Back in Switzerland

My week in M.B. for x-mas flew by, but I was able to spend a lot of quality time with family and friends. And the great weather continued throughout the trip, which made for a nice x-mas present.

Here's a picture that I took during the return flight to Geneva shortly before landing. The warm, sunny weather was definitely behind me, as evidenced by the dark clouds and fields covered in snow. Apparently it's been snowing for the past couple of days.

We're spending the New Years weekend at Emilie's mom's place , so shortly after returning to Lausanne we headed across the border to France. It should be a mellow weekend, though the combination of x-country skiing and non-stop French-speaking will no doubt exhaust me.

As seen from the picture below, we arrived at Emilie's mom's place to find snow everywhere. The storm of the past few days blanketed the walkway from the street. If it snows much more, Emilie's car probably won't be visible in the morning.

An MB Sunset

Since my arrival on Wednesday, I've been welcomed by some real Southern California x-mas weather: sun with temps in the 70s. It's a nice respite from the cold, snowy weather back "home" in Switzerland.

Another benefit of being back in M.B. is seeing some "real" sunsets, which, by my definition, consist of the sun setting over the ocean. Here's a shot from the front of my friend's place. The setting sun itself wasn't visible, but we still had a nice view.

White Christmas

 

The past two days we’ve had a bit of an early Christmas gift – snow. It’s not very common to get snow in Lausanne – perhaps 5-10 days each year – so we’ll have to enjoy it while it lasts. Here’s the view from our apartment.

Le Fabuleux Village

 

Before dinner on Saturday we met up with Emilie’s sister and her husband in Evian. While there we walked around the downtown area, which was decorated in a mixed Christmas / Halloween-type fashion as part of an annual Le Fabuleux Village (ou la Legende des Flottins).

I don’t really know the full story behind the village, but it basically centers around some mischievous elves and gnomes that live in the Alps and come down to Lac Leman every year during the winter to rest on the shores of Evian in a village of driftwood. During one November, Santa Claus was doing a training run over the lake and crashed because of a squabble amongst some of the reindeer. The elves and gnomes swam out to save him and every year since Santa has returned in December to see the friends that rescued him.

It may sound a bit corny and convoluted, but its a very popular story with the kids and the many driftwood sculptures on display were pretty interesting.

Raclette

 

Tonight we had dinner with Emilie’s family in La Chappelle d’Abondance, a small town in the French Alps not far from the Swiss border. Thanks to a winter storm, it was snowing for much of the drive and provided a nice holiday feel.

In traditional Savoyard fashion, the group decided to go with Raclette – basically a cousin of fondue in which a massive wheel of cheese is slowly heated on one side and the melted portion is routinely scraped onto everyone’s plate alongside some charcuterie, steamed potatoes and other vegetables.

As “luck” would have it, Yvain and I sat adjacent to where the Raclette “machine” was ultimately set up. Thus, we had the hottest seats at the table – both in terms of the actual heat radiating from the machine and the pressure of scraping the cheese onto everyone’s plate before it melts too much.

Given that I was busy serving others throughout the meal, I didn’t have a lot of free time to actually eat. Instead, I basically found myself stuffing my face in the brief breaks from serving everyone else. It made for a fun dinner, though, and I think that I’ll be much better prepared for the next time we have Raclette.

The Multilinguist

 

I’m always thoroughly impressed by someone who can speak many languages fluently. After doing my best to learn Spanish in school and French in Switzerland, I can attest first-hand how difficult it is to (attempt to) master a second (or third) language.

While riding the train the other day, I sat across from a guy who definitely was linguistically gifted. Over the course of a 40-minute train ride, he switched effortlessly between English, Spanish, French, German and Italian while speaking with various people on the phone.

Typically, I would have been annoyed by someone talking on his mobile for a prolonged period while on the train, but in this case I was so impressed by what I was witnessing that I didn’t even care.

Praha - Day II

We began Sunday with a funicular ride up to the top of Petrin hill in order to get a nice view of Prague from above. At the top of the hill is an observation tower that looks a bit like the Eiffel Tower, so we decided to walk up the 299 steps required to get to the top in order to have the best possible view.

The observation tower indeed offered a beautiful view of the city, with Prague Castle on the left (top photo below) and the Charles Bridge as well as the Old Town to the right (bottom photo below).

