Friday, 16 September 2022

Europe travelogue part 2 - Rencontron-nous à la gare

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Who doesn't love a buffet breakfast? The bakery downstairs from the hotel had breads of all shapes and sizes, with a helpful large knife to slice them. One could choose from butter, cheese, various fruit jams.. and one mysterious "L'Parfait". Well, I had heard this word on Masterchef Australia and it usually referred to ice-creams or yoghurts. But this probably wasn't that. I Googled it - and it was pork liver. Near miss! 

Seriously, eating or shopping as a vegetarian, in a non-English-speaking country without the safety of red and green dots is like exploring an unknown jungle. But it's easier now that your phone can translate everything. 

The summer school lectures started bright and early at 9 am. Here was Luca Trevisan, not in theory but in real life! One sometimes has to consciously remember that famous researchers are just regular people, in this case with a very charming accent.

For armchair physicists.

Afterwards was a coffee break where we were plied with cake and croissant. Later, at the lunch buffet too, there were giant slices of cake. Does everyone in Europe live like this? Is this really offset just by having walkable cities? So many questions. 

Lunch was definitely colourful!

After lunch the schedule said "swimming", which was intriguing. The lake Leman is a ten-minute walk from EPFL, and so we went - many got into the water, others just enjoyed the sun. Of course, all these are just excuses to mingle, and I was happy to collect acquaintances of many nationalities. German, Greek, Dutch, Spanish, Russian - but really most seemed to identify more strongly with being a nerdy theoretical computer scientist than with any country. 

Almost asked the goose which university he was from.

Having said that, the Europeans seemed to quickly connect with each other more than the tiny handful of the rest of us there. For starters, white people are just taller, and the conversations happened at a plane above our heads! Language wasn't a problem - everyone there spoke excellent English. But I suppose invisible cultural barriers do count for something. Few like us had made a long journey - there were a couple of people from Iran, but that was really it. Later I had a long conversation with two Germans, who had lots and lots of questions about Indian languages, society and religion. I might think about these subjects a lot but summarising for a complete outsider is a whole new challenge.

So, the exercise-solving sessions were a great unifier. We were put into groups, and for a couple of hours we were all only speaking the language of maths. 

That "night" (8 pm but bright as ever), Sricharan and I went back to the lakeside. You can actually see the French side, across the lake, and it lit up gradually as darkness set in. We had a great catch-up after a couple of years. I tried and failed to skip stones on the water. 

Lots of houses had some sort of regional flag, but this was probably not that.

Over the next few days I tried to explore EPFL whenever I got some free time. It is large, with helpful maps everywhere (and vending machines if the walk makes you hungry). The multiple floors can get pretty confusing, there are large open spaces not on ground level. 

 

The streets are named for famous mathematicians and scientists, and spotting someone you liked was like (I imagine) finding your favourite actor on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. 

There is a museum of computer history, with nice old models, though the text is all entirely French. 

The library in the Rolex centre is expansive, with English and French books (and probably others). Did you know that the French term for "operating systems" is "systèmes d'exploitation"?

On Wednesday it rained in the morning: light by Mumbai standards but enough to warrant a change of plan. We were supposed to go on a trek, but we were instead going to the Charlie Chaplin museum in nearby Montreux. I love museums so I wasn't disappointed. (A breakaway group decided to go anyway. They later said they had to turn back midway because of the rain. Ha!) The bus ride along the lake side was gorgeous.

What I didn't know until then was that Charlie Chaplin had actually lived in Montreux for many years, from 1953 until his death in 1977. This was after he was forced to leave the US for expressing communist sympathies. To use a modern term, based.

The museum is in two parts: his large house, featuring his possessions and also timelines and video clips. There was also an exhibition on the top floor about one particular film, The Kid

That makes two of us!


All the famous people he had interacted with.

The other part is a recreation of many of the settings he used, including streets, shops and police stations. You can also walk around the grounds. 



It began to rain again while we were there. I was among the few who had brought an umbrella (Mumbai teaches you to never go anywhere without one) and I looked around in search of a rainbow, to no avail. Overall it was a nice museum and I do recommend it if you're in the area, even if you haven't seen his films. 

We had some time to kill before dinner, so we did a micro-trek near the restaurant and went up this tower. 



Dinner was at Chalet Suisse. We were in two groups: those with no dietary restrictions, and those with any at all (vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free). So my dinner was really mostly salad. But it was a nice location for sure. 

On Thursday Sricharan and I went back to the main city. Our destination was the Museum of Photography. Amazingly, we had made it at the specific time of the week that it was free for students. They had two special exhibitions: about railways and about the Earth. 

Here's yours truly enjoying an interactive installation.

Let's meet at the station.

Miniature cities in suitcases. You collect places as much as you visit them.

<tangent>

It's important to remember about contemporary art that artists are not trying to confuse the viewer or make them feel silly for not understanding it the same way they would understand a piece of classical art. Art now has (in my view) a more general scope of being a trigger for an experience, or trying to convey possibly a broader range of things than before. 

