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!
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