the border guards. Since Switzerland is a neutral country, the customs process is pretty intense. We had to go through two sets of security-- the French exit customs and the Swiss entrance customs, and of the two the French customs were much more serious. Matt told us that this was because the French government has to be concerned about people fleeing France to take refuge in Switzerland, since the Swiss will not necessarily take action against fugitives from other countries.

Day 1: Friday

We arrived in Geneva at around 8 o'clock in the morning, and the first order of business was to find an ATM and take out some money. Switzerland uses Swiss francs, which are currently trading at roughly the same rate as U.S. dollars. Matt led us to the Geneva train station, where we figured we could find the ATM as well as buy a roundtrip ticket to Bern, our other destination of interest. We located the ATM and I inserted my debit card, selected my withdrawal amount, and entered my PIN code. I waited for my money, but none came. A blinking message popped up on the screen.

"Card retained?!" I shrieked, staring at it in horror. "What does that mean?"

I pressed every button in sight, but with no success. As if mocking my distress, the machine blinked a few more times and spat out a receipt. "Your card has been retained. Please present this receipt to your local bank. Thank you!"

"Lena," I said, in a panic. "That machine ate my card! It won't give it back!"

Lena, wide-eyed with fear, slipped her own card back into her wallet.

After some Frenglish communications with the woman at the ticket booth, we were told that the man capable of getting the card back would not be at work until noon. Faced with a morning in Geneva and only slightly sickened by distress, I followed Matt and Lena away from the ATM of Doom. We ate breakfast at a pastry store in the train station ("Bonjour! Which of these pastries is the most typically Swiss?") and then stepped out on the streets of Geneva. The day was cold and rainy, and being that it was also Good Friday, all the stores were closed. After several windy, wet minutes of wandering, we came upon the St. Pierre Cathedral. It's quite an impressive structure, the front facade an imposing row of Roman-revival columns. The grandeur befits its historical import, since it's also the church where John Calvin, founder of Calvinism, delivered his famous sermons.

We saw some people going down a little stairway at the side of the cathedral, and followed them just to get out of the rain. It turned out to be an underground archeological site where you could wander around and look at the foundations from the hundreds of years' worth of earlier churches and temples that existed on the site before St. Pierre was built. Parts of it were surprisingly well-preserved, like a mostly-intact entryway floor that still had the original Roman mosaic tiles. We spent over an hour walking around with our audio guides and making dorky art-history observations about the styles of columns we were encountering. When we got to the ancient tomb area I turned the corner and literally gasped-- there was a skeleton in the grave! The audioguide told me it was probably a Roman-era Allobrogian chieftain buried under the original altar. So that fulfilled my daily dose of creepy.

After the archeological site tour, Matt left us and hopped a train to Leichtenstein. Lena and I ducked into the nearby Museum of the Reformation, but it was ultimately unexciting and we left before long.

We decided to head back to the train station, and after a little while standing in line I finally got to talk with the elusive ATM problem-solver man, who extracted my debit card from its clutches and advised me not to try using it again. Now a few hours delayed from the original plan, we stayed in line and purchased two round-trip tickets to Switzerland's German-speaking capital city, Bern. Buying a ticket enables you to depart for your destination city at any time you want-- the trains leave twice an hour and allow for a lot of traveling flexibility. The first train we tried was cancelled due to "an accident involving a passenger," so we jumped on the next one and after about an hour or two of watching the gorgeous mountain scenery and gently-swirling snowstorms fly by, we were in Bern.

Bern presented something of a problem, since Lena speaks no German and all I can remember from my two years of German instruction in England is "My name is Sara," "I am eight years old" (slightly useless over a decade later), the word for "nothing," and how to count to twenty.

"Which way is... Laupenstrasse?" I said, staring blankly at the map on the station wall.

"I think it's that way... near Schlosesslistr."

"...Okay."

