Conquering La Suisse

One of the benefits of living for a period in a tiny country is that you get to explore it north, south, east, and west (and, in Switzerland's case, up and down). Lausanne is a nice place to work in, but when the weekend rolls around it's no different than New Haven: you just gotta get away. To facilitate my escapism, I have bought a Swiss half-price travel card, which provides me a lot of benefits including (surprise!) half-price train (snooze), boat (barf/drown), and bus (yuck) travel and also makes me look cool because they did some crazy transparent shit with the card (see photos!). Pretty much every weekend I have been able to go somewhere at least mildly interesting. Here's a summary:

1. Evian, France. Where they make the water! Or harvest it, as Melinda would say. The first weekend some of us took a ferry across Lac Leman (Lake Geneva for those of you who can't pretend to speak French) to Evian. Turns out Evian is a little aspirational - there's a few sources where you can "harvest" water with surprisingly nice mineral balance (Patrick's tounge tested and approved!) but not really that much else. It's like whatever - at least I got some international travel in.

2. Sion. A little town east of the lake that has two amazing castles on hills facing each other. Apparently in 1350 or something the rulers of...Sion thought that their old digs were nasty and built a new one on the hill across the valley. I think the old one is cooler - the ruins make it really mysterious!

3. Montreux. The next big city east of Lausanne on the lake. There was a jazz festival there for the first few weeks of July that's apparently pretty famous. I went twice, even though I'm not really a jazz person (doubt that I've ever been relaxed enough to catch the "vibes" or whatever hippie shit those crazy performers think up next). Montreux is prettier than Lausanne because it abuts a nice mountain range and wasn't destroyed by renegade architects in the 1960s and 70s, as my temporary home was.

4. Leysin. Still can't say this name differently than "Lausanne." in Leysin is a pretty tall mountain called the Tour d'Ai (say it out loud! It sounds like Tower of Death!). We climbed it one Sunday. It took about 4 hours!

5. Bern. Switzerland is ALL UP in "independence" rhetoric so doesn't actually have a capital, but if it did Bern would come closest to fitting the bill. The American embassy and Switzerland sponsored a trip for us here one weekend to see the embassy, parliament building, etc. It's a pretty city and is in the German part of Switzerland, so I had my fun pretending to be one of them! We jumped off a bridge into the river and floated (freezing) through the city as well. A good experience!

6. Interlaken. The same trip to Bern brought us to nearby Interlaken, a kitschy ski resort/tourist death trap. We took a train one day from the town to the Jungfraujoch train station, elevation 12000 ft, the highest in Europe. There was a snowstorm so we couldn't see anything from the top. I kept thinking that it was the highest that I'd ever been until someone pointed out airplanes. What a Debbie downer! The next day a few of us (lord not me) paraglided in Interlaken. It looked reckless.

7. Thun. I'm pretty sure this name is French for tuna. It's a small city in between Bern and Interlaken with a castle. Charming, but I've seen it all before. Jadedness!

8. Zermatt. A town at the bottom of the Materhorn. Also touristy but actually much better than Interlaken. The views of the Materhorn are magnificent, and the hiking opportunities in the area are impressive. A great weekend trip!

9. Locarno. A charming lakeside town in Ticino, the only Italian-speaking canton of Schweiz. We went to the international film festival there and saw some very interesting films. One was a highly explicit exploration of gay sexuality (Melinda and Alex were LOVING this one, I'm sure), one was a movie about a scary kid scaring away potential suitors for his mothers, and one was a Finnish Christmas tale. Variety!

10. Bellinzona. The capital of the Ticino canton and a town know for having not two but three castles on a hill. You would think that castles on a hill get old, but these ones were charming still. We stayed here during the Locarno trip because Locarno was all booked due to the film festival.

And I still have la suisse metropolises Geneva and Zürich to go! Zürich is next weekend and Geneva has a festival going on all this week. I'll write about them and Lausanne as well in a post soon!

A bientôit! I hate French.

Patrick, V. 3.42853

Finally, my readers, an update from the namesake of this blog, la suisse. I apologize for making you sit on your hands waiting for this. It's just that in Switzerland, unlike everywhere else I had to go this summer, I actually have something concrete to do: my job. As you will learn in this post, productive Patrick is not equal to creative Patrick.

So: the dirty deets first.

My job: parfait. That's French for perfect! I get to play with little disabled mice all day and then try to cure them. It's edifying.

My place: so-so. I live in the Malley section of Lausanne, which my new friends (see below) and I have concluded is the ugliest section of Switzerland. Luckily, Switzerland is in general laughably gorgeous, so Malley turns out to be mediocre in the grand scheme of things. I have a beautiful balcony that overlooks...a traffic circle. But hey, it's a single with wood floors. What else can a guy ask for?

My friends: I made friends! This is SO not sixth grade Patrick talking here! I've mostly been traveling with Alex, Amber, and Melinda, three endlessly entertaining students from my program. Some of the other people in the program are interesting too!

