A Real Post!

I'm feeling a little nostalgic today. Maybe it's because I'm about to make a big move into the unknown, but a few minutes ago I randomly started missing Switzerland, a place I only spent a few days in this spring. When Dan and I were younger, I used to have to go and comfort him some Sunday nights before he went to bed because he missed the weekend already. Well, now I can empathize a little better. I miss April 20, 2008. So I'm going to tell you all about it :-)

After an uncomfortable night on a train from Rome (this trip, however, being much better than the night train from Frankfurt to Florence... instead of 7 people crammed into one cabin there were 3) Dan and I pulled into the still sleeping village of Montreaux. We pulled out our information about the hostel and realized the only instructions they had offered to help us get there were "situated right on the lake-front, about 1km from the middle of town." This place was breathtakingly beautiful, though; so beautiful that I only pretended to be a little grumpy to keep up my reputation as world's worst morning person. (Please note the semi-grumpy, semi-thrilled, definitely weird expression on my face.) It was no hardship at all to haul our backpacks down to the promenade along Lake Geneva, pick a direction to walk in, and bask in the gorgeous Sunday morning we had practically all to ourselves as the sun came up over snow-capped peaks. (I should write travel guides, I know.) This town is seriously amazing. I'm almost out of cheesy adjectives, hence the multitude of pictures. We wandered along at a leisurely pace for about half an hour watching the lake, the mountains, the tulips, and the random Ice Age characters made out of shrubbery, until we suddenly needed to find a bathroom--desparately. In order to protect myself, I won't say which of us needed this bathroom break (oh, wait, dangit!). The problem is, public bathrooms--especially in small towns--are few and far between in Europe. They usually cost money and are, well, in a word, disgusting. We still had no idea where the hostel was. All the businesses along the promenade were closed. The situation was getting hairy. Then, what do we behold, but the most clean, open, free European public bathroom I have ever experienced. This was the best morning ever.

Disaster averted, we finally found the hostel and checked in. We stowed our bags, and hiked up the mountainside to a church we had seen on our way in. By this time it was about 9:30 or 10 in the morning, so we figured we'd be sure to be able to catch some kind of church service, even though since we were in the French-speaking side of Switzerland we wouldn't understand a thing. We got up there, and it was completely empty. No pastor, no meeting times posted, nothing but an open, empty, old church. It was awesome! We explored a little, then plopped ourselves down on some chairs and decided to sing hymns to ourselves. The acoustics were incredible. We tried to sight read some songs from the little French hymnals we found, but mostly ended up laughing at each other's French, sight reading, or both. So we stuck to the old stand-bys: "Come Thou Fount", "Abide With Me", "How Great Thou Art", etc. The perfect Sunday morning--in an old, tiny, mountainside Alpine church, singing hymns with my favorite brother. We spent about an hour there and I'm still amazed that the only other people we saw was a couple from California that wandered in for a few minutes, also perplexed that there was no one around. We drunk in our fill of the atmosphere and the scenery, then headed back down the mountainside to the hostel so we could finally shower and look like humans again.

I'll skip the next few hours because they involved hunger, and though I tried to be as cheery as possible, we all know that a hungry Lauren isn't necessarily a happy Lauren. Sad truth. Needless to say, we eventually found food and a train to Champery. This is where the story gets good again :-) I loved this train. When we got back and people asked for the highlights of our trip, I immediately thought of this train. A little, rickety thing, this train chugged up the mountain from the little town of Aigle, through tiny villages and farms clinging to the mountains, all the way up to Champery. Thirty minutes of pure joy. Heaven is going to be a combination of Montreaux and Champery, I'm convinced of it. We listened to talks by Elder Holland on Dan's iPod and watched waterfalls, steep cliffs, clouds, sheep, hamlets, cows, and trees go by. We got to Champery and, of course, since it was a Sunday afternoon just about everything was closed. We mostly wandered around a lot and just loved it. I've decided that's the only way to travel Europe--to just wander. We found the hotel Dan stayed in when he was there in high school, picked out a restaurant to eat in the next day for his birthday, and wandered some more. After a while we got hungry again and decided to have a picnic of sorts. We went to a little grocery store and got a loaf of good bread, some cheese, a couple bars of chocolate, and some Mövenpick ice cream. We found a bench with an incredible view (not a tough thing to find) and had ourselves some Swiss goodness. I bet you can't get what we did next--yup, we wandered. Took some pictures, loved life, and meandered about our little Alpine village. It started to get dark, so we got back on the train, listened to some more Elder Holland, and loved life a little more.

In summation, I heart Switzerland. If anyone knows any good Swiss men, send them my way.