We'd been given directions by our Couchsurfer in Bern, and her house ended up only being a fifteen-minute walk from the station. Unfortunately on the way there the monsoon gods decided it would be the perfect opportunity to toy with some fatigued mortals, and we arrived at our host's door looking like a pair of drowned rats huddling uselessly under flimsy umbrellas. Luckily Sabine, the woman who hosted us, ended up being the kindest woman in Switzerland. She ushered us inside and immediately presented us with hot tea, Easter cake, and pairs of her own slippers. We met her fourteen-year-old son Yannis, who murmured a self-conscious "hello" as Lena and I wished him "Guten Tag!" in what was undoubtedly the least German accent on the planet. After some tea and conversation with Sabine, we stashed our bags upstairs and waited for dinner. Feeding your guests is by no means a requirement for couchsurfing hosts, but most of them do it anyway out of hospitality. Sabine made us a delicious and traditional dinner called raclette, which Lena and I loved because it involved lots of melted cheese. Basically the dish consists of potatoes, mushrooms, asparagas, olives, and whatever other side dishes you want to include, but the main attraction is the thick slices of various kinds of cheese which you load into little trays and then insert them into a tabletop machine called a raclette maker. It looks like a double-decker pancake griddle and it has heated coils that melt the cheese; when it's sufficiently gooey you remove the tray and use a little paddle to scrape the melty goodness onto your potatoes and other fixings. It was a lot of fun and tasted amazing, and Lena and I both declared a desire to purchase raclette makers for use in the States. The other cool part about dinner was the fact that we had three different languages going on at one time. Yannis had a friend from school over, and the friend spoke French and German but very little English. Yannis spoke German and a fair amount of English, but not much French. Sabine is quatrilingual or something so that wasn't a problem for her. In the effort for everyone to understand everyone else, French, German, and English flew around the table in the most amazing and complimentary way I've ever seen, with everyone clarifying for the others in whatever language was most convenient. I looked at the smile on Lena's face and knew she was thinking the same thing I was-- I've never had dinner like this before. After everyone was stuffed with potatoes and melted cheese, Lena and I did the dishes and retired to our room to sleep.

Day 2: Saturday

We woke up on Holy Saturday to find Bern bathed in golden rays of sunshine. Sabine set out a delicious breakfast of custardy yogurt, muesli, bread and cheese, then helped us look over our maps and plan out our day. We read somewhere that there was an outdoor market in the town center on Saturdays, so we gathered up some stuff and headed out. The market turned out to be huge-- dozens and dozens of vendors selling everything from food and flowers to clothes and jewelry. I got some of my Christmas shopping done and we bought some fresh pesto gnocchi from a pasta cart to give to Sabine as a thank-you gift. After our adventures at the market we visited the Old Town of Bern, which we quickly pronounced the best city in Switzerland. Whereas Geneva had been vast and stark, Bern had the atmosphere of a modernized medieval village-- which in fact it was. We saw the Zytglogge, an impressive clock tower in the middle of Old Town that features little puppets that pop out and perform a musical skit every hour. The clock is even more impressive considering that all the mechanisms for the puppet performance were built in the mid 1500s and are still working! We also saw the Munster cathedral, which is no longer a functional church but still featured some amazing Gothic-style architecture. Our last real stop of the day was to the Bern bear pit, which is literally a big hole where a few real live bears live. According to Sabine, the history of Bern involves a town founder who decides that he'll go out hunting and the first animal he shoots will lend its name to the town. He bags a bear, and the town becomes "bern." Before you get sad about the bears being forced to live in a little concrete hole with a bunch of tourists gazing in at them, though, you should know that they're being moved to a new habitat next year where they'll have a lot more space to roam around and live happy bear lives.

After thinking some more about our travel plans, we decided that it would be a worthwhile excursion to stay in Bern another night and leave for Geneva the following morning, stopping on the way to visit the mountain village of Gruyere, where they make Gruyere cheese. Sabine was having guests over that night, though, so she wasn't able to host us. We got on Couchsurfing.com and found another candidate who was willing to take us-- a 24-year-old woman named Kaja, her boyfriend Christian, and their giant white shepherd dog Coona. We gathered up our stuff, presented the farewell gnocchi to Sabine, and trekked along the river to Kaja's apartment. Once again the couchsurfing experience exceeded our expectations-- we presented a bag of fresh caramels to Kaja and Christian, who were incredibly friendly and fed us a delicious meal of beef and mushroom in a cream sauce served over potato pancakes. It was really interesting to talk to them because Kaja is German and Christian is Swiss, and they were eager to learn about Americans' views of Europe. They seemed shocked to discover that most Americans revere Europe as a chic and cultural vacation destination, and seemed downright confused when Lena and I told them that most fairy tales are understood to take place in Europe ("Does it say that? Couldn't they be anywhere, really?" "Well, we don't really have castles and stuff in America").

Kaja also told us a lot of things we didn't know about Germany and its self-image, like the fact that it's only recently become acceptable to be proud of being German. When she was growing up, professing a pride in your nationality was too tied up with memories of Hitler and the war, and people would assume you had some sort of racist agenda if you didn't act ashamed of your nationality. Kaja said that German schools place a lot of emphasis on explaining to their students the horrors perpetrated by the Nazi party, and a newly-emerging attitude of distance from those actions is finally allowing the country to take on a new identity as a German people. It was at this point that I realized how glad I was that Lena and I decided to couchsurf during this trip. Where else can you have these kinds of candid conversations with people whose life experiences are so entirely different from your own? They asked us how we were enjoying Bern, and when we mentioned how much we liked our dinner the night before and how sad we were that we wouldn't be able to buy a raclette maker before the stores reopened in Switzerland, Kaja offered to sell us her own. "We hardly ever use it," she said, taking it off a shelf in the kitchen. "And we can buy a new one anytime." I parted with twenty Swiss francs and am now the proud owner of said appliance, so if anyone wants to sample a sinfully cheesy dinner sometime, let me know.

