Me and Sam have spent the whole day in Lausanne. It has been STUNNING.
We're really happy with the stuff we've done, and now both our bodies and brains are drained. The stuff we've done has been quite varied which is nice, and even just travelling through Lausanne has been an experience. So glad we came here. It's definitely a change from Spain and Italy, but it's a nice change.
We're also in a new hostel - yesterday's was just for one night. It's been really good so far, more details coming up in this post!
Once again, the weather has been so so good. I can't believe the luck we've had with the weather on this trip. It gives everything such a nice feel, and also the view over the lake is breathtaking...you can see all of the mountains.
And you can see this shit right here!! You don't have to move an inch! You don't even have to spend a fucking ridiculous sum of Swiss Francs to see it either. You lucky people. Here we go then...
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I got woken up by Sam at about 8.50am. It's lucky for him that I'd set my alarm for 9 o'clock.
He seemed more than a little bit excited.
"Jack...the breakfast is FUCKING AMAZING."
He'd already been down to the canteen in our hostel where they served our breakfast, which was included in the price of our stay. So far, in all the hostels where breakfast has been included, it hasn't been all that great, so I knew Sam really meant it.
I quickly got dressed and headed downstairs with Sam (who was going for his second helping...fatty).
That canteen was like a fucking place of worship for us.
It had so much... 4 different types of cereal and milk, 2 different types of bread, 2 different types of ham, a million different types of cheese, fruit salad, natural yoghurt and different fruit juices/coffees/teas. All of which was practically unlimited; all of which you could have AS MUCH AS YOUR BODY HAS ROOM FOR.
This was our chance to stuff ourselves, seeing as we had to leave the hostel later on. Everything is so expensive here, so the less we had to spend on food, the better. We didn't know when the next opportunity to eat this much food would be.
I crammed my first tray with three slices of bread, a bowl of muesli, a bowl of fruit salad and a bowl of natural yoghurt. Tray 1 = devoured.
Sam was stuffed after having his second tray, so he went back up to the room and I got another tray, this time with ham as well as bread, more muesli and more fruit salad.
It took me so long to eat. I just wanted to fill myself up as much as possible; I think Sam even came down from the room at one point to check I was still there. It was very very good though.
Afterwards, me and Sam both showered, and then packed our stuff up ready to leave.
Luckily, the free transport card that the hostel gave us was valid for the whole of today as well as yesterday, so our transport to the new hostel was sorted. We checked out and got the bus and the metro back to Lausanne train station.
From here, Sam had directions to the new hostel. It was actually really close. We didn't even need to get any public transport - it was simply a walk down the station road, a turn and then another turn, and we were there.
We checked in at reception, and the receptionist gave us the wifi password and ANOTHER free public transport card for the duration of our stay HERE. Awesome.
And then I saw something.
Something BEAUTIFUL.
HOLY SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT, THERE'S A FUCKING PIANO IN THIS HOSTEL!!!!!!!!!I couldn't believe it. This was perfect!!
I had to ask the receptionist about it.
"Are we allowed to play the piano."
And here came the inevitably heartbreaking response.
"No, the piano is actually really badly out of tune, it is horrible to listen to. You really wouldn't want to play it."
NO FUCKING WAY.
How many times is this???? I many times have I come so close to a piano and been unable to play it?! What the fuck is going on!!!!!!!!!! I swear some higher being is doing this on purpose to spite me.
Grrrrrrrrr.
Back to checking in at the hostel, the receptionist informed us, although we knew already, that the check-in time was 3pm (It was like 12 o'clock at this point) and so he couldn't give us our room keys. But he said that we could keep our bags in the luggage room, so this is what we did.
The next task was to work out what we were going to do today.
We opened up the netbook and looked on the internet for places to visit. We also used information on the map we were given, and we marked the places we wanted to visit today, forming a route at the same time.
While I was using the netbook, Sam saw this on a noticeboard above the piano:
I hope you can read it ok, some of them are pretty funny and we've definitely noticed them. The notice does not lie.
We then got all the stuff we needed together - cameras, water, money (we would definitely need that here...) and left for the cathedral, our first place to visit.
To get there, we had to walk to the train station and get the metro to 'Riponne Maurice-Bejart' (a nice one for English people to say), which was pretty close to the cathedral.
When we got off the metro, we ended up in a large square, which we had a quick look around.
We saw...
...a dog being washed in a fountain, as you do...
...and nice building which was a university library or some shit.
We then headed up some steps towards the cathedral.
This area of Lausanne is beautiful.
There was then just a short walk and a climb up some old shaded steps to get to the cathedral.
We saw a nice...thing? I don't really know how to describe it. My head keeps saying monument, but it's not. Oh fuck it, it's late.
The shaded steps.
The view over the rooftops from half-way up the shaded steps.
And we finally reached the cathedral. This is the first part you see:
There is like a small plaza bit which the cathedral is based on. This is quite high up, so you can look over the city too.
This is the lovely area to the left of the cathedral...quite typically Swiss. Very clean and just generally nice.
One of the views over the city.
I like the shape of the houses.
Church and mountains in the distance.
Nice and gothic.
Like in Geneva yesterday, it was free to enter, so we payed a visit inside the building.
Here are the photos:
The cathedral was so quiet. It's so nice to not have to deal with millions of other tourists in your way like in Spain and Italy. When this photo was taken, the cathedral was completely empty apart form us.
Big organ.
Decorative stained-glass windows.
Gothicness.
Why can't you be a piano?
The altar and ambulatory. The ambulatory is procession way situated behind the main altar which you can walk around. They have one of these in Canterbury Cathedral.
Canterbury!!! We may not be spelt correctly but it's there!!!
Interesting wall/ceiling design.
We left the cathedral and headed for the nearest bus stop, which would take us further up the hill to the next place we wanted to visit. This is a tower which gave views over the lake and the surrounding area.
We got off at the bus stop 'Chocolatiere' (there was no chocolate *sad face*), and realised after looking at the map that we should probably have gotten off at the previous stop.
The area was surrounded by woodland. To get to the tower, we had to head in a direction pointing straight into the wood as opposed to the roads that we could see.
It was fortunate, then, that we noticed a small path going into the wood that headed straight for the tower.
It was a lovely walk. It reminded us a bit of home, seeing as we hadn't been in this type of environment since the trip started. And it was nice to get out of the sun for a while.
We started to see a clearing, and then we saw the tower.
Wow, we didn't expect that.
It was made out of wood!
We got a bit closer and filled up our water bottles at this cool fountain, ready for the climb up.
To get in, you had to pass through automatic turnstiles which open when you press a button. According to a nearby sign, this is used to measure how many people are on the tower at a time (you also press a button to leave) as the tower is only designed to support 50 people.
Because of the spiral shape, it allowed there to be a separate staircase for going up and going down the tower. The staircases looked pretty amazing.
We made it to the top though, and it was certainly worth the climb.
The view was stunning. You could see so much of the lake, lots of mountains and the whole of Lausanne.
Here is a selection of pictures from the top of the tower.
It's a long way down!
You can see the cathedral we were just at!
The way the fence was angled meant that if you leaned against it, it felt as if you were leaning off the tower...not extremely comfortable.
Not only that, but the tower swayed a little as people moved...
There were two signs on the tower showing what different landmarks were on the landscape.
Crazy shit.
Snowy mountains in the distance.
Sam on the way down.
Me too!
I had a really good time on that tower; it was really impressive and definitely worth the trip up there.We saw a sign at the bottom saying that it was 35.2m high and weighed 130 tonnes.
We made our way through a path in the woods towards the bus stop before the one that we got off. It only took about 10 minutes to walk there, and a bus came soon after we arrived. It's great how frequent the buses are here, even to the more obscure places.
We got off at the cathedral, and walked towards a different bus stop on the other side of the square we were on previously.
The next place we wanted to visit was the 'Collection de l'Art Brut', which is a collection of art created by people on the fringes of society - loners, murderers, schizophrenics, orphans and so on. I could relate.
We got the next bus to the right bus stop, but spent about 20 minutes getting lost in a random park place. It was quite nice though.
We found it eventually though.
We went in and were given leaflets and other information by the receptionist. Luckily, there was a discount for students, so we got in for 5 Swiss Francs each.
However, we weren't allowed to take any pictures WHATSOEVER. Sorry guys.
In a way, though, I'm kind of glad. It allowed us to stop and consider the art more, which you really had to do.
Firstly, we went through the main exhibition that was going on at the time, which displayed the art of Aloise, a schizophrenic who produced her art with coloured pencil and crayons in her psychiatric ward.
Here's an example of one of her pieces:
It was so interesting. I saw an awful lot in her art and it made me too fucking emotional...and it was only the first display!
See what you can see in this piece. All her other pieces are very similar and have similar themes. I saw a lot about desire and innocence.
There were like 4 floors in this place and SO MUCH ART. You definitely got your money's worth.
I couldn't believe how incredible this art is.
I can't remember the full story behind it (beside the art the story of the person who created it was displayed), but a woman with a serious mental disorder created the wedding dress that she would never wear out of scraps of thread or something like that...oh my god it scared me how much some of this stuff affected me.
It was so inspirational too...as these people were so marginalised in society, their art wasn't very affected by social norms, so it was VERY original. Some of their ideas completely blew my mind.
In the end, me and Sam both agreed that there was almost too much in this place...by the time we left our brains were completely drained from focusing on the art, and also we were physically tired too.
This was totally my thing.
It has been said that art is food for the soul, which I agree with. However, by the end of this, my soul had had the equivalent of about 10 Christmas dinners and was tired, slumping and fucking DEAD.
We wearily made our way back to the bus stop, and our bus came which took us back near to the train station, from which our hostel is in walking distance.
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So as you can see, we had a pretty lively day. We spent like over 2 hours in the art place, so although I've only been able to describe stuff with text, this actually took up the most time. But generally today was a really interesting day, and I definitely think we saw some of the best that Lausanne has to offer.
This is Jack from the future writing again by the way. This is about the 17th June, so I'm still only one day behind (given that I'm writing this in the early morning of the 19th...it's still practically the 18th!). Hopefully tomorrow I'll catch up completely.
I'm so fucking tired right now. wehfoejwliehgiofr.mreiugnhvoeihrgf[oiweh'fhewofewgif]hgvh.
A lot of the time, I come up with the titles for the blog posts after I've written them. Tonight is one of those nights. As you can see, tiredness has certainly been a factor.
So anyway, I better get to bed. But you can look forward to the next post, because today has been a brilliant day too. We've seen some amazing shit, and also travelled to a DIFFERENT PART OF SWITZERLAND (we just went for part of the day, that's why I'm still in Lausanne).
So stay tuned for that tomorrow, I must get sleep. I think my soul is still aching from that art place.
Bonne nuit!
Jack - 19/6/12 - 02:41 in Lausanne, 01:41 in the UK
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