Now, down to business: the Swiss and their souls. It's rough going here, folks: the Swiss aren't exactly the friendliest bunch. I've done well in German Switzerland because everyone thinks that I'm one of them until I speak, but unfortunately I live in the French-speaking canton on Vaud. Background: my struggles with French are epic and self-renewing. Every time a French-speaking person is mean to me because I can't speak French, I get more and more scared of the Gauls. Now it's at the point where I tremble when I pass old ladies holding baguettes. Pretty rough. The Swiss all know English, but wringing it out of them is like trying to pinch ants - it just doesn't happen.

Nonetheless, I have gained some insights:

-The Swiss are robots. Like, real robots. When they walk, their arms sway in the same way. When they judge me for not speaking French, it is always with the same robotic smirk. When any train is 15 seconds late, the old ladyrobots whip out their Tissots and check the time with the same robotic dismay. Remember that recession a few years ago? Yeah, never happened in Switzerland. No one knows why. I say robots.

-The Swiss love time. Not so much time but more the passing of time. Never have I been in a place where time moves as inexorably forward as it does in la suisse. In contrast to America, where buses are timeless because they never come, most Swiss buses are 2.5 minutes early. Lunch breaks last from 12 to 1245. The work day ends at 5. In Switzerland, on time is late.

-The Swiss can't dance. This is actually probably related to the fact that they're robots (but can't do The Robot). Any of my friends will gleefully tell you that I cannot dance. But when I am on the dance floor at a club here, I feel like the (adopted) love child of Beyonce and David Guetta compared to the Swiss, who merely sway back and forth, obviously waiting for someone to give them chocolate or a watch or something.

I'm not gonna lie: I kind of like it. Nothing unexpected ever happens in la suisse. Trains are on time. People come to work. Prices are ridiculous. It will always stay that way: robots can't break rules. It's a good place to get stuff done - I'm glad that I ended up here for the only slightly serious part of my Eurotrip.

That's why I too am a robot, at least for July and August. I'm Patrick, version 3.42853.

Venetian Sol

Can anyone say heat stroke? It’s been over 30 (that’s >86 for all of you cute little Americans!) for all of my four days in the city that will soon be no more.

What’s that, you say? Yes, Venice is playing a tragic little role in geopolitical affairs – it’s sinking into the mud it was built on (dumbass 9th century engineers…) while also at the mercy of rising sea levels. Like most sad things, Venice has appeal. A little too much appeal, perhaps – there are tourists everywhere. It’s not as bad as Paris, though – one can still pretty easily escape the rush and get lost in this ancient, aging city.

There is much to be said for getting intentionally lost in a city: you can see new areas that you might not have planned on otherwise, follow locals around a little creepily, and find cute places to eat. Venice is the perfect city to get lost in. First of all, you get lost wheteher you want to or not – no map can have enough detail to display the nooks and crannies that are a result of poor poor poor Italian city planning that somehow made a charming city, like many things that the Italians fuck up only to see a cute result. When one is lost in Venice, as I was yesterday for about three hours, one can observe the decaying buildings, the rising water, and the happy Snooki-like party girl lying in wait around every corner.

It’s a really great time! One problem when it’s so hot, though: water, water, everywhere but not a drop to swim in. Because you do NOT want to touch the canal water. That’s twelve centuries of nasty, people.

Paris as a Hipster

Stay with me here, folks. I realize that I might have lost a few already. Those who I have lost with my title most likely fall into two camps:

1. Those who ask: what is a hipster? You, my followers, are lucky enough that you have not yet been forced to grapple with the hipster phenomenon that is sweeping the world. According to my favorite definition on UrbanDictionary.com (which you probably have not heard of if you have not heard of “hipsters,” but hey, it’s not like Britannica defines this shit), a hipster is: "someone who thinks they are cooler than everyone else even though their clothes look like they come from the Salvation Army."

2. Those who think: “Patrick, you’re stupid. You were just in Berlin – hipster capital of Europe! Paris, with its leafy avenues, lofty works of art, and ladylike togetherness as a whole, is the antithesis of a dirty, smelly hipster!”

I understand everyone’s concerns. This post is risky, I know. But hear me out. Paris, the city of lights, love, and L’Enfant, is a hipster. And I hate it. Here’s why:

Point A. Paris doesn’t do anything. It just sort of stands around looking good. Like a well-cultivated hipster, Paris presents and image to the world that is finished and static. Construction above the Eiffel tower? Non, non, that would ruin l’skyline. Berlin was an absolute mess – cranes and scaffolding everywhere. But at least they were doing something.

Point B. Paris gets much more credit than it deserves. Like that hipster kid in weird sunglasses gently nodding his head to bad electronic music in the corner of a dark basement party who everyone is jealous of, Paris is overrun with AsiansAfricansAmericansAleutians oogling at Notre Dame, l’Tour Eiffel, and the Arc d’triomphe (France? A military triumph? Huh?) when these sights are really not any more amazing than those one could see in a whole list of other European cities that are less-visited.