Day 3: Easter Sunday

Early on Easter Sunday we awoke, said our thank-yous and goodbyes to our hosts, and set off for the train station. A slight glitch in the plans arose when I realized I had lost my round-trip train ticket from Geneva to Bern, which meant that I had to buy a whole new one instead of cashing it in for a refund. After that snafoo we caught a train and series of buses to Gruyere, which is situated in the Alps and may very well be the cutest village on the planet. We bought tickets for the factory and watched the milk swirl around in giant copper vats, destined to become delicious guyere cheese. An informational poster on the wall told us that two-thirds of all gruyere is sold in Switzerland, with the remaining one-third divvied up among Europe and North America. I think they need to make more, because the other continents are being seriously deprived. By a sheer stroke of luck we also happened to be there on the last day of the year that the old artisan cheesemakers were doing an outdoor demonstration of old-fashioned cheesemaking, which involves cooking the milk over a fire in a giant copper kettle. We got to taste the cheese at each stage of completion-- as whey and curds (which were surprisingly rich and delicious), as fresh spongy cheese being pressed into the wooden mold, and as the finished cheese at 6, 8, and 10 months, which get progressively tangier as they age. Stuffed with cheese, we then ascended a winding mountain trail to the village proper of Gruyere, where the restaurants and tourist shops were all open for business. We ate some traditional fondue and did a little shopping, picking up a box of meringues for our next couchsurfer host in Geneva. After the shopping we came back down the mountain and meandered over to the bus station (after I slipped on some ice and faceplanted in the middle of the street right in the path of an oncoming car, that is. It's a comfort to know that in even the most scenic and foreign of locales, I am still as clumsy and pathetic as I am back home). It was then that disaster struck.

"Lena," I said, rooting through my purse in an increasing panic. "Do you have my camera?"

"No... don't you?"

We retraced our steps all through the village, asking every shopkeeper and hotel clerk if someone had returned a lost camera, but to no avail. It was gone. Lena mentioned that she had seen two really suspicious men in one of the stores we had last been in, trailing close behind her at every turn. With dismay I realized that my camera had been in my coat pocket for the last few minutes before I noticed it was gone, and would've been all too easy to take without my noticing. Our bus arrived then, so there was nothing more to be done. As we pulled away from Gruyere I looked out the window at the thick and sudden snowstorm that had hit the town a few hours earlier, the majestic Alps now faint against the darkened sky, and hoped that stealing a camera on Easter Sunday earns you a one-way ticket to hell. I cried to myself on the train to Geneva, thinking of all the pictures I had lost and despairing at the thought of buying a new camera. Lena, sensing my mood, said nothing.

Day 4: Monday

Our last Swiss couchsurfer was a 30-something single woman named Anne, and while she was friendly enough she didn't have the same energy and charisma as our couchsurfers in Bern. She told us we were welcome to anything in the fridge, gave us permission to use her computer, and left us to eat and shower while she went out to visit some friends. We called a few museums to see what was open on Easter Monday, but very little was. We wandered around Geneva for a few hours and saw some key landmarks like Old Town, the inside of the St. Pierre Cathedral, and the Jet d'Eau, a giant water-spewing fountain in Lake Geneva. Then it got really cold and we decided that there wasn't much left to do, so we trudged back to Anne's apartment and spent the afternoon doing homework and watching tv. For dinner Anne made us fondue with potatoes, which was delicious, and then we packed up our stuff and walked back to the bus station to catch an overnight ride back to Paris. At the station we were surprised to see none other than Matt, our friend from the first day.

"Matt! How are you? Last time I saw you you were getting on a train to Leichtenstein!"

It's kind of hilarious that I have opportunities to say things like that.

Matt did apparently wind up in Leichtenstein, which he crossed on foot in just over two hours. We also met his friend Caitlin, another Canadian college student studying in Paris this semester. The bus ride back was uneventful, and Lena and I were relieved when 7 A.M. rolled around and we disembarked in familiar surroundings.

"Paris, je t'aime!" said Lena, throwing her arms out in an attempt to embrace the whole city at once.
"I'm so glad to be back," I agreed, hoisting my bags onto my aching shoulder.

Tired, sluggish, and laden with suitcases, we boarded the Metro and lurched away from the bus station, headed once again toward the streets and people we knew. The ground was damp and the skies gray, but it was warmer than Switzerland. Once in the apartment, I tiptoed down the hall and set my bags in my room. I noticed something on my desk-- a chocolate figurine from my host family accompanied by a little note wishing me "bonnes Paques." True to the constant weirdness of my life here, the chocolate was in the shape of Donald Duck riding a moped, which has arguably no relation to the Easter season, and upon closer inspection he also turned out to be filled with smaller chocolates in the shape of seashells and fish. I ate a seashell and climbed into bed. It felt so good to be home.