A true sign of having gotten used to Norway (in my two weeks there) was the strange disorienting feeling I got looking out the window of the train to see darkness at 22hr. Thick, black, night. Incredible.
On the plane to Frankfurt, I sat next to a nice Belgian girl who spent most of the time reading. The Lufthansa flight came with a complimentary half sandwhich with some kind of qwark-like cheese (and dill) and in addition to the normal (rel US standards) beverage options, we also had complimentary wine. I had two small glasses of a generic red as well as some sparkling water. It was heavenly. There's something about 'forced' depravation that adds more delight to the thing you live without. I normally don't drink much, or often, but feeling forced to not drink while in Norway was different. I was asked, prefaced with a disclaimer that she'd never been to the States, if it was like what they see on soaps. I started with "Well, not everyone owns a gun" and said that each region was very different, walking through characterizations of the northeast, south, midwest, southwest, west, pacific northwest, and california. I talked about the (relatively) tightly-packed northeast, and Massachusetts leftist ways (+ universal healthcare), the strong mix of cultures in the southwest, wide open spaces of the west. How the midwest still caries some of the traces of having been settled by germans, with its meat-and-potatoes fare. It was fun to talk about.
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Here is the album from the first bit of Lausanne touristing:
The conference went from 8:30 am to 5:30 pm every day. The evenings were a blur of figuring out dinner plans, hanging out, and a small amount of
touristing. The mountains are amazingly beautiful, a postcard backdrop to the more industrial/spaceship-like campus. The public transit system is (of course) amazing, a network of trains and trams (bus-like things powered by powerlines hanging above their routes).
First night in, I was greeted by a caucophonous din in the guesthouse common area, as well as a dinner of pasta, pesto, and pizza.
Here is (someone else's) pic of the guesthouse, and
this is what the rooms are like, except the picture is deceptive. They are not as large as they look.
The next day, after the conference, we went touristing a bit. There was a
cathedral on top of a large hill in the city which we headed to for the view.
View from cathedral:
While touristing, we passed a protest, full of women
They were asking for 4000 CHF/mo minimum pay. It wasn't clear how this
related to complaints of unequal pay among men and women, unless perhaps the national minimum pay for men in Switzerland was something like that.
Oh, right. CHF. The domain names here are ".ch". This is harkening back to
the Roman/Latin name for the federation of Swiss states. Confederation
Helveticae, roughly.
Math tourists:
We discovered that the grocery stores closed by 19:00, which was strange
after the ones in Nordfjordeid (a much smaller town) closing at 23:00. The group splintered into the grocery-shoppers and the restaurant-seekers. I banded together with three of the guys from the conference to make dinner. I saw a 'Ratatouille' kit (a tray with onions, tomatoes, eggplant and zucchini) on it, and suggested throwing together a stew. We also got some more zucchini, some broccoli, a bag of pasta, and two large coils of sausage (not the pre-cooked kind). This totaled to about 28 CHF (~1.2 USD per 1 CHF), so 7 CHF each, which was a steal. Labor was divied amoung us, with me doing the main stew cooking, two of the guys cutting, and the other helping me with the cooking (sauteeing garlic & meat, washing veggies, etc). There was even enough that two of the guys ate leftovers from it for dinner the next night.
My meal that night was a salad(lettuce, cherry tomatoes and avocado) as well as some cheese soft brie-like cheese and bread (5 CHF total, for my share), and also made my lunch for several of the days of the conference (6 CHF for 3 sandwiches, in the end).
When I brought up the prices of restaurants (11 CHF for a 'special' at the
kebab place ---kebab + soda), I was reminded that the waitstaff in
switzerland are paid a living wage (no tips necessary).
I ate at the campus cafeterias twice (first day and second-to-last day of the conference). The first time I had salat with lardons and oef (bacon and egg), which was delicious (also, 8.5 CHF) and included an apple. The other time, the mean was a delicious fish, atop which might have been curried turnip (it was curried, the vegetable was under debate) and accompanied by gnocchi with pesto, for 12 CHF.
Rolex learning center (+cafeteria), view from math dept:
Another afternoon/night (sun setting between 9 and 10pm) of 'touristing' was mainly wandering around hoping for some kind of cold drink. We had nostalgic iced coffee at starbucks (since non-american places wouldn't pollute their coffee with ice), which was a staggering 6.60 CHF.
Our hostel (which everyone stayed in) was a stone's throw from the main train station,
Lausanne-Gare, and around the corner from a very blatant porn movie theater, as well as a fancy thing called 'L'atelier couture'. Some of the boys kept making jokes about catching a late showing or stopping in
before the conference. Adjacent to this was where our conference dinner was held, a pizzera called
Le
Milan. Very very thin-crust pizza, plenty of cheese, and delicious. We
ended up (accidentally, since we didn't know the toppings foreach pizza name (Margherita, Napoli, etc)) ordering two anchovy pizzas, out of the 6 for the table.
Next installment -- our trip to Vevey.