Point C. Parisians are mean. Like hipsters, they keep to themselves. Perhaps they have good reason for this, but it’s still all about image. They’re not befriending (or acknowledging the existence of) that woman with BMI 30 wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt and eating fake gelato next to Notre Dame for a reason – they’re too cool.

Point D. Paris acts like it doesn’t care. This is actually an extension of Point C. Parisians act like they’re the coolest kids on the block, but if you didn’t have BMI 30 woman spending her money because she thinks you’re cool, you would have no money with which you could continue to pretend to be cool.

Nuff’ said. Sometimes, you just have to knock the hipsters back into their places.

Berlinglish

When a good German boy goes to the motherland, he is expected to speak the mother tongue. So, here in Berlin for the past week, I have had a similar experience to that which I had in Denmark – namely, people expect me, based on how I look, to speak the native tongue. Palace guards come up to me and tell me in Deutsch not to take photos, old ladies ask in Deutsch for my seat on the train, people come up to me in clubs and ask in Deutsch to buy me drinks (in my dreams). Everywhere is Deutsch, Deutsch, Deutsch. And unlike the play-fake-stupid language that I faced down in Copenhagen, I actually feel bad about not knowing the word eingang, which prevented me from promptly entering lots of doors in my time here.

Despite the copious amounts of beer available, German just isn’t like Spanish – I can’t fake it (drunk) to make it. I just don’t know the language. So in one of my authentic German conversations with a local there always came that pretty awkward moment when I let them know “I don’t speak German, sorry,” after about three minutes of nodding and laughing at what they had been saying in their native language. They are good sports about it, however, and better at English than I am in German, on the whole.

And despite the missing words, there is still a connection I feel to the Germans that persists. Whether it’s driving on the autobahn at 120 mph or eating lots of meat, I have seen how Germany connects to Amerika. Berlin actually feels more American than any city I’ve been to so far (granted, there hasn’t been much competition). I thought I came to Europe to escape the land of drive-ins and shrink-wrap, but found myself most at home in its closest European cousin. Time to go to Paris and shake it all off, with the help, no doubt, of the stuffy Parisens. Can’t wait!

Danske Adventurske

Hej everyone! Not a typo - here it is "hej."

Yes, I am in Denmark now, hanging out with my lovely friend Sarah in her Copenhagen apartment. If you think you're orderly, you have to go to Denmark to test it before you can ever be sure. I mean, these mennesken (people) have their shit TOGETHER - there is no jaywalking, bikelanes on every street, and perfectly-dressed people everywhere. It is a little intimidating for those who love to be the big fish in the small pond - Denmark, at 5 million mennesken, sure is a small pond, but has lots of big ass fishes too.

I've been having many different cultural interactions with my Danish brethren. Yesterday, Sarah and I went to a bike auction to buy her way into the country's preferred mode of transportation. After 30 minutes of confusion, I learned the basic gist of Danish numbers and proceeded to bid for her and get a nice if bit derelict bike! Not knowing the language of where I'm staying is something that I haven't experienced in a while, and it's both fun and frustrating. Fun because I can sort of just walk around clueless in a reverie. Frustrating because I order chicken salad on accident in restaurants when trying to get a ham sandwich. All the same, my blonde hair for once puts me in the majority, and I have been mistaken for a Danish person more than once. My usual procedure is to make sounds like "mmmm" and "Ja!" and "tank" (thank you) until they go away. One has to fake it till one makes it, after all.

I am leaving for Berlin on Tuesday. Post haste!

Los Madrileños y sus almas

Hello Chaps!

Gotcha! If you thought that you were still chaps, you, mis amigos, are sadly en el pasado. In this moment (en este momento sounds so elegant, making me wonder why its literal translation sounds vaguely creepy) I am in Madrid, staying with some friends from school. After a sometimes-terrifying, sometimes-not-because-I-was-asleep flight on the illustrious(ly cheap) easyJet from Gatwick to Barajas, yo soy un Madrileño provisional.

Temporal presence means temporal learning - meaning we need to get down to the soulful matters right away. I spend most of the day navigating the serpentine (dios mio!) Madrid metro, second in length among subways in Europe only to London's. Second in length, maybe, but not second in soul - the Madrid subway pulses with life 250 feet below a semiarid capital ciudad. How do I illustrate this? With a dialogo, of course:

(Linea 2 con dirrecion a Ventas, dos de la tarde. A young woman sits on a seat across from the tired author, who is enamored with his recent coca cola light purchase. A man in his late fifties enters, looking tired, too):
Woman: Oy, papito, puede tener mi asiento
Man: Ahh que amable chiquita, no, no puedo
Woman: Vale, vale, tome el asiento.
Man: Ayy que es esto determinacion, ella tiene una misión!
Woman: Solo quiero que tu tome mi asiento.

CUT SCENE

The Londoners in their Paul Smith suits on the tube were nice, but not this nice. When a young woman persists so in offering a debilitated old man her seat, it is a luminous experience - it even made the author and his coca cola light give up their own seats for a similarly debilitated old woman. I went to Madrid and caught some soul.