Picking up from where I left off... Saturday morning, my mother and I were met by my mom's fellow chemistry friends--Phan and Raphael--in Aigle. The four of us went to Lausanne for the afternoon to walk around the harbor, stopping for a delicious lunch of crêpes. Saturday was the cloudiest day of the weekend, meaning that even standing at the edge of the water with the lake nearly lapping our shoes, none of us could see the mighty mountains that rose up from the opposite shore just 8 miles away. Honestly, it was the best day for the clouds to roll in, and they happily rolled right back out of sight for Sunday's snowshoeing.
Phan, Raphy, my mom, and I also walked around Vevey's shores for a while before and after dinner. I've been to Vevey twice (since Phan and Raphy live there, and my family has visited), and it is a truly beautiful place. In fact, Vevey and its surrounding countryside is what I associate (quite fondly) with the word "Switzerland." Apparently, though, my previous visits to the city have missed an important landmark: the giant metal fork! Yes, there is a 26-foot steel fork stuck just off of Vevey's shores, and my mom and I couldn't stop chuckling about it. This bizarre piece of Swiss artwork is actually meant to be "advertising" of sorts for Vevey's Alimentarium Museum, which features exhibits about food, cooking, and the history of Nestle (whose headquarters are located in Vevey).
Isn't that giant fork ridiculous? My mom and I loved it. Anyway, Sunday dawned much sunnier, and after a slightly strange breakfast of bread, cheese, and dried sausage, the Phan and Raphy drove us up a local mountain to go snowshoeing. My mom and I rented snowshoes (brightly colored plastic with buckles: no tennis rackets here!) and the four of us started off!
Revelations during the experience: snowshoeing is a pretty good workout, especially when going uphill! Uneven terrain can make you fall sideways into the snow, so it's a balancing act as well. And my favorite thought: snowshoeing is just like taking a walk with bigger, clumsier feet.
Since Europe has had a global-warming winter, there were quite a few patches of the walk where the four of us had to snowshoe through the mud or take them off. The guy at the snowshoe rental told us that Sunday was the last day of the season due to the warm weather. Phan and Raphy, who had snowshoed the very same route two weeks prior, said that they had never seen so little snow so early in the year. Granted, there were many shaded parts of the route where the snow was still pretty deep; I found this out for certain when I removed my showshoes a little too early, causing me to sink almost knee-deep into the snow with every snowshoe-less step.
After about two hours of snowshoeing, the four of us returned to Phan and Raphy's house in Vevey, where we were joined by another couple that my mom knew from her post-doc years in Switzerland: Christiane and Reinhart. Seeing as both Swiss couples are fluent in French and that both my mom and I can communicate somewhat effectively in the language, it was decided that French was the official language during the time we spent at Phan and Raphy's.The six of us had a wonderful Raclette lunch (toasted cheese slices over boiled potatoes), made with the best cheese I have ever tasted in my life. A couple of bottles of wine later, the six of us were sitting out in the warm afternoon sun on Phan's patio, admiring the absolutely unbelievable view of Lake Geneva and the mountains and chatting along in French. I couldn't imagine a sweeter Sunday in Switzerland.
My mom and I left Vevey early on Monday morning: I was headed back to Strasbourg, and she was on to visit friends in Neuchatel. I absolutely loved seeing my mom, and I'm so glad that she was able to visit me once more while I was in Europe! And as she reminded me, my study abroad experience will be over in less than three months, and I'll be back home in the US!
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