Lausanne

Thursday March 5^th 2009:

After a morning visit to Monterossa Al Mare, we boarded a train to Lausanne. The train, including all of the stops was about 6 hours, but quite beautiful. We road through the Italian hills by the sea, and north through Switzerland and the Alps. Kevin finally experienced his beautiful European train ride! I had planned to end our trip in Lausanne, where we would stay and spend some time with Nathalie and Nicolas Dengler-Stolz, and there five year old girl named “Ella’ and their five month old “Luce”. Nathalie was my former au-pair (nanny) who spent a year with us when I was five years old. I had seen her once since, when traveling with the Wisconsin Ambassadors of Music in High school, but it had been awhile and I was anxious to reconnect. She was absolutely wonderful and patient with us, and I have nothing but vivid and gentle memories of her. She was also my main inspiration to learn French and I was excited for Kevin to meet a piece of my childhood.

We arrived about 7 pm, and Nathalie met us at the train station. We headed to her apartment and had a lovely relaxing evening. She made us a “Lausanne specialty” of a sort of sausage and roasted vegetables, however she burned the vegetables (since she got distracted feeding Luce) but it was tasty anyway. Although her apartment is quite small (we literally slept in the living room) it was realty comforting to end our journey at a home. They are so kind and welcoming, and it was a uniquely rejuvenating experience.

The next morning we woke early (Ella is an early riser), showered and ate a French breakfast of toast and coffee. After breakfast we headed into Lausanne with Ella, Nathalie and Luce to see the city. We walked
through the old part of town; saw the Cathedral and the old staircase. It was almost shocking how different Switzerland was to Italy, everything was one time, very clean and everyone was very helpful. Kevin and I continued on to walk by the lake and have coffee. It had started to snow pretty heavily, a wet spring type, so unfortunately the mountains weren’t very visible. We picked up a few groceries on the way back. Back at Nathalie’s we enjoyed a delicious lunch of polenta with ham topped off with fresh tomato chutney and a salad. After that, Nathalie bravely drove us through the snow to a little Swiss village called “Gruyere” (famous for its cheese). The village was cute and quaint, and just utterly “Swiss”. The most

exciting part however, was seeing Kevin walk through the castle. When we entered, his eyes became wide, and he sort of jumped around a bit, giddily saying, “this is my first castle!” The castle included many rooms, old furniture, large stoves, and a mummified hand. (Ella was a bit unsure about that one…) It was beautiful, old and interesting to see the differences between this castles, the castles in England and the Alsatian one we saw at the beginning of the semester. After the castle, we stopped by to get some tea so Nathalie could feed Luce, then pushed the stroller through about a foot of snow and headed back to Lausanne.

When we returned, it was almost time to feed Luce again and she was starting to get hungry. Nathalie wanted to start dinner before having to stop and feed her, but Luce’s stomach didn’t agree with that plan. Nathalie and Kevin were frantically chopping, sautéing, and preparing while Ella and I were trying to distract Luce from her hunger. It was really quite a humorous scene-Ella and I walking Luce around the room, talking and playing with her. The song “Do you know the muffin man?” kept spontaneously playing from a little plastic baby toy, to distract Luce.

After feeding and a little tranquility, Nathalie’s mother Margaret arrived in time for dinner. We ate spring rolls, filling them with a mixture of chicken, fresh soy sprouts, lettuce, shrimp and peanuts. Dinner was again lovely and relaxing. Margaret is a very sweet woman, who in some ways reminded me of an Austrian; perhaps more mellow form of Kevin’s Grandmother Dede. She doesn’t speak English very well, but was trying very hard to follow the conversation and participate, and doing remarkably well. When hearing about our bad weather luck and the snow today, she said to Kevin in an almost prophetic manner “I looked at the TV and I saw sun!” as she was making a square with her hands.

It was quite late by the time we finished dinner, but we nonetheless headed back out. We stopped off first at one of Nathalie and Nicolas’s friends place and chatted for a while. After that, we headed back out to try to find a place to get a drink. We stumbled into a wine place and enjoyed some drinks, finishing just in time for closing at 2 am.

The next morning was indeed clear-Margaret had been correct! The snow had stuck a little, so after breakfast we headed out to a small hill so that Ella could sled. It was absolutely beautiful and sunny, complete with the Swiss Alps in the background. It was fun to sled with Ella; she kept shyly requesting that I go down the hill with her. I made a new friend!

After sledding we stopped by a café and had a quick juice before heading to the train station. We road the beautiful scenic train ride back to Strasbourg, with warm memories of Switzerland.