By the time that I went to bed at about 10:30pm Monday night at the Hotel de la Gare, I had been awake for about 38 hours. I was hoping that I would be able to fall asleep quickly and stay asleep for a while, but this was not to be so. This was the first of several sleepless or semi-sleepless nights for me. I woke up at about 4am because I was sweating like crazy and had to go to the bathroom. I came back to bed and tried falling asleep with no luck. I finally got up at 5am, took a shower, and read The Plague by Albert Camus until 6:30. I went back to bed after that and finally managed to fall asleep until my alarm went off at 8:30.
When I opened my eyes, I was amazed to discover that I could see two peaks in the Alps through the window in my room without even lifting my head. After getting breakfast, Dr. Peters held a meeting for those of us who have internships. I am working for the International Commission of Jurists, which is an organization that promotes human rights and the rule of law by advising governments and organizations on how to create and implement their laws. It sounds like a good organization, but Dr. Peters said that no one in the Kent program has ever worked with them before, so I have to negotiate with my supervisors about scheduling my hours and setting aside time to travel.
At 10:30 we packed up and walked across the street to the train station, where we hopped on a train towards Gruyeres. It was extremely warm on the train, but we passed some extremely beautiful scenery. After about a 20 minute ride we arrived at La Maison Gruyeres, which is the central hub of the Gruyeres cheese industry. They have a restaurant here, and the caves where they age the cheese are here as well. We made a quick pit stop in the gift shop, and then got on the bus to head up to Moleson Gruyeres, a mountain that is 2,002 meters (6,568 feet) tall. There were a bunch of Swiss elementary school children on the bus (I'm not sure if they were done with school of if they were going home for lunch), but I don't think I've ever seen a group of people so excited to see Americans. One kid was literally jumping up and down and smacking the window when he saw us. As we climbed onto the bus, the boys started high-fiving us, yelling, and running up the aisles. It was kind of crazy.
The bus ride was interesting, as we weaved our way up the winding mountain roads, some of which curved almost 180 degrees. I was extremely excited when we arrived at Moleson Gruyeres. We got our tickets, then climbed onto the funiculaire, a small, glass-walled mountain tram that takes you half-way up the climb to about 3,200 feet. Once I got off the funiculaire, I was able to look up at the summit of the mountain and see it clearly for the first time - it was incredible. Dr. Peters told us that the schedule was extremely tight and she didn't think we would be able to go the cheese factory, have lunch, and go to the summit of the mountain, so we had to choose two of the three. Ashley and I made our choice immediately, and headed up to the ticket office for the cable car with a group of about 5 other people. We had hoped that we would be the only ones, as there were a handful of girls who had said they were afraid of heights and didn't want to go up, but by the time the cable car operator came over to give us our tickets, the entire group had shown up.
It only took about 4 or 5 minutes for the cable car to ride the rest of the way up the mountain. When we stepped out of the crowded car onto the platform, I was blown away by the scenery - it was absolutely breathtaking. The sun had come out, and because we were above the lower layer of clouds, you literally had an unimpeded view of the Alps and the adjacent valley for hundreds of miles. We walked up a staircase and out onto the observation deck and were surrounded by mountains. While we were frantically snapping pictures, a nice older Swiss man who was wearing skis told us in French that if we looked over a certain mountain ridge, we could just see Mt. Blanc, a mountain that straddles the French-Italian border and which is the highest point in Europe at 15,781 feet. The whole thing was fairly surreal.
While we were being bombarded by the scenery, a handful of people from our group decided to head up the last 250 feet or so of the mountain. I asked Ashley if she wanted to do it, and we both agreed that it would be pretty awesome to say that we had climbed to the top of a mountain in the Swiss Alps. It was a difficult climb at times, because most of the snow was packed and slippery, but we made it all the way to the top and were rewarded for our efforts. The altitude started to have an affect on my by this point, as I found it more difficult to breathe and was starting to get sore, but I really didn't mind.
When we had gotten our fill of the scenery, we headed back down to the cable car. It took a while for the next car to make it up to the platform, and we all started to get anxious. Dr. Peters warned us that the last bus for Gruyeres left at 1:42pm, and it was 1:27 when the cable car finally showed up. We made our way back down to the funiculaire and then down to the bus stop at 1:43, but there was no bus there. Dr. Peters and Gertrude told us that the bus had come and gone and that we would have to walk the way back to Gruyeres. Gertrude started to bitch us out, despite the fact that she and Dr. Peters had allowed us to go up the mountain, we had made it back by the time that we were given, and we were delayed several minutes by circumstances outside of our control; but don't ask her to be understanding. This was the first and only bus that I have come across in Switzerland that was not exactly on time, but it had serious consequences. Dr. Peters began frantically making phone calls to try and get us a bus. She also had to call the cheese factory and the Chateau de Gruyeres to cancel our tours. All the while, Gertrude continued to scold us like 6-year old children.
