In Switzerland

Bonjour! Bienvenue vers la Suisse.

I am currently living in Switzerland in a tiny village called Leysin, which is in the French region of Switzerland (I’ll get to that in a minute).  My boyfriend, JC, is the program director for a five-week FSU international program teaching 22 students about hospitality in Europe. The students have class for three days in Switzerland and then travel on their own throughout Europe. This is our second year of making this trip.

By the way, JC said if I was going to talk about him in this post, he should get to have his say as well. His comments are in red italic. I think you’ll enjoy his sense of humor:~)

I’m a life partner

This is the term which allows me to accompany JC on this trip. According to him this means I get to do the laundry, clean, and sometimes cook (if using the microwave is considered cooking). JC is a chef. So, when I have cooking duty, I  just ask him if I cook the spaghetti for 20 or 30 minutes. Before you can say “boil water,” he’s up and taking over the cooking.  See I’m not so dumb!

So far we haven’t killed each other, even though neither of us are particularly good travelers.  The last time we came, I almost killed him by accident when we were driving up an incredibly dangerous mountain road. I made the mistake of saying, “oh, look at that view!” (We almost had a scenic view of flying over the mountain!) Driving in Switzerland is a lesson in patience and terror!

Languages spoken

But I digress, I wanted to tell you a little about Switzerland and include some of my pictures of our journey so far. Switzerland has three major regions by language – German, French and Italian. Well, there is one more, called Romansch which is spoken by only about 100,000 people. I’ve yet to meet someone who speaks this language! (Even though I can read French menus with no problem, I recently made the mistake of ordering pineapple on my pizza instead of peppers. Nothing like adding pineapple to sausage, olives, and onions to ruin a good pizza! While Sara denies it, I think this menu was written in Romansch.)

What’s interesting is that each region uses only its language. In other words, if you drive out of the French region into the German regions, the road signs ALL are written in German with no French translation. It’s truly like leaving one country and entering another.

Switzerland pictures

Okay, that’s enough lecture for one post:~) Onward to the pictures. Let me set the scene. In Leysin, we are about 5,000 feet straight up a mountain. For a Florida girl used to flat lands, this can be a rather intimidating climb. (Or someone who’s only driven a stick shift once in forty years. When I  stall on a hill,  drivers forced to pass me yell sweet words of encouragement in French…or maybe they weren’t words of encouragement?) Sometimes it’s good not to understand the language.

Last year, I decided to walk down the mountain to the village by taking the “short cut,” which is a set of stone stairs straight down. Going down was easy; coming back up was hell (pardon my English!) On the other hand, the mountain views are beyond magnificent.

Here are some of pictures of Leysin and the Alps.  Appréciez la vue.

A view from our apartment balcony

Another view showing clouds in the valley

The higher mountains still have snow, but most will be gone when we leave.

I climbed up