On our way back down the hill we stopped at the St. Nicholas Cathedral, which dates to the 13th century (at least in part) and is known for its recognizable belltower.

I liked the interior -- particularly the view of the massive dome from below.

Next we visited the Josefov, Prague's Jewish Quarter, which includes a number of sites related to the country's Jewish history. It was interesting to see but very sad as well given the devastation inflicted by the Nazis during WWII (less than 3% of country's Jewish population remained after the war).

We spent the remainder of the afternoon walking around and enjoying the scenery / architecture. I think Prague is definitely one of the more beautiful cities that I've seen.

We passed countless buildings with interesting facades like the ones below.

We decided to grab an early dinner rather than roll the dice on airport / airplane food. On the way to the restaurant, we walked back across the Charles Bridge. I assume that one has to get up pretty early to see the bridge without anyone else on it.

There were a couple of puppeteers performing on the bridge and I was really impressed by their skills. They had music playing and the puppets were perfectly sychronized to the drums and guitar.

While we didn't end up getting traditional Czech fare for dinner (as appetizing as goulash sounded), we at least decided to go for a traditional Czech drink -- beer. According to our cab driver from the first night, the average Czech drinks around three beers a night (I have no idea whether this is actually true, but did "confirm" via Wikipedia that the country has the highest per capita beer consumption in the world...). Na zdraví!

Praha - Day I

 We began our Prague visit by walking up the hill to Prague Castle, which is reportedly the largest castle in the world. Over its 1,000+ year history, it has served as the residence of Bohemian Kings, Holy Roman Emperors and presidents of both Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic.

Emilie and I decided to go for the "short" visit, which includes entrance to the majority of the castle's main sights. My favorite part was the St. Vitus Cathedral, whose construction began in the 14th century and took over 600 years.

The inside was pretty impressive, with a very high ceiling and beautiful stained glass windows.

I also really liked the Zlatá ulička (Golden Lane), which is the site of the 16th century houses of the castle's marksmen. Given the number of marksmen and the limited space, the houses are extremely tiny and appear better suited for elves than people. A notable resident in more "recent" times was Franz Kafka.

Our next "stop" was the Charles Bridge, which we took to get to the city's Old Town area. The bridge dates back to the mid-14th century and is named after Charles IV, who was Holy Roman Emperor at the time. Here's a view of the bridge taken from a couple hundred yards down river.

I particularly liked the guard towers on each side as well as the bridge's 30 statues, which date back to the early 18th century.

The bridge also offered a nice view of Prague Casle, which can be seen at the top of the hill in the photo below.

After crossing the bridge we visited the Staroměstské náměstí, the Old Town's main square. During December it is home to a large Christmas market, which allowed for a nice picture (the late-afternoon sun definitely helped as well).

The square contains the world's third-oldest astronomical clock, which was built in 1410 (it's also the oldest one in the world that is still functioning). It is visible at the base of the clock tower on the left in the photo below.

Shortly thereafter it was time for us to head back to the hotel for a quick meal as we had tickets to see Carmen at the Prague State Opera House. Here's a picture that I took along the way that shows one of Prague's many bridges just after sunset.

The performance was excellent and the venue was beautiful. To demonstrate my ignorance when it comes to opera, I never knew before the show that Carmen was a French opera.

After the opera we broke one of our cab driver-from-last-night's rules -- never grab a cab on the street as they will charge you a horrendous fare. We were freezing, however, and it was getting late, so we figured we were willing to pay a premium just to get back to the hotel fast. And we ended up bargaining a bit and only paid about half of what the first driver that passed asked for, so we considered that a bit of a victory.

Prague

This weekend Emilie and I are visting Prague, a city that I've wanted to see for a long time given all the great feedback on it that I've heard from others. Emilie visited the city with her parents about 20 years ago, so in a way it's like seeing a new city for her as well.

We arrived late tonight as we didn't find a direct flight and instead had to connect through Frankfurt. As such, we headed straight to the hotel from the airport and didn't plan anything for this evening. We have all day tomorrow and almost all of Sunday to explore, though, so we should be able to see a lot during our stay.

Our hotel is in the Malá Strana ("Lesser Town") neighborhood of the city, which is below Prague Castle and just across the river from the Old Town. The decor in the hotel is pretty interesting. Our room feels like we went back in time a couple of centuries.

