Lucern § Lausanne

Thursday night I stepped off the train in Lucern to find myself in the middle of their monster carnival... to scare away the winter. Met Andre, my scuba buddy in Western Australia, quickly dropped my stuff at his apartment and walked to the old city center for a quick drink... that quickly turned into a night of dancing in the streets surrounded by fully costumed brass and percussion bands playing songs like Aerosmith's Crazy, they were all incredible. The amazing thing was that everyone homemakes their costumes, famillies and friends all dressed to match, there we people with bird cages, paint buckets and full shower stalls on their heads, whole bands dressed like devils, and lots of knights and carabanna type colours. I was introduced to cafe-schnapps (yum) and met a bunch of Andres friends, spending the night immersed in Swiss German. I didn't take any pictures, they wouldn't have done justice, but if you can picture any old city crammed shoulder to shoulder, everyone in full creative costume, bands setup around every corner so that the only way to move was to dance, through the streets, up and down stairs... that was my proper introduction to Swiss-German festivities.

Friday Andre and I woke up early for a day trip to Lausanne, about 2hrs away to pick up some of his old stuff for his new apartment, spent the afternoon exploring a bit, Lausanne is beautiful with an old city center, complete with 700 year old Cathedral and Lake that stretches out to touch the mountains.








































Saturday brought snowboarding for my first time. These are the moutains in the distance, took a cable car up to the resort town and after a few hours of lessons, Andre left to join Andia and Lukas on the big-kid hills and I was on my own. It was incredible, beautiful and my bum still hurts 3 days later...


Saturday night, we had a well deserved Raquelette feast, the focus being lots of broiled cheese and potates, and for desert we went out dancing...































Sunday Andre took Lukas and I out for a bit of a tour and then Lukas dropped me off at a train station on his way home to Fribourg where I then met up with Johnny who I am staying with this week in France, about 5 min from the Swiss border.