l'Hiver en suisse

Switzerland!  I have been here for three weeks exactly now-- finished a three day orientation where we stayed in a youth hostel in downtown Geneva and prepared for the program, moved in with the host family in a tiny Swiss village 20 minutes by train from Geneva, started classes and already attended an international conference.  We took a tour of the UN, received our badges to use the UN library whenever we want, and also attended a briefing at the International Committee of the Red Cross.  It's so amazing how many resources we have available to us here, and how much we are expected to use them. For all of our papers, including the final term research paper at the end, we are expected to interview "experts" in our field of study, which in this city could and does actually mean diplomats and high level officials at international organizations.  It's really incredible, and kind of intimidating.  

Downtown Geneva by the lake, hotels and Swiss and Geneva flags in the background.

The second day of orientation, we took a tour of Old Town, the old part of Geneva, by walking across a bridge from the bustling, rich hotel strip of the Lac Léman to another world completely.  We had the most energetic and enthusiastic elderly Swiss lady as a tour guide.  She took us into St. Peter's Cathedral, the oldest in Geneva, and walked down the cobblestone streets where inventors, diplomats, philosophers, and nobility once lived.   We also walked through the big parking garage in the Old Town, which is build right into the remnants of an old Roman ruin wall... there are modern, working buildings built right next to and into old batiments and churches, even in the newer part of the city.  

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's house, Old Town Geneva.

Time to talk about the host family:  they are géniale, encore!  They are the sweetest French Swiss family, living in a house a 2 minute walk from the train station of the little town of Gland, and a 20 minute train ride from Geneva where I have class.  My host mom, Anne, has four children.  The youngest, Guillaume, is 17 and reminds me a lot of my brother.  My host sister Fannie is 20, and is in and out of the house a lot.  There are also 21 year old twins, Magali and David, who both go to universities far away, Magali in Zurich and David in Germany, whom I still haven't met.  They are all really nice and talk with me in French, although they are all bilingual, having a British grandmother and lived in New Hampshire for two years.  We speak in english sometimes to clarify things, or if the grandmother says "hello" instead of "salut" and starts to speak in British English.  The grandmother, Diane, and grandfather, Jean, live on the level above us in the same house, and we have dinner with them every night.  We talk a lot or a little, depending on who shows up for dinner, and I never know when the grandfather is joking or not.  He has told me many times that he is "not occupied by me" (in the French meaning you're not my responsibility), and that I am to serve myself at the table... they're great and treat me like a third daughter.   

Train through the Swiss riviera, en route to Château d'Oex.

I've also enjoyed learning little idiomatic French-Swiss words-- they say "souper" instead of "diner", like the difference between our dinner and supper; they have ingeniously fixed their number system, simplifying seventy, eighty, and ninety into "sept-ant", "huit-ant", and "nen-ant".  Those are the most annoying numbers in standard French, so I am really taking a liking to this system.  I also learned the word for "mess", which I find I need to say a lot.  These linguistic differences are really cool, and so are all the winter holiday traditions my host mom and grandma tell me about.  There is Carnivale, to chase the winter away and usually including celebration and these delicious "merveilles" thin thin fried dough crisp rounds (sun-shaped) dusted with powdered sugar; and Chandleur, or "Candle Mass", which is the genesis of our Ground Hog Day.  I'm not sure if they associate it with a small rodent, just that they usually cook crepes, big round crepes again shaped like the sun, to encourage the sun to come to help the plants grow.  There is a big difference between Morocco and Switzerland, the biggest being that Swiss culture is more familiar, similar to home, American culture, but I love finding the sticking points of where things become distinctly "Swiss".  

During our second weekend with the host families, I went into the Swiss Riveria, about 2 hours east, with some friends to see an international hot-air balloon-- montgolfière-- festival.  It was the most worthwhile thing I've gotten up at 6.30 in the morning for in a long time... the two train rides it took to get out there were a trip in themselves.  It was  like winding through a Christmas illustrated book, like those little trains puffing away through forests and around winding mountains that you see in movies.  We set out as the sun was rising, passing through vineyards and past little villages.  Our first train was east, the second was more "up".  We just climbed and climbed, and then eventually we rounded a corner and saw little tracks, like a model train village, with big colorful balloons peeking from between the houses.  The first batch of balloons ascended while we were pulling into the station at the tiny town of Château d'Oex-- known purely for, and very proud of, this balloon festival-- and it was really something beautiful.  We sat on a big hill watching the balloons take off and the families milling around, and the air was clear and the sky was blue and I thought it was unbelievably gorgeous.  

International Balloon Festival-- montgolfières en Château d'Oex!

Funny shaped balloons-- lion and baby lion, Obelix in the background.

"Château d'Oex is as good as NASA"

We watched the balloons and walked around town for a few hours, wandered through the fair that was catching speed as the day went on, and had some delicious mulled wine from an actual cauldron.  After that, we took a train back down the mountain and got off at the lakeside town of Montreux, another picturesque Swiss town that is a little more touristy and developed than Nyon, the "big city" a 5 minute train ride from my town of Gland.  We ran into another group of students from our program there, and wandered along the coast, watching the sun set.  An Italian dinner and a chocolate-finding mission ended our night, and we took the train back home.  Let me just say-- I love the public transportation in this country.  It makes sense, it's economical and environmentally sound, and it is on time.  

Lac Léman, in Montreux.

Shrubbery animals, Montreux.

Freddy Mercury, Montreux's claim to fame.

Lac Léman, Montreux.

Sunset in Montreux.

Since the weekend, I have gone to a flea market in Nyon, where I  saw many a strange old thing and lots of freezing-looking people, and had some roasted chestnuts made by an equally frozen-looking man.  Tonight, the program hosted the students and their host families at a Raclette restaurant-- raclette is a type of cheese, and also the name of the entire meal where you put melted raclette cheese over boiled potatoes and pickled onions and pickles. There were a bunch of "suspender" plates for these half-wheels of raclette cheese, and there were two suspenders under each heating panel, and the heating panel heats the top part of the cheese wheel until it bubbles, which is when a man picks up the wheel and shaves off the bubbly part onto a plate-- for you.  It's delicious!  Anne and Diane came, and we talked with some of the other students and parents and host-siblings, in Frenglish as always.  

Tomorrow after the morning lecture, I am going to Zurich with some friends, to visit the German part of Switzerland.  There's a lot of talk by my family about the German Swiss, as my host grandfather is a French Swissman from the mountains... it's supposed to be a beautiful city, and I'm really excited to travel across the country by train.  This is already a great trip, and I can't believe that just less than two months ago I was in Morocco.  That experience was something else, and everything was new and different.  I'm loving finding the new and different customs and habits and things to do here as well, but it's impossible to describe the mixed emotions at the beginning between missing a country that wasn't my country but which I had adapted to and gotten comfortable in.  I'm looking forward to more adventures here, tomorrow and every day after that!