Montreux, Switzerland

Last week, Marie, Julia and I went to Switzerland via Tübingen to see Kevin and Gerd. Me and Julia know Kevin from Halifax. He studied in the physics department at Dalhousie University with Julia. As it sometime happens, we forgot the camera in the car and thus have no photographic evidence. But we can tell you that we had a great time. We went to see where Kevin and Lisa (his girlfriend) worked, the Max Plank Institute for crazy brain science, where we could buy cold beer from a vending machine (first time buying cold beer in germany!). We drank them next to the lake. It might be important to mention the incredible dimensions and state of the “lake”. We were standing next to an algae congealed 0.5 m by 1.5 m pond when Kevin said “ oh yeah, and this is the lake” and then proceeded to bounce rather than skip a rock along it’s length. Then we played ping pong and went back to Kevin’s place were we drank until 3 or 4 ish. Good times, and a good start to our Swiss vacation. Thanks, Kevin and Lisa.

Next stop, Switzerland. We drove to Lausanne the next morning to go see Gerd. Gerd was a regular on our blog as he was a friend of ours in Victoria and was one of Julia’s officemates. Now he lives in Lausanne and works at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. We met him at his work also and went to the student union pub which sells a hundred different types of beer. Of course the first four I tried to order they were either out or the brewery had stopped brewing a long time ago. The next day we went to Montreux another city along Lake Geneva (or Lac Léman in french). There was a Jazz festival there that is apparently famous.

We walked along the lake to the Château de Chillon, which looked pretty well maintained compared to our experiences so far with German castles (except maybe for the Rococco one). Very fairy tale-looking, being on a lake and everything.

The day was hot and the water was pretty warm, but unfortunately we'd forgotten our bathing suits in the car. This didn't stop us from going as close to swimming as we could without soaking our clothes, however.
As the evening came we were able to see some of the first evidence that there really was a music festival town, and we caught the end of a set by a salsa band from the University of Texas at the free outdoor stage. We considered staying to see more later, but opted for supper instead, which ended up being a good idea as there were severe thundershowers while we were eating.

And what was supper, you might ask? Naturally a heaping pot of cheese fondue for Jeremi, Marie, and myself, to finish off our Montreux experience. (Gerd chose not to partake, having instead a quite tasty Rösti, which is a bit like a swiss latke or potato pancake.)


and finally one last image from Montreux - the statue of Freddy Mercury along the waterfront. He wasn't actually from there (he was actually born in Zanzibar, of all places), but it seems that Queen's record label had a recording studio in town, and he felt very much at home there, and appreciated the discretion accorded by its citizens regarding his lifestyle.
Our next stop (and our next post) was in Bern. Stay tuned...