Well not yesterday. With the rain, the bus was packed beyond capacity. Like Madonna and Child paintings in the Uffizi, there were just too many people on the bus. This resulted in stops at every stop along the way to drop off 1 or 2 passengers and pick up 10 or 11. By the time we arrived in Florence, it was 2:50 pm. Perfect timing for a traffic jam. A distance that should have taken 2 minutes took 9. So, at 2:59 pm, I got off the bus and plowed a tremendous hole through the hordes of stranded travelers at Santa Maria Novella, just reaching the platform in time. Shout out to my friend David for sprinting alongside me and carrying my other bag!
Thankfully, the remainder of the journey went smoothly. I arrived in Switzerland at 8:40 pm. Arriving just at dusk, I was given a perfect view of Lake Geneva and the surrounding castles with a brilliant orange sun sinking over the Alps, as if to say "Good job on finals. Welcome to summer vacation!"
This morning, the family that I am staying with took me to Gruyere, a small Swiss village with a 13th century castle. As we neared the village, traffic slowed. This was unusual since the village is so small and few cars pass through it. But it wasn't cars that held us up- instead, it was a horde of cows promenading to the mountainous pastures for the summer months. Accompanied by herders in traditional Swiss garb pushing rustic cheese carts, this was a perfect introduction to the Switzerland of everyone's imagination.
The castle (and I promise to upload photos later this week!) was built in the 1270s. For over three hundred years, the region was controlled by bailiffs and counts that hid from pesky French invaders within the castle's walls. In the 1600s, the castle went baroque, abandoning medieval warfare with the French in favor of art and high culture. Wimps.
Today, the castle is a spectacular museum, where you can see exhibits with 800 year old sheets of armor, medieval cannons, baroque paintings, rococco ceilings, a traditional french garden, ramparts that provide spectacular views of the Alps, and a multimedia spectacle clearly not produced during the Middle Ages, but was still very entertaining.
After a visit to the castle, we drove to Bulle, an even smaller village home to the Cailler chocolate factory, one of Switzerland's finest purveyors of coca-related products. When I heard "chocolate factory," I expected we were going to see some machines making chocolate, then wander through a giant gift shop. And while there was certainly a large gift shop, I had no idea we would be going through an interactive, multimedia tour surely designed after the attractions of Universal Studios or Disney World. Spanning the history of chocolate, from Spanish theft of the cocoa plant from South America, to the legalization of chocolate by the Church in the 1500s, the tour wound through mock Aztec temples, Renaissance courts, Baroque studios, and simulated Swiss pastures.
The tour ended in front of the chocolate machines, which turned out fresh chocolates for us to taste. I was a little disappointed that the tour only included one free chocolate.... But, in the next room, there was a table full of hundreds of different Cailler chocolate products- all you can eat, free of charge. I've never walked so slowly around a table before in my life. Let's just say that I left enormously content, but with an equally enormous stomach ache.
The day ended with a relaxing evening on the deck that overlooks Lake Geneva. Watching sail boats, a near by soccer game, listening to Jimmy Buffett and reading a captivating book- needless to say, it felt like vacation.
Tomorrow- off to a glacier (altitude 3,000 meters!) for a morning of skiing!
A tout a l'heure!
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