Lifestyles of the Swiss and Famous

Okay, so I know that I'm still way behind, but as you've all noticed, I'm posting like mad to catch up. Today is my last day in Switzerland, so you'll all have to hang off a cliff with respect to my last three days here. I promise to post again as soon as I can, but I'm not sure when that will be, and I'm sure you're all overwhelmed with my anecdotes as it is. I would bog you down with extra posts right now, but alas, I must go to bed early. Consider this a well-deserved break :)

{Sunday, August 31}

Yesterday was surprisingly slow, for a weekend day. The morning was nice; breakfast consisted of some fabulous pain au chocolat, then Isabella’s sister Sophie came over with her sons Pierre-Jean and Pierre-Emmanuel {this must be how they avoid having to do the Junior vs. Senior thing in French-speaking countries; throw in a second name and a hyphen and you’re good to go!} and we ate lunch together – all thirteen of us. Isabella made hamburgers, which made it the third or fourth meal since asking what I like to eat that she cooked one of the foods I’d listed {I really meant to say “steak” but apparently it means hamburger in Switzerland}. So I can’t complain when it comes to hospitality; they’ve been really accommodating and I hear a chorus of “Caroline, laisse!” {“Caroline, leave it!”} whenever I try to put away a dirty dish.

We took an emergency shopping trip to Bulle for extra school things,

"Forty Reasons To Not Have Children", which I knew some of you would definitely appreciate.

Jessica, I thought of you immediately, even though I've still never set foot in an Aldi in my life.

and the rest of the day was spent around the house, so now I give you a brief note on channel surfing in Switzerland: it’s like a box of chocolates. Okay, so it’s not delicious and although it technically can make you fat, I am of course alluding to Forrest Gump {actually, his Mama}’s declaration that you never know what you’re gonna get. It may be in German, French, Italian, or English. You may stumble across a channel with which you are familiar, but in another language, though the French version is just called, for example, “Cartoon Network” with a thick French accent. You may see Mr. T. speaking German {hilarious} or CNN {not so hilarious}. And you may just get static.

Or, if you’re Carole and the kids and I last night, you may watch a live-action version of the adventures of Astérix and Obélix, two beloved French comic book characters played, in this case, by famous comedians Christian Clavier and Gérard Depardieu. Much like any Muppet production, it was a kids’ movie with scads of adult humor, and quite entertaining.

Today, I got up and helped Carole feed “les nains”, which is what she calls the youngest kids. It quite literally means “the dwarves”, which perfectly reflects the attitude about humor here: if it’s funny, say it {within reason}. There are some boundaries, but I’m pretty sure they only exist when the nains are in earshot, because Olivier made a very dirty joke the other day, after they’d gone downstairs. We also ate lunch together {without the kids} today, and Virgil quite literally referred to his father as “autistic”. I was, surprisingly, the only one embarrassed by this, but I think I blushed enough for all of us.

One thing I can’t go any longer without mentioning, as I sit on the porch writing this, is the mysterious, invisible cow next door. When I first arrived at the maison "Robinson", I heard an arrhythmic ringing, which I assumed to be wind chimes. However, after sitting in the backyard, whose limits are dictated by a hedge {on the front and sides} and a row of pine trees that is also the far edge of the goat enclosure {at the back, where the occasional goats are brought to munch on grass for about three weeks at a time; unfortunately, they left just before I got here}, I noticed that this ringing was quite loud, and sounded like it was coming from the house behind, or down the hill, if you prefer. I asked what it was, and one of the girls said there were cows next door, and it was the sound of their bells {I also realized that I had never seen a cowbell on an actual cow before this vacation}. Satisfied with this answer, I stopped contemplating the ringing…until one night around 11:30 PM, when I was in Nathalie’s room upstairs and could still hear it, now sounding even more frequent. Do these cows not sleep? How many are there? I posed these questions to Nathalie, who said she has no idea, because she’s actually never seen them. I peered out the window and, sure enough, you still can’t see past the pine trees. In order to catch a glimpse at this cow/these cows, I would have to walk all the way down the street, turn down onto the street that runs up the hill, turn left again onto this neighboring street, and somehow gain entrance into the yard wherein grazes the alleged cow. And most midday meals and usually breakfast on a nice day take place with this nearly incessant ringing in the background. There is also a black squirrel who hangs around, but the problem there is not that we haven’t seen him, but that we don’t know where he lives. Isabella was musing on this during today’s lunch {featuring music provided by our unseen neighbor}, which Virgil and Gabriel concluded was the most worthless conversation that could possibly be taking place…so we changed the subject to Virgil’s schoolwork, which shut him up pretty quickly.

After lunch and some green tea, Olivier, Isabella, and I took off for Gstaad {“g-shtodd”}, a small tourist town in the German-speaking area of the country. It is also home to the famous Johnny Hallyday, an old French singer whose fan base consists mostly of the middle-aged women who listened to him in their younger days. So apart from the stone-paved main street with luxury shops like Chanel, Hermès, and Rolex housed in chalets, and things like this,

Roland's kiosk! Sorry Dad, I couldn't help myself.

I love cigarette ads in Europe, because they put the fine print right out there. "Winston: Smoking kills."

Gstaad is like the Beverly Hills or Bel Air of Switzerland…but in the ski resort portion of the country. Most of the chalets scream opulence, especially as compared to the humble farmhouses found throughout most of the areas I’ve been in, and a great deal of them have fancy underground garages with intercoms to keep out the impoverished masses {like us}.

We walked up the hill to see some houses up close, and encountered yet another linguistic dilemma. There was one house called “Le Chevreuil”, which is quite similar to the word for goat {chevre}, so I asked what the difference was between the two. They told me it was more like a deer {cerf} than a goat, but obviously it wasn’t a cerf proper, or they would have called it that. It was not an elk. I racked my brain for another deer-like animal, but could only come up with those who live in Africa – antelope, oryx…How about a reindeer? The ones that live with Père Noël, and…no, that’s a renne. Caribou – larger than a deer, but…no a chevreuil is smaller than a deer. Well, the French have a word for everything, so I went ahead and assumed that we probably just call it a [insert adjective here] deer. Either that, or they don’t exist in the U.S. It was quite frustrating to not know, but really hilarious trying to teach Isabella how to say “white-tailed deer”, which is our equivalent of “cerf” {the next day, she actually referred to it as “white machin”, i.e. “white thingy”}.

It was a roe deer, by the way, which I’ve read about but never seen or even heard uttered. Oh well.

We ambled back down the hill and searched the main street for some well-earned ice cream, which we found in abundance at Charly’s. The hostess sounded like she was speaking Italian, and our waiter spoke better English than French, so I should have handled interactions with him, but it was funnier to watch him try to communicate with Isabella and Olivier, when his native language was clearly German and he knew next to no French. The ice cream, too, was large and decadent, a glass parfait dish with vanilla bean and dark chocolate ice cream, sweetened cherries, Chantilly whipped cream, and long, thin chocolate pieces sticking out of the top. As it turns out, it was not the most advisable thing to have eaten before driving up and down the hills to see the Palace Hotel

and more houses.

After an eternity of luxurious homes and roller-coaster roads, Olivier turned to me and said {in English}, “Have you seen enough chalets today, Caroline?” Only, in an attempt to Americanize a word from his own language, he pronounced the “ts”, so it was “shallets”, which made me giggle.

We took the long drive back home, passing through Château D’Oex {“dey”}, where they have the largest hot air balloon festival in the world. Around 8:30, we arrived home, heated up some leftovers, and Virgil and I discussed the possibility of him coming to study in the U.S. For those of you in these respective areas: What’s the best neighborhood in Boston for a college student to live in? Are there good econ schools in the Carolinas? Does URI have a good econ program and, if so, where should he try to live {off-campus} if he wants to be able to go out and find nightlife? I answered as many other questions as possible, but some of you know much more about these places than I do, so feel free to give me a shout. Merci!