Retrouver en Swisse (Reunited in Switzerland)

After a brief stopover in Paris early Monday morning (and by that I mean four hours), Jackie and I took the train to Geneva, Switzerland! We met our other roommate Grete who flew down from London for the week. It was the first time we’ve seen Grete since early February so we were so excited to spend a week together!

Switzerland is breathtakingly beautiful and hard to describe in words. The mountains reminded me a lot of Colorado. I took over 500 pictures (yikes), so I think it is best to let some of those pictures explain my trip.

Just a few observances:

*Switzerland is broken down into three parts: the French side (west), German side (central/eastern) and the Italian side (south, close to Italy). The largest portion is the German portion, but we spent most of our time on the French side. I loved the way the Swiss spoke French. It was much clearer and a little slower. They could understand me and Jackie better as well.

*Because of these three different sections, just about everyone we ran into in Switzerland spoke three languages: French, German and English. The Italian portion is so small and we were far away from it, but I’m sure many Swiss people speak Italian too. I was so impressed by this. I am dying to and struggling to master French and these people have three languages under their belt. It made me determined to become bilingual.

*We had one tiny bump on our trip that luckily didn’t prove to be a problem. Jackie and I bought our train tickets for traveling around Switzerland online before the trip. Somehow we ended up booking the trains for May 13-17 instead of April 13-17. We didn’t notice this until we were on our first train from Geneva to Montreux. The train attendant pointed it out to us and just told us to pay attention. We ran into the same problem on the way back to Geneva but the train attendant once again let it slide. Phew! We could have been shelling out a lot of extra money if they hadn’t been so nice. Words of advice for anyone traveling in Switzerland: buy your train tickets at the train station the day you are traveling, not online beforehand. Their system works better that way.

After checking into our hostel on Monday we headed straight for Lake Geneva. This was the first thing we saw. There were a lot of locals hanging out on the lake side, drinking beer and just hanging out. We noticed right away how diverse the population is in Geneva. The weather was really warm (probably about mid 60s) and stayed that way for most of the trip. Geneva sits on the west end of Lake Geneva and the next town we visited, Montreux, is on the east side.

Another view of the lake, this time looking at the historical section of Geneva. You can see the Cathedral, which we visited later in our trip.

It was Easter Monday so there wasn't much open. We spent the evening exploring the historical section of town and stumbled upon this park. We made sure to try all of the playground equipment :-)

On Tuesday morning we took the one hour train ride to Montreux. This is a view of the main street from a little park that sits next to the lake. Montreux was quite possibly my favorite place I have visited all semester. I chose to go here because it was a little bit off of the tourist track and was supposed to have a beautiful chateau. There wasn't a whole lot to do but we really enjoyed the scenery and the cute little town. Montreux is known for its jazz festival in July.

Everywhere we went in Switzerland there were spouts of water that you could drink from. I had some of the best water I've ever had in Interlaken!

Chateau Chillon in Montreux. We took a boat ride on Lake Geneva to get over to the chateau. It is much bigger than it looks from the outside. We spent a good hour and a half exploring all of the different rooms. At one point, a girls choir stopped and sang in one of the courtyards. I think they were in town for a choral festival for the weekend.

A view of Montreux from the Chateau. It was a good 45 minute walk between the town and the chateau. We stayed in a hostel that was somewhat in the middle of the chateau and the town. I guess this is a good point to mention how nice each of the hostels were that we stayed in in Switzerland! They were clean and the staff were pretty friendly at each.

Just incredible.

All along the pathway that follows the lake there are these creatures made out of palms (I think). Kind of weird but kind of cool too.

My favorite picture of Montreux. The flowers all around the town were incredible.

A sunset over the lake. Can you see why I fell in love with this town?

Wednesday morning we took a scenic train ride to Interlaken, a town in the German section. This is just an example of the awesome stuff we saw from the train.

Interlaken is known for its extreme sports. Unfortunately, we went during the wrong season for just about everything. Winter sports had just ended and spring sports hadn't begun yet. We could have gone paragliding, which we were all really excited to do, but the weather didn't cooperate. So, when we got to our hostel the.. interesting.. receptionist told us about the cable cars we could take into the mountains. There was still some snow on the top of the mountains, but a lot of it was melting which made these waterfalls all along the side of the mountains.

On our first cable car ride. I'm just going to admit it now, I've definitely become more afraid of heights recently. I was pretty nervous on this cable car that seemed to just be hanging from a couple strings, but I managed. It was definitely worth the few minutes of being scared!

Some of the mountains we saw.

After two different cable car rides we ended up in this town, Murren. I'm sure most of the houses and restaurants are meant for skiiers during the winter, but some people actually live up here too. I have NO idea how they do it, but it was a beautiful little town. There were actually still a bunch of skiiers since the snow hadn't quite melted yet.

Our jumping picture in the Alps of Switzerland!

We stopped at a little cafe in Murren. Jackie and Grete split this awesome looking apple strudel :-)

After exploring the mountains we went down into town and walked around. We stopped at a Knife center and got some swiss army knives. We also walked to one of the lakes. Interlaken sits between two beautiful lakes, hence the name... The hostel we stayed in was really cool. It was more like a giant wooden lodge with a bunch of different rooms. They also have a beer garden and sports in the summer. I definitely want to try and go back!

Not all of my pictures have to be serious ;-) Gotta love those Haribo gummy frogs!

On Thursday morning we got up and took a boat ride to these caves nearby Interlaken. It was supposed to rain so we figured it would be the best thing to do.

And we saw this along the way.... I have never seen bluer water than I did in Switzerland.

Nobody told us that to get to the caves we would essentially have to hike up a mountain... but we eventually got there and saw this. This is the outside of the caves.

Looking at the lake from the caves.

<3

Friday we had one more day in Geneva. I honestly wasn't that impressed by Geneva. It's a pretty city but there isn't much going on and there isn't much charm. I felt like we could have spent more time in the two other towns we saw and less time in Geneva. But Friday we walked back to the old part of town and went up the tower of the Cathedral. There were incredible views but I liked this one the most!

We then ventured over to the United Nations. This is a protest of Iraqi refugees outside of the building. It's not that great of a picture but I wanted to show you the front of the grounds, all of the flags that line the pathway, the protest and this giant chair. The chair only has three legs to symbolize the failure of important countries, including the U.S., to sign a treaty dealing with land mines and cluster bombs.

We had a great tour of a lot of the facilities. We also learned a lot about the UN in general. I was unaware that they have many, many different divisions and committees that are stationed all over the world. I've been to the UN headquarters in New York and knew that there was an office in Geneva. This is the largest conference hall where all of the states can meet together. We were there on Friday. On Monday, Iranian president Ahmadinejad spoke in this very room.

The symbol of Geneva: the Jet d'Eau (water jet).

All three of us were incredibly happy we decided to explore Switzerland. It was nice to spend time outdoors and away from city air. It was definitely one of the prettiest places I have seen in my life and I definitely plan to return!