When it became clear that we had no other option, we began the long hike back down the road to Gruyeres. It was a long and winding route and took around an hour to finish; Ashley estimated that it was probably a 4-mile walk or so. Gertrude and Dr. Peters just so happened to hitchhike their way down, so they didn't have to deal with the walk. We got to La Maison Gruyeres and sat down in the restaurant for lunch. I was looking forward to this, because they used the Gruyeres cheese that they made on the premises, but I was disappointed. I thought I had ordered a grilled cheese sandwich, but it was just a few pieces of cheese on French bread with some mustard and a pickle about the size of a tic tac, along with a salad of shredded vegetables covered in Ranch dressing which I did not eat.
After lunch we walked up to the medieval town of Gruyeres, where the Chateau de Gruyeres is located. It is a tiny little one-street town that is surrounded by its stone walls. It might be the coolest place that I have ever been before, other than the mountain. Dr. Peters told us we could have cake and coffee in the restaurant or walk around the town, so Ashley and I started walking up the street immediately. We took a few pictures of the buildings and the fountain, noticed that they had some tables made out of ice complete with ice ash trays outside of a small restaurant, and headed to the tourism center, which is a converted medieval church. The tourism center was small and unimpressive, so we walked outside after a minute or two. Just outside of the door, we ran into a brown, female tabby cat. She obviously interacts with people on a regular basis, because she walked right up to and let Ashley start petting her. As soon as Ashley touched her, she began purring like crazy. We pet her for a few minutes, and she started standing up on her hind legs and putting her front paws on Ashley. I walked over to give her some more attention, and as soon as I leaned over, she saw the opportunity and jumped right onto my shoulders. I stood up, stunned, and she walked around my shoulders, purring and letting me pet her. It was unbelievable; I have never seen a cat act so friendly before.
After a few more minutes, we bid goodbye to our new friend and headed further into the town. Through the next archway, we came across the Musee IR Giger, which is a museum for the artist who made all the costumes and scenery for the Aliens movies. This nice Canadian man standing at our gate at the Newark airport had told us about this museum. He said that he had spend a year living in the city of Lausanne in the Lake Geneva region and had been amazed to run into this museum in this little medieval town. We didn't go into the museum, since it isn't our cup of tea, but there was a small bar just across the street that was themed around the museum. There was a bunch of furniture that was fashioned in the style of Aliens. Next, we went up to look at the Chateau de Gruyeres. We didn't get a chance to tour it, as it had closed at 4:30pm (we got there at 4:31), and I didn't feel like paying for the tour. We just took a bunch of pictures, looked around at the outside, and headed back to the restaurant to join back up with our group.
Only our group wasn't there. Three students had seen us walking toward the Chateau, but they apparently didn't realize we hadn't come back yet. We walked into the restaurant to look for them. Thankfully Ashley knows French, because when she asked the waitress where the big group was, she told us they had already left. We hurried down the hill back towards La Maison Gruyeres, and came across a group of guys whose car was broken down at the base of the hill. Ashley asked an Asian Swiss man with a mullet if he had seen our group, and he told her that they had gone by a few minutes before, so we continued down the road. We saw them at at the train station a few minutes later, and we managed to rejoin the group a few minutes before our train came. I guess that Dr. Peters and Gertrude weren't very familiar with the area, because they tried to get onto a train heading in the wrong direction. Then after we got onto our train and started heading back to Montbovon, Gertrude tried to get off at every exit starting four stops before ours. She's kind of clueless.
When we got back, Dr. Low had arrived to talk with us about the economics of climate change. Dr. Low is the chief economist at the WTO who teaches two econ classes for the program; he is a pretty brilliant man. I found it kind of difficult to listen to his talk, however, because his fly was unzipped and he kept dragging on, talking about tedious economics theories and equations. Probably the highlight of the talk came during the Q&A session, though. The obnoxious girl whom I mentioned in my last post asked a doosy of a question. She brought up the concept, and rightly so, that planting a tree outside of the rainforest doesn't do a whole lot to curb carbon emissions. Had she stopped here, she may have saved face. Instead, she continued, saying that she could have sworn she had read somewhere that planting a tree can actually be bad for the environment, because it can somehow speech up global warming. Dr. Sheridan, the program director and geography professor/climatologist said that the only way this could happen is if the tree was cut down and burned. Even after he made this point, which was clearly a joke meant to end the discussion, she asked for clarification on this point again. Her brilliant insight has led some of the people to begin referring to her as "tree girl."
The owners of our hotel made us fondue for dinner that night. It was pretty good, but not all that great. It tasted like they had poured 5 bottles of wine in the pot, and they only gave us bread to dip. I got sick after dinner, again. I got sick after every meal Monday-Thursday, with the exception of Wednesday's breakfast. I think it may have been due to the altitude. That's it for this post. Hopefully I can wrap the rest of the week up in one more post, because we haven't done a whole lot since Tuesday. There are also a number of observations that I have made about Switzerland that I wanted to point out for all of you who are States-side.
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