Lausanne

There's a lot going on here and it's hard to get every experience on the blog.....so I'll start with the trip we took this past Saturday. If you haven't figured out from the title, it was to Lausanne.

I had called Mandi the night before (she just arrived in Switzerland that day) to see if she wanted to come with Maralee and me - and she did! Yeah. So, I got to meet my future flat-mate and grill her with questions on the 40 minute train ride. She was in Cameroon for this past year......and no, they didn't "kick her out".......so Maralee and I have the inside scoop on Yaounde' now!

I went to the train station here in Neuchatel that morning and managed to buy the train/bus tickets for all 3 of us. I must say I was pretty impressed with myself since I managed to do it all alone. The ticket agent did speak some English though, so don't get too amazed at my progress, and I really didn't mean to buy all 3 of the tickets right then but it worked out well in the end.


We visited the Cathedral Notre-Dame (same name, different cathedral) and it was AMAZING!! They were doing renovations so we weren't able to go up into the tower but it was beyond words on the inside. My pictures hardly do it justice and I am eager to return for another visit in the late Spring or early Summer when the trees are green. (This is the a view from the front, I think, with my "Heidi milk" in the foreground......I just had to show that because it's so funny.)


The streets are twice as steep in Lausanne as in Neuchatel and we hoofed it up and down all day. This is a huge time for "Sales" at most of the stores so we did a little shopping and I found a hat that looks more "European" than my ear band. And FYI, the word "sale" actually means dirty in French and the word to look for here is "soldes."

We had a picnic-style lunch on a park bench. Bread, turkey, cheese, chips we bought from the local store. And yes, it was probably about 25 degrees outside but you can't exactly take your food in a restaurant and sit down to eat it. So, we did the "Europe on a budget" style of eating and gave some people a good laugh. I'm sure they were thinking "they must be American, who else would eat lunch outside in the middle of January!?