Europe travelogue part 2 - Rencontron-nous à la gare

Note on images: In-line images may be compressed, you can click for better quality.

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!