Lausanne

The photo might be deceiving. But no, I didn’t travel to Torino this weekend. I went to Lausanne (pronounced Loh-Zahn), the home of the International Olympics Committee and therefore also home to a museum and park dedicated to the games.
Lausanne is really pretty and probably would have been more beautiful if the sun was shining. Unfortunately, the clouds stuck around all day, hiding the view of the surrounding mountains. The city is only about a half hour train ride from Geneva and sits right on the lake. It’s also very hilly; I heard some people compare it to San Francisco. I’ve never been there, so I can’t be the judge on that one. However, I did my fair share of climbing cobblestone streets and stairs, especially in the city’s Old Town. I stopped by the city’s castle and cathedral, which is the biggest one in Switzerland. Interesting fact: Since the Middle Ages a watchman sits at the top of the tower and calls out the hours at night. The tradition started because the town was made of wood and would frequently burn down and the watchman would be on the lookout for the fires. Lausanne still has a watchman take the post every night.
On the way home I stopped at Manor, the local department store. They were having a sale on chocolate so I bought a lot for souvenirs. The place was jammed. I know I’ve said it before, but Swiss people really do love their chocolate.
My other adventure this weekend: laundry. Armed with coins, detergent and my French-English dictionary, I headed downstairs to my complex’s laundry room. The machines are like none I’ve ever seen. On one side of the machine are 13 options corresponding with a dial, 13. All of which have a description written in French. I tried to translate a few and finally chose the cheapest one with the temperature I wanted (40 Celsius). I open the soap bin and there are three different compartments and I have no clue which one to put my detergent in. I hope for the best, put a bit of soap in each compartment and press the start button. Luckily, ended up with what I think were clean clothes. They smell clean at least.

Fondue and city photos

These are photos from my first weekend in Geneva taken by Althea's friend Andrzej. We walked around the city and stopped for a fondue dinner. I suppose I'm in deep thought in the last picture.

Random foreign thoughts

I’ve been here now for a little longer than two weeks. It definitely feels longer than that. But sometimes I still have to remind myself that I’m actually living by myself in a foreign country. Here are some of my thoughts and observations about Geneva, the lab and everything else around here:

French-speaking people really do use the phrase “super” a lot. Only they pronounce it “soup-pear” with a big exclamation mark at the end. When people are talking really fast it’s one of the only words I can pick out of the conversation.

It’s ATLAS week at CERN, which means that many of the international collaborators are here for the week. So far, I’ve run into a few people I knew or just recognized from Fermilab. It’s a really strange feeling to connect a face to somewhere thousands of miles away. And it makes it even more difficult to remember their names.

I went to a different grocery store last night and bought some veggie burgers, the first I’ve seen since I’ve been here. Veggie products aren’t nearly as popular as they are in the states and even more expensive. So this was quite a find!

There are four English-speaking channels on local TV: CNN World, BBC, BBC Prime and some sports channel that has been showing the Olympics with British commentary. Many of the other channels air American shows dubbed over in French. The funniest I’ve seen is “Friends.” Joey’s mouth moves and a second later comes a voice that is definitely not his.

It’s pretty much assumed that after you eat lunch, you sit back down and have a coffee or tea and some type of chocolate.

Lots of people ski (the mountains are everywhere). Therefore lots of people die skiing. The number of skiing fatalities in the Geneva area alone last weekend was five.

The standard of living is extremely high. Housing is expensive, food is expensive, movie tickets are expensive, you get the idea.

Despite the stereotype that Swiss people are really healthy, I beg to differ. It’s true that people here look healthy. Most are skinny or average weight, and I’m yet to see someone I’d label as obese. But so many people smoke, and they smoke everywhere, all the time.

People speak multiple languages here. French, German and Italian are spoken in different regions of the country and there are people who can speak some or all of those in addition to English. It makes me feel dumb and really jealous.

Bern and bears

On Saturday I took the train to Bern, the Swiss capital about an hour and a half ride northeast of Geneva. The ride itself was beautiful, providing a great view of Lake Geneva, the countryside -- where patches of farmland line the hills -- and the ever-present mountains in the background. Like the city bus system, the rail is clean and efficient. My only fear was that I’d board the wrong car and end up in Italy or somewhere equally far.
Bern is a really great city. It’s a peninsula surrounded by a river, which restrains it to quite a small area and makes it really easy to navigate on foot. The buildings are beautiful with storefronts on the bottom and living spaces on the top. Every block or so down the main streets are ornate water fountains. Bern is in the German-speaking part of the country and seems to be influenced a lot by that. There’s a giant cuckoo clock in the middle of the town, and brown gingerbread-looking houses with smoke pluming from their chimneys are scattered about. There also were lots of street vendors selling the biggest pretzels I’ve ever seen. It amazes me how such a small country can have such vastly different regions.
I stopped by the Einstein Haus, a museum made of the flat he once lived in while working at the patent office in Bern. I guess I can’t get away from physics! The museum itself, which is filled with lots of old belongings of Einstein, wasn’t really worth the 6 francs admission, but it was still interesting.
From the train station, Bern expands downhill. At the end of the peninsula and across a bridge are the bear pits. The bear is Bern’s mascot, so they keep four or five of them in these pits kind of like a zoo. Visitors can buy bags of fruit to toss down to them and I guess they sometimes do tricks for the food. They didn’t do any tricks when I was there; they just looked really sad. Their living space is pretty small and I felt kind of guilty for staring at them.
The city also has lots of shopping and a huge market with fresh food and various trinkets was set up in the main square. I also took a walk around the Parliament building. Although I’ve never been to the White House, I can imagine that the atmosphere there is much different from the Swiss capital. I didn’t see one security guard.

Parlez-vous anglais?

I find myself using this phrase really often. At the lab, most people speak English well. Off site, however, is another story. And since my French is limited to “hello,” “thank you” and the days of the week, communicating has been my biggest challenge associated with living here. After I’ve used up my signature greeting, “bonjour,” there’s not much else I can do. So if a person I’m passing on the street or stuck in an elevator with continues to talk, I just smile and nod, hoping they’re not telling me something important. Also, I fully embrace gestures when trying to ask a store clerk a question. A lot can be accomplished with a quick game of charades. I must look ridiculous, though.
I imagine I’ve come across as “the dumb American” quite a few times. For instance, during my first bus ride to the lab last week. I bought my ticket at the stop and walked up to the front of the bus as it pulled up. Expecting the driver to open the door and take my ticket, I waited. And waited. And the door stayed closed. I look inside to get the attention of the driver and find that he’s looking right back at me. I make a gesture to open the doors and then I see it -- a red button with opposite arrow symbols positioned next to the door. I look down the sidewalk to see that the other people waiting at the stop are already on board and realize that the button is to let yourself in. By this time, the driver has opened the door himself and I walk on, give him a quick smile and feel my face flush red all the way to my seat.
Another surprise came in the grocery store. I walked to a small shop down the street from my apartment and felt proud of myself for figuring out how to use the electronic scale next to the fruit. When you place the food on the machine and punch in a specialized code, out comes a price sticker to give to the cashier. But when checking out, the cashier picked the bananas I selected, pointing to the sticker and talking quickly in what I can only assume was French. I don’t know the code I entered, but it must have been for something expensive, because the price tag said 10 francs instead of the about 3 francs it was worth.
There are a lot of little differences like this. Things to get used to. Keys with rounded edges, blinds positioned on the outside of windows, elevators made to fit three people and basements with doors the width of a vault. But in the big picture, life goes on in pretty much the same way it does at home.