In the context of an exhibition about Earth, what is the point of some magnifying lenses placed over some cooled lava rocks? First, how does it make you feel and what do you notice? You observe tiny details in the rocks and marvel at what a delicate thing Nature has created. You remember you are in an exhibition about Earth and feel more responsibility to protect its delicate balance. There you go! 

Whatever is your honest reaction is what it "means".

For those who are unimpressed by or skeptical of contemporary art (like I was, not too long ago!), I recommend this video by "The Art Assignment" on YouTube, and also their "The Case For" series.

<end tangent>

Friday was our last day in Lausanne. Already! But the weekend was full of promise. Sricharan and I bought a (rather expensive) copy of the New York Times, and got on a train to Domodossola. Stay tuned for part 3!

What's this place? Looks interesting.


Goodbye to the Olympic capital!

Wednesday, 7 September 2022

Europe travelogue part 1: Prochain arrêt, Lausanne

In July, I had the good fortune to be selected for a one-week summer school in EPFL, Lausanne in Switzerland. Of course, when you go to Europe for the first time, you try to do a bit more than get educated. It was a short trip, but pretty eventful, and if nothing else I took a lot of photos. Here is the first of a three-part travelogue.

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After long waits in the check-in and immigration lines, my friend Arghya and I boarded the Etihad flight to Abu Dhabi. There were many Hajj travellers, but others too. The Indians on either side of me, who somehow both independently decided to watch Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, were probably bemused by my choice of film - Ich bin dein Mensch, a German movie about a woman and her robot boyfriend. 

We landed at Abu Dhabi with a few hours to kill. The Emirati model of airport commerce is simple - accept most currencies but return change in dirhams, which you may never use again, unless you buy more stuff at the same airport. Brilliant! 




Then it was time for the second leg to Geneva. This sector is fancier - the in-flight entertainment featured a gaming console in addition to the films and TV series. Arghya was very excited, but I was too tired to enjoy that and just slept. (Also, being an airline from the Arab world, the system also has namaaz times and a pointer towards Mecca.)

It was a lovely Sunday morning when we landed in Geneva. The airport is beautiful, near the hills. The immigration officer greeted us with "Bonjour" - we were here!

There is a railway station right at the airport, and inter-city trains are frequent, so we were off to Lausanne right away. Geneva and Lausanne are both on the shore of the lake (Lac) Leman. Among the first things one notices riding through the Swiss countryside is the abundance of Swiss flags. They don't need to be told, Har Ghar Tiranga-style.

After about an hour we arrived at Lausanne's main railway station, Lausanne-Gare. The city is the home of the International Olympic Committee, and that is its pride. 


We dropped our luggage at the hotel. Now this left us with the rest of the day to explore. The logical first place to go was the Olympic museum, located by the lakeside. An excellent thing Lausanne does is to give guests of almost any hotel free travel (metro as well as bus) passes for the duration of their stay. Plus, buses are regular and punctual. Our bus took a bit of a detour since it was Sunday, and the lake-side road is reserved for walking and cycling. (Indian cities, take a hint!). So we walked along the lake-front to the museum.


Europe was having a heatwave at the time, and so it was noticeably hot even for us tropical folks. But we were not prepared for lots of people simply walking on the road in nothing but shorts!

The walk up to the museum gate is dotted with sculptures, and the steps have the hosts of all past Olympics inscribed. 





The main museum had a pricey entry ticket, and Arghya wasn't keen, so we decided to skip it. However, there was a free temporary exhibition about the modern urban sports included in the last summer Olympics - 3v3 basketball, skateboarding and speed climbing. Even the Olympics have to evolve to stay relevant.



At lunch, we had one minor culture shock. We were given cold sandwiches, and asked if we could get them heated up. Apparently, people there generally consume their food cold!

Afterwards, my old friend Sricharan, coming there from Vienna, joined us and the three of us decided to check out the city centre. European cities on Sundays are strange. Few people are out and about. Almost all shops are closed, but the lights are left on, giving an eerie sense of a city where the people had suddenly vanished. 


One place that was open was a pretty little park, Mon Repos, where we stretched our legs for a while. And then the next shock, which I was expecting but is no less surprising when it happens: it is 6pm, then 7pm, then 8pm and the sun shows no signs of setting. Of course, a longer day is ideal for tourists. 




Dinner was at a burger joint downstairs from the hotel, which had veggie burger options (yes, plural) as well as a student discount. Life was good. I met Lasse, a German who was also there for the summer school, and it took everything I had not to launch into essays and/or barrages of questions about Sebastian Vettel and Kai Havertz.

At sunset, a gentle chill began to set in and we went for a short walk. The week had only just begun!

Here's the tea - US trip #2

Click the photos for better quality! I alighted in Boston's Back Bay station (yes, it shares a name with the second-nearest bus stand ...