Diary

 A very belated Happy Easter (or Joyous Pacque as they say here) to all. Spring appears to finally be on its way here in Lausanne, and boy are we happy! As usual, things have been pretty busy around here since our last update and it looks like our last 2 months here in Switzerland will be our busiest yet.

We’ve watched the warm weather at home with a bit of envy over the past month. The weather has been cold and rainy most days making it hard for little boys with too much energy to get outside. So rather than wait for the warmer weather to arrive in Lausanne, we went to find it.

We headed south to Dubrovnik, Croatia in late March and it was everything we had hoped for—the weather was much warmer and the Old City was quiet and beautiful with only a few scattered tourists visiting this time of year. By the time we left Todd was asking about housing costs. Although I’d imagine it might not be the easiest place to get to from the US, we would highly recommend it if you’re looking for a spot full of history and natural beauty with a waterfront setting. It wasn’t long ago that Dubrovnik was in the midst of a war. You can see the bomb marks on the beautiful stone streets and local artisans are busily at work repairing, and in some cases rebuilding their historic town centre. The wounds, both physically and emotionally are fresh for the local, so fresh that there is still a sense of awkwardness when the war is mentioned. We took a boat trip to one of the many nearby islands, which was a bit like stepping back in time. The island had once been a busy port and defense mechanism for Dubrovnik, but is now a sleepy town with more curious tourists than year round inhabitants. Scenes like this make you wonder how those who have stayed can economically survive. The simplicity of life here is both inspiring and calming.

We were only back from Dubrovnik for a few days when my sisters arrived from California. Max had been so excited about them coming to visit—he had all sorts of wrestling plans and was ready to teach them all about rockets and outer space. While they were here we decided to take a couple of day trips. The first was to visit the thermal baths at Lavay-les-Bains just a bit over an hour away. The trauma of putting on swimsuits was probably enough to keep us from a return visit (we’ve been eating too much fondue and raclette!). Overall, I think we were all a bit disappointed in the baths—I had envisioned beautiful tiled thermal baths like those that the Turks and Romans to had used. The setting turned out to be more like a large pool with a few bells and whistles. We fed them their first raclette--somehow the description of cheese, potatoes, pickles and onions didn't sound appealing, but at the end of dinner, we had eaten more than our share of raclette, so I guess the Swiss just need to come up with a better description of the yummy local foods. (I should add here that we just saw a statistic in the local paper that said each Swiss resident eats an average of over 50lbs of cheese each year--that's a pound a week, so Schering's Vytorin would be a blockbuster here if they didn't all believe everything could be cured with a variation of tea.) The three of us girls took a trip to Rome, which is always beautiful. Lori had organized what turned out to be an excellent walking tour of Palatine Hill and the ruins around the Coliseum. Although I had been there several times before, our guide really made the setting come to life with tales of daily life of the time. We finished off Lori and Diana’s visit by traveling to nearby Annecy, France, which is a very cute lakefront town with arched stone bridges tucked throughout the Old City area. We were so glad they were able to visit and were sad to see them go.

One of Todd’s goals for his year in Europe has been to see some of the more classic cycling races. So after visiting Annecy, he headed off to France to watch the Paris-Roubaix ride that is famous for torturing the cyclists by making them ride on poorly constructed cobblestone roads. The dustier and more dangerous it is, the happier the onlookers seem to be. One well known cyclist who was considered a contender to win the Tour de France this year crashed and broke his collarbone, so for those who think of cycling as a gentile sport, au contraire. The season is young, but the injuries many.

We found that the Swiss celebrate Easter with big fanfare, much to our surprise. For a country that frowns on commercialized holidays, they really join in for this one. First, the schools all close for two weeks—yes, that has been two weeks of 24/7 with my energy filled son. Businesses join right in and EVERYTHING closes down for Good Friday, Easter as well as the Monday following Easter. We found out that they really meant EVERYTHING when we needed a few groceries. We did our best to join in with the celebrations and visited the nearby lake front town of Nyon, which has an annual competition decorating the various fountains throughout the city. It is a beautiful town, which seems to act as a suburb of Geneva. Good thing for Easter or we probably would never have seen it. Seeing the fountains was a bit reminiscent of the Swiss Christmas tree decorating, but nonetheless charming.

Despite the cool and sometimes rainy weather, we decided to visit the Swiss Vapeur Park near the Swiss/France border. The best way to describe it is as an amusement park made up of nothing but trains. Max, the trainman, loved it! The mini-train engines are built and run exactly as full sized engines with many being replicas of famous Swiss trains like the Golden Pass panoramic. They even had an Amtrak train, but just like the real Amtrak, it was in the train shed being worked on. After four hours of riding trains, we took the boat back to Vevey and caught our train home. That night, I went to lock the front door and Max stopped me, reminding me that if I locked the door, the Easter bunny couldn’t get in—he’s too smart!

Sure enough the Easter bunny did come visit and brought enough candy to supply a 30 pound child with a sugar high for at least a couple of weeks. To top it off, we joined some friends for brunch and an Easter egg hunt where Max proved his egg hunting skills and pretty much doubled his loot! All in all a very nice Easter break—maybe we can start a movement to have a two-week Easter break in the US!

Our most recent trip was to Sicily, the home of Todd’s father’s family. Neither of us had ever been, so we weren’t quiet sure what to expect, but in many ways were pleasantly surprised. We made the city of Catania located in the northeast side of the island our home base for the 5-day trip. Turns out that Italian’s consider Catania to be the Milan of the south (I had never heard that, but hey, I’m not Italian), so as you might imagine, lots of shopping and well dressed individuals strolling the main streets. Apparently gold lame is very popular here—we’ll hope that will be one trend that will not make it’s way back to the US! The Sicilian people were incredibly friendly. Virtually no one spoke any English (even if they said they did, it would be like me saying I speak French), but the warmth of the Sicilian people more than made up for what we lacked in language communication. If you needed directions, they would simply walk you to where you needed to go, when you showed up with your unhappy 3 year old at dinner time, they greeted him first, always happily. Everyone seemed just darned happy there! We got caught not having eaten lunch before siesta and thus had to visit the local McDonald’s which I feel confident in saying has the happiest employees of any McDonald’s I’ve ever been to—and the workers were my age! Must be something in the Sicilian sun. We took a day trip to the coastal town of Taromina. It sits probably 1500 meters above the water on a cliff like setting, so the views are stunning with bougainvillea growing up the rocky walls. Really beautiful and a must visit if you go to Sicily (I'd recommend this as your base if you're opting to visit without a car)!

With all of the travel we’ve been doing and Todd’s busier than expected work calendar, we decided to cancel our upcoming weeklong trip to Portugal and to replace it instead with a two-day trip to Lucerne here in Switzerland. Our last two months will I’m sure go by quickly filled with several more trips to places like Zurich, Copenhagen and Strasbourg, France, as well as having a few more friends coming to visit.

I’ll hope to do one more update before we head home, but will look forward to seeing all of you in late July or August. Take care and let us know what you’re up to!

Bon weekend,

Sherri, Todd and Max