Basel with Sharon

Sharon and I decided that it would be important to plan the next day trip in a big Swiss city. A friend asked me previously if I had thought about going on the XChange UNIL trip to Basel, and I thought that sounded like fun. However, instead of signing up with XChange, Sharon and I planned our own tour of the city. This gave us the opportunity to plan our museum list and historical tour, without worrying about whether or not we would get to see everything on our list.



We visited the Kunstmuseum, the Puppenhaus Museum, and the Tinguely Museum, all of which provided a great cultural background of the city and some fun interaction with art and history.



Not only was it a beautiful day with blue skies and sunshine, but we managed to take a rather extensive tour of the historical part of the city and engage in some regular weekend fun. We found the Saturday food market at the Marchplatz, where Sharon and I shared a DELICIOUS pretzel (her first ever) and a garage sale at Petersplatz, where people were dressed up and selling a whole variety of old junk. We also walked over all three of the major bridges over the Rhine (one of the largest rivers in Europe).



Another thing we found out: the Swiss really do love their cheese - enough to fill an entire refrigerated wall and a corner with several refrigerated units. We bought some amazing cheese for our trip back on the train!

Bern Christmas Markets

This time, I decided to take advantage of the Xchange opportunities with UNIL, the University of Lausanne. They were offering to give us a tour of the city of Bern and take us to the Christmas markets. Although Bern itself is not that large, the city was still bustling with activity, as many Swiss residents were hopping from sale to sale to do their holiday shopping.

Bern is the city of 100 fountains (or some number close to that), bears, and arched buildings. My favorite fountain has to be the one of the ogre eating the children - Kindlifresserbrunnen. It depicts Kronos, the Greek god who ate his children to prevent them from taking his throne - I guess it was also supposed to remind children to be good to their parents. I saw a film about the history of Bern, but I didn't understand it fully - there were lots of flashy sounds and colors and effects, which were more interesting than the narration about Napoleon. After taking a tour of the old downtown, our group ventured toward the bear pit. Unfortunately, we didn't actually get to see the bears because one was still recovering from being tranquilized. Recently, a man jumped over the wall into the bear pit, and the bear severely attacked him. Luckily the man survived, but both he and the bear are in weak stages of recovery.

In addition to visiting the bear pit, we also had the chance to climb the Bern Cathedral tower that overlooked the city and had a breath-taking view of the Alps, snow and all. I am hoping to soon be able to go hiking in the snow with my snowshoes!

The buildings in Bern employ overhangs held up by arched structures that protect vendors from the seasonal elements and offer a nice wind breaker for pedestrians as well. After a few steps, you would see vendors selling traditional German breads made into the shape of men (with little raisin eyes) or people selling mugs of mulled wine and roasted chestnuts. I have found that chestnuts are rather enjoyable, and I wish that they existed in Iowa! It would be nice to have a mug of mulled wine and a paper sack of warm chestnuts while strolling through the Iowa tundra. The Christmas markets, Waisenhausplatz and Munsterplatz, were full of handmade knick-knacks and delicious holiday foods.

Here, a man is cutting caramels. This stand sold Swiss spice cake with symbols of the Bernois bear and Swiss flags. How traditional.

Santa flag and the Bern flag behind. The Christmas tree really makes me miss home and holiday times with my family!

Les Caves Ouvertes and Extraterrestrial Visitors

This Saturday, EPFL Xchange took a trip to the vineyards in Gland, Switzerland, for a day of wine tasting, called "Les Caves Ouvertes." We bought a glass that was our ticket to 24 vineyards. After having taken the train and then the shuttle bus to Vitzel, we ambled along cobblestone roads and through autumn-colored grape vines to get to each "cave." Unfortunately, it rained all day, so we often ran to seek refuge in the warm indoors. We were lucky enough to find many with fireplaces and large tables for our group. They were also generous in offering us bread and cheese in almost every place.

We learned a bit about how the wine was made - in the wooden barrel pictured in the album, it takes 10,000 L of grape juice to fill the barrel! We were going to be enginerds and figure out, according to estimation of the volume of the average grape, how many grapes were required to fill the barrel, but we were too tired from drinking all that wine. All in all, we managed to visit 9 caves and were thoroughly content to return to Lausanne.

Afterwards, there was an alien-themed party at one of our friends' apartments, and they covered the floor in red paper and had amazing lamps and craters made of papier maché. It was great to see the creativity of the costumes, and we had a lot of fun dancing the night away!

This guy used squash balls to make his super-power orb martian costume.

Leticia brought some music from all over the world. She is a big fan of 20's music like Django Reinhardt.

Gil and his alien costume.

Melanie and Emmanuele, our fashionable hosts.

I'm a friendly alien!

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.