Cailler-Nestlé Factory and Return of the Cows

On Saturday, the Xchange group organized a trip to Broc to visit the Cailler chocolate factory. Once we arrived in the city, you could smell the chocolate radiating from the building. I think that the people of Broc probably get tired of the smell every day, but I enjoyed it for the moment. The tour of the factory included a film describing the fabrication process, a brief explanation of the raw materials needed as well as their origins, a look at old wrappers and advertisements from the early 20th century, some information on old machinery, and, finally, unlimited chocolate sampling! This plethora of chocolate ranged from typical bars to bars filled with almond and hazelnut-butter. Then, we sampled “des branches,” which are sticks of chocolate rolled in nuts. There were also orange, coffee, mousse, nut butter, and chocolate-filled truffles at the very end. In short, we were stuffed with sweets only to find that they were selling all of their products at the end of the tour. Of course, many people filled grocery sacks with souvenir chocolate.

In order to burn off the large amount of calories from the tour, we took a short hiking trip back to Gruyère, where we then took a train to see the cow festival. This is the time where all of the cows have returned from the Alps, and their owners decorate them in flower headdresses and elaborate bells, showing them off to bystanders. They had a small market during the festival, which offered cheese, artisan goods, and clothing. I especially enjoyed watching the marching band play American songs – I believe they played one by Tina Turner!

I met some wonderful people while on this excursion: Yvonne and Florian (from Aachen, Germany), Leticia and Gil (from Lisbon, Spain), and Arslan and Memit (from Istanbul, Turkey). We met up later in the evening to attend the International Festival of Dance, to take a night tour of the city of Lausanne, and to go to a hole-in-the-wall bar with 1920s French music – Edith Piaf and Django Reinhardt were some of the musicians.