Les aventures de Belle & Sebastian

Today I went out to explore Lausanne and buy a few bits I needed – just some milk, tea-towels, a new purse.. It’s a really interesting place. It’s pretty big – we’re living right on the outskirts, and it took about 20 minutes to drive into the centre, it would be double that at least by public transport. But it’s also very beautiful. There’s a lot of nice old buildings in a typically French style, with ornate balconies, cute shutters, and winding staircases. The whole city is basically on three levels, and it’s on a very steep slope going down to lake Geneva (such a steep slope that my ears popped driving from our house to the town). So anyway, today’s one short shopping trip almost killed me. In fact it wasn’t shopping, it was more like mountain climbing. In 30+ degree heat.

On the plus side, I’m expecting to return to the UK with legs as strong as alpine cows and a goat-like nimbleness :p

The first day in Switzerland, we got settled in and just chilled the whole day after an exhausting week. Our new housemate is really nice and later in the afternoon we all went down to the waterfront (Ouchy-Lausanne) to soak up some rays and enjoy the atmosphere. Finally some summer after England. It’s about 25-30c. Perfect.

On Sunday we went to Gstaad, in the German canton of Switzerland, but only about an hour’s drive away. It’s a hotspot for the rich – I think almost every other car we went past was a Ferrari or Lamborghini. The shops in town are all designer – Cartier, Louis Vuitton, Ralph Lauren etc. And the restaurants looked pricey too. But we made the most of the weather & nature, and brought a picnic with us, so we had a great day without spending much at all  : )

We saw some incredible views on the way. I can’t get over how beautiful it is here. I’ve been a few times before but it still hits me every time. The mountains, valleys, vineyards, lakes, wildflowers, old buildings, cute chalets. I love it. We saw some gorgeous waterfalls too and had to get out and explore.

I thought I better at least try and use some of my German (rather rubbish school-days German last learnt at age 13), and went into a cafe to buy an apple tart. But I ended up making an idiot out of myself by slipping into a weird Dutch-German mix and asking for ‘een appel tart bitte’, ‘dank u wel’. Got a very weird look, unsurprisingly :p Guess I better try and brush up on my German for our future trips!

We wanted to get a cable car up a mountain to get some even better views, and stopped at a very cool-looking one called glacier 3000 (as in it takes you to the top of a 3000 metre snow-capped mountain). But at £50 each, the price was a steep as the mountain…

So we gave it a miss and found another, much cheaper cable car in Gstaad itself. Not as cool, but still very nice:

Last Thursday a new chapter of our life started. We said goodbye to our home of the last two years, moved our stuff into storage and drove to Switzerland.

My photos of our apartment (which I took for the landlords to put on rightmove.co.uk)

On the day, my mum arrived to help us (which turned out to be absolutely necessary).  We had been working up until moving day and manically busy so everything was a bit of a last-minute rush. We had a game of tetris trying to fit everything in the moving van and we got it all packed in with just enough time to attempt to go to the tip to throw away a sofa chair that had a stain in it. We literally got there 1 minute before they closed. And then we got to the storage place at 20 minutes before they closed the office (but you can access the storage 24/7). An extremely close shave – really don’t know how we could have done it without my lovely mum! By the time we got to the storage it was 17.40 and we had been up since 6.30 and working solidly with hardly a break. It took a couple of hours to unpack everything and then we were off home again to clean the flat. That took a few more hours… We also realised we couldn’t fit everything we wanted to in the car and had to give some things to  my mum to look after (what a nice mum!).

At this stage we were abosultely shattered, and Seb, in a daze, put two of our boxes for Switzerland (that had food and kitchen items like herbs & spices, tea, cereal, soya milk, Pimms :p, everything we needed to get started there) in my mum’s car by accident. So that was one thing that went wrong but not a big deal – things could have gone a lot worse!

We got to my parent’s house about 1.30 in the morning and were then able to get about 3 hours sleep before we had to get up at quarter to 5 to leave for an early morning eurotunnel (you drive onto the train with your car). We’ve taken the eurotunnel a few times before and found it really hassle-free and quick. We arrived with plenty of time at the terminal, but found out there were long delays (who knows why!). So we waited about 3 and a half hours which was a bit annoying, but oh well… I paid for the trip with Tesco clubcard vouchers so at least it was free!

From then on we had a very smooth trip. The roads were completely clear of traffic all the way there. This may have been because our satnav took us on toll roads all the way there which probably cost us about an extra £40 :p But at least we had a short-ish trip the other end. On the way we stopped off at a huge hypermarket in Dijon, France that I absolutely loved. What most impressed me was the fresh fruit and veg section, which had so much variety. The food was really cheap, and much better quality than England. So we stocked up and got a couple of bottles of wine too. It definitely made up for the lost boxes!

We finally arrived in Lausanne at about 11pm, exhausted but happy to be able to collapse and sleep!

The house is great. It’s a student house (although it doesn’t seem like one!), very close to the hotel school in Lausanne (EHL). We’re subletting a double room as the students generallu all go home for the summer. At the moment there’s just one Singaporian living here, a really nice friendly girl, who helped us settle in a bit. But she’s leaving in a week or so, so we might have the house to ourselves for the next couple of months.

The house is very spacious, on 4 levels with 6 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, a very large open plan ground floor and a large garden with barbeque. We were thinking of bringing a cocktail set and poker set that I bought Seb for our anniversary, and decided not to, to save space in the car, but they have both of those things here already which we thought was pretty cool. Our bedroom is on the 2nd floor and is also very large with good storage and a nice double bed and good sized desk. You can see mountains in the distance when you look out the window. And we have a bathroom to ourselves which is always good.

So here are some pics of our base for the next 3 months…

The house

Back of the house

Living room

Living room

Kitchen

Our room

~ Home Sweet Home ~