One of the things that I had heard about Czechs is that they are very nice people and this has definitely proved to be true thus far (though we're dealing with a small sample size -- 1). Our cab driver gave us a nice overview of the city and some helpful tips to ensure a smooth visit.

Joyeux Noel

 

Thanks to Emilie, our apartment is now Christmas-ready. I came home the other day to find the tree trimmed, the stockings hung and a wide-range of miscellaneous x-mas decorations set up.

The newest addition is a Nativity scene that Emilie bought last weekend at one of the Christmas markets in Alsace.

Return to Riquewihr

This morning we returned to Riquewihr to visit Feerie de Noel, the Christmas shop that had closed before we arrived last night.

Here's the queue to get into the store. There must have been about 50 people in line when we arrived but it fortunately went fairly quickly.

Once inside, it was basically structured like a miniature Christmas version of IKEA -- i.e., one-way only with the cash registers at the end. And if you like Christmas decorations (ornaments, snow globes, nut crackers, Nativity scenes, etc., etc.) you would have been in heaven.

I hadn't planned on buying anything, but it's probably impossible to make it through the whole store empty handed. Given the initial line and the time required to navigate the one-way path, you almost feel obligated to make a purchase. And so I did.

Our return to Riquewihr also gave us the opportunity to tour the city a bit with the benefit of daylight. I liked the traditional buildings, with their angular wooden designs and interesting colors.

For lunch we had reservations at L'Auberge de L'Ill in nearby Illhaeusern. The restaurant is by far the most acclaimed restaurant that I've ever dined at (it's held three Michelin stars since 1967) and we were seated in a nice private spot just off the main dining area.

The food was excellent, as should be expected I guess. Here are a few pictures of the courses ordered by either Emilie, her mom or me.

After the meal we walked around for a bit as a three-hour car ride was the only remaining item on our itinerary. I took the following picture from a bridge just adjacent to the restaurant.

Alsace

This weekend Emilie and I went with her mom to visit the Alsace region of France to see a few of the small towns in the area that are known for their Christmas markets. We're staying in Thann, which is about three hours north of Lausanne (via Basel).

The weather was cold and rainy, which provided little motivation to explore after our arrival. Here's a picture of a plaza near our hotel where we found a restaurant to grab a quick bite to eat and escape from the cold.

The weather finally cleared in the late-afternoon, so we headed to the Kaysersberg for our first real visit of the trip. The town has a medieval feel to it and was part of Germany up until WWI, as may have been surmised from the name ("Kaisersberg" = "emperor's mountain" in German).

By the time that we arrived it was dark (the sun sets before 5pm now) and we struggled a bit to find a parking space. It seems we weren't the only ones who decided to visit the city's famous Christmas markets.

The atmosphere was very festive, with packed streets full of people kicking off the Christmas season. Here's a picture that I took of the city's medieval church.

There was Christmas decor everywhere, including the following Nativity scene that was set up at the base of a statue in a plaza.

After exploring the city's sights and window shopping at the x-mas stores for a couple hours (primarily the former, for me), we finished up our visit. Here's a picture that I took from a bridge during our walk back to the car. The style of the house in the middle of the photo is very typical for the area.

Next we headed to the nearby town of Riquewihr, which is one of the few towns in the area that wasn't heavily damaged during WWII and thus still maintains much of its 16th century architecture.

Unfortunately for us, the Riquewihr visit didn't go according to script. First, the Christmas store that Emilie specifically planned our trip to Alsace around had already closed for the day (fortunately, we can make a return trip tomorrow). Second, the restaurant where we had booked a reservation didn't serve the Alsacian specialty that Emilie and her mom specifically wanted -- tarte flambée.

And given that tarte flambée is apparently a "must" for any Alsacian visit, we cancelled our existing reservation and instead searched for a back-up restaurant. This was a risky maneuver given the town's small size and the throngs of tourists, but we ultimately found a nice restaurant that wasn't complet AND served tarte flambée.

So what exactly is tarte flambée? It's effectively a rectangular, pizza-like baked dish with cheese,  crème fraîche, thinly sliced onions and lardons (small strips of pork fat -- basically bacon). And I have to admit, it was very good and well worth the extra trouble. Here's a photo (trust me, it tasted much better than it looks...).