Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Arrival in Switzerland

Tuesday May 24th
We left Germany this morning and headed to Lausanne, Switzerland.  Lausanne is on Lake Geneva in the French speaking region of Switzerland.  Switzerland has four distinct regions each with their own language, German, French, Italian and Romansch.  Almost 75% of the country speaks german, 21% French, 3% Italian and less than 1% Romansch.  The French region is obviously along the swiss-French border, and that is where Lausanne is located.  Yu can look from our hotel window out across lake Geneva to Evian, France.
We took three trains this morning, one from Mannheim, Germany to Basel, Switzerland, then Basel to Biel and Biel to Lausanne.  We didn’t really know about changing in Biel, so that was a surprise to us. We had open tickets from Basel to Lausanne and just asked at the info booth when we arrived for the next train to Lausanne.  The agent printed out a slip that showed it left on track 14 is six minutes so we hustled there, laoded out luggage and sat down.  I was concerned because Lausanne was not on the list of stops, but figured I’d ask the conductor. He confirmed this train was not going to Launsanne and showed me that the slip the agent gave me showed a change in Biel.  But that was easy enough, we got off an hour later in Biel, waited five minutes and got the train to Lausanne. Easy as can be.  Traveling so much through unfamiliar regions is teaching me to be patient and not to panic. We were much better off than the young lady behind us who found out that her eurail pass did not work in Switzerland and her Austrialian credit card was not valid on the train. She had to get off at the next station and figure out what to do.
We got to our hotel right on Lake Geneva around 2pm, and took a nap.  I was simply exhausted.  I slpet until 4 and then we walked along the lake for a while. We found the headquarters of the International Olympic Organizing Committee and plan to go to the park and museum there later this week.  We watched a water skier, and some kdis playing in a fountain.  I spoke with a paddleboat rental shop and again we plan to do that, as the paddle boat have a slide off the back and you can slide right into the lake and swim.  It looks like  a lot of fun.
The town is built on the side of a hill and the old town is up the hill, so we then took the new metro up the hill and walked around the old cobblestone historical section a bit  before settling down at a small Italian place for dinner.   I told Katie that “you know your trip is getting a bit long when you look around in Switzerland and say…ok , more of the same, cobblestone streets, an old church, a historical museum, OK nothing really to see here…..” I think we will stick o the lake district, which is just beautiful and a bit more quiet than the town, as well as something different from yet another old town.

1 comment:

  1. I did the paddle boats on Lake Geneva and they are REALLY fun!

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