The Land of the 24-hour Cheese Machine

Hi everyone!

I'm in Switzerland now with my friend Jessica who I know from my semester in Harbin, China--she was studying there with me, but she's Swiss and is from a leeettle village in the Frech-speaking part of Switzland where she and her mom have kindly let me stay and are serving as amazing tour guides. The name of this village (of just 400 people!) is Lechelles, and basically nobody knows where it is.

Before I get into telling you about Switzerland, let me just say that just before I left London, guess who came into town to visit from Cambridge?That's right (for those that know him), it's Paul! And he's doing quite well, woking on his PhD in nanotechnology (and so will be at Cambridge for a while yet). He says hi to everyone!

Back to Switzerland. Jessica and her mom, Clair, have been wonderful, as they have driven me all over and insisted that I try about a billion different kinds of foods. And they've all been amazing! They also all involve dairy products of some kind--perfect bread and 5 different kinds of cheese for lunch (along with dried beef and horse meat)(yes, horse. They do that around here)(and it was great!), and then rachlette (rah-KLEHt, more or less), which is a type of cheese you melt in a specific rachlette melter thing and then pour over potatoes, for dinner. See the picture on the right, which is kind-of the idea with the rochlette toaster thing, but our's didn't have all the other stuff, just cheese placed on the scoops which as then placed in the toaster in the middle. Mmmm... And everything is so fresh! We bought the rachlette from the local dairy where the farmers bring the milk in twice a day for the cheese they make in the back. Below is part of the inside of the dairy we went to. Whoa.

And although everything around here closes at 5pm, and there's basically NOTHING that you can get at any time of day, you can, actually, buy cheese from automated machines outside the dairy whenever you want. And this isn't just any old cheese, nooo no no. This is fancy fondue cheese along with several other types, all fresh. This country knows where its priorities are.

So today, after a late start and lunch of horse, cheese, delicious local yogurt and bread, we headed to Bern, Switzerland's capital, which is actually in the German-speaking part of the country. This is what it looked like out the car window: Those are apple blossoms.

Once in Bern, we ran over to the parliament building to catch a tour, but it turned out that they were in session, so we had to content ourselves with, well, watching parliament in session, which was actually quite cool. Jessica had never been to the building, either, and we were both shocked at how no one pays attention to whoever is talking up front, but instead continues talking amongst themselves and carrying on with their business on the floor. The talking with important tones up front is just for show then? For the media? Dunno.

Afterwards, there was much walking around Bern (which really isn't all that big) and looking off onto views like this: and taking pictures of friends who don't want their pictures taken, like this: Hello, Jessica!

Jessica's mom also insisted that we have a very Swiss stop for coffee and a snack (chocolate) at a behind-the-chocolate-shop bar and cafe as we were walking. At which point I consumed my first (of much, I hope) Swiss chocolate: They are shaped like this bug that, apparently, shows up every two years in July-ish and is famously stupid. The real ones' (ones's? oh no, I can't remember!)(oh wait, I'm on holiday, it doesn't matter! ha!) legs are fuzzy and are smaller and rounder than these chocolate versions. The deal is that they are SO dumb that you can bat them around with a shoe (or whatever) and they, much like the locusts in Chicago, get everywhere! Jess's mom said she couldn't imagine the amount of them that would get caught in my hair (because of their stupidity and fuzzy legs)(and because of my curly hair) if I were around in July. Lovely thought, no?

So, in short, Switzerland is very green, very wet (although that's just the storm that followed me from England, which hopefully will leave soon), and has AMAZING food. Really! It makes you never want to bother to eat either bread or dairy in the US again. Well, except for Beyond Bread bread (Tucson, you know what I'm talking about!).