A beautiful Saturday: Walk from Savigny via the "Tour de Gourze"

Hi everyone! :)
It's the weekend again, and I've been in Lausanne for 5 whole weeks! School work is definitely piling up on me a little, but with good afternoon sessions in the library at the hospital I'm making some progress. We have now finished our first "module", and are moving on to hematology, immunology, and some microbiology in the weeks to come-- I think it'll be really interesting!

The weather is more and more fitting the description of autumn. We're having really changing weather-- really hard rain followed by beautiful sunny days. This weekend though, is the first I've had here where temperatures stayed below 14 degrees all day, and are supposed to drop to about 7 degrees at night. Getting chillier, and my scarves are slowly making their way out of my closet (and generally onto the floor...). I've bought a new autumn/winter coat, and my boots are being allowed out of the "winter-shoe" bag. I guess I'm prepared.

All week, the forecast for today though has been reaaally sunny, and so I wanted to make the most of the upcoming beautiful autumn day. My friend and her boyfriend agreed to join in on the plans, as well as a girl from my class. After some scrutiny of the internet to find a good walk to do which was not too far from Lausanne, we found this site:
http://www.randosuisse.ch/savigny----cully.html

We took the bus at 13:40 from Sallaz in Lausanne toward Savigny. From there we followed a series of small country-side roads leading toward the hill where the Tour de Gourze (the goal of our excursion) is located. We passed farms and large fields, passed through little forested areas, counted at least 5 different species of COWS, saw goats, birds, sheep- you name it. The weather was spectacular, and all the way we had great views of the mountains beyond the lake , especially in toward Montreux and Valais. We turned off the paved roads about a kilometer from the Tour, and a steep forest path led us to the top. It was good we all had good hiking boots on as it was quite slippery with all the fallen leaves! The forest was so beautiful in its newly adopted fall colors, and enormous amounts of mushrooms scattered across the forest floor. I got some great nature shots of the sun shining down between the trees. The Tour de Gourze itself did not look too impressive when we finally found it; it was very... well.. square. But, the view from the top was breathtaking, as is the view from just about anywhere in this country, and we stayed there taking a large amount of pictures and just sighing at the wonderfulness of it all :)

Walking down from the hill toward the lake were more amazing views, and the afternoon sun made sure it didn't get too cold. We met several other hikers along the way, and a moment where I missed my dad a lot when we met 5 men with model airplanes, flying them out across the fields sloping down from the Tour. We went all the way down to a little town called "Grandvaux", where we found the train-tracks of the RER (local area trains), along which was a "tourisme pedestre" path (marked paths all over showing pedestrians where it's nice to walk), next to the tracks. We followed this in the direction of Lausanne, with the intention of going to the bus-station in Lutry, but ending up following further due to the beautiful scenery and wine-ranks we were walking through. We ended up at the Goussiers station, where we exhausted got on a train with two stops back to the main station in Lausanne. As always I think pictures give a better idea than my writing of how my day has been, so here is a selection :)

 

The Tour de Gourze from the backside of the hill

Bye-bye birdies :) off to Italy for the winter...

Hope everyone will have a great weekend! Here it's all books and studying tomorrow, but with this day behind me I don't think it will be too hard to sit inside.
Bisous de la Suisse xx

Accio Mobilis!

It is day 3 in Lausanne and I have to share my latest accomplishments:

1. This IKEA piece of furniture that I built myself *proud* (becoming very pro at using the hammer and screwdriver and terrified this morning that my neighbors would come knocking because I was making too much noise):

2. I went to the Migros across the street and did my first proper grocery shopping, of course doing about 50 rounds around the store to find everything I needed. I'm quite proud of the healthiness of everything I bought- let's hope I can keep this up! I also bought new coat-hangers for my wardrobe (it only contained about 5.. who only uses 5 coat-hangers???), as well as a "plug-converter" so I can now charge my laptop. The plugs here are different than in Belgium- they're "oval hexagonal" and so my perfectly round "pig-nose" ones did not fit. Problem solved though so all is well.

3. I took the bus into town today for my first venture into the Centre-ville. However, the ticket-machines in this country clearly do not love me very much as they only take coins. I don't have any of those yet thanks to the 200 notes I am carrying round (very scary amounts of money to have in my bag...). Grudgingly accepting that I couldn't use the machine at the bus-stop, I decided I would by my ticket on board. But hey-- no such luck! I get onboard and the lady looks at me questioningly when I asked her for a ticket to the Centre. Nope, you have to buy a ticket at the stop. I pleadingly explained the situation to her, and thankfully a very nice lady sitting at the front of the bus heard our conversation and said she could change my 20CHF bill (I got that this morning after my grocery shopping). The chauffeur then happily let me get off at the next stop to hassle the ticket machine there, and it finally spewed out a valid ticket for me to get to town.

The reason for my visit to central Lausanne today was in fact to aquire a "Mobilis" card- which is the only way to travel here without having to fight with ticket machines every day. I thankfully found the "point de vente" that I had located on my map before leaving, and after about 15 minutes in line I was helped by a very nice man speaking in his Swiss french accent so I understood nothing. The French here is really funny, they do a sort of "sing-song" voice and pronounce things weirdly. I did, however manage to get my year pass for the transport in Lausanne, and gave my address here for the first time when he registered me in the system (I had to think for a moment not to give the address I've had for the past 10 years).

4. I visited my campus! I decided to be adventurous and take the metro the 3 stops up from the city centre to the university hospital where I will be attending classes starting next tuesday (!!). It's called CHUV (pronounced "SHOOV") by the monotonous announcer-voice on the metro, and stands for Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Vaud. Very fancy. It's a really nice area and it's got a great view of the lake as it's quite far up. I wandered around aimlessly for a bit to get a feel of the place, and then found the way to the auditoriums where I am expected to meet up for orientation on Wednesday. The metro here is also a fun experience. It's got fancy doors on the platform that open only when the train arrives, and the announcements of the stations along the way are preceded by a different shall-we-say "Swiss Noise" every time. There was cows mooing before they said CHUV. All the Swiss people round me seemed completely unaffected by this but I almost burst out laughing! :D

So here are my conclusions of the day:
-The Swiss people have a reputation of being closed and unfriendly toward outsiders (according to my Erasmus information booklet). This is completely wrong.
- I now have both milk AND a valid "titre de transport", so I am increasingly ready to live in this city for an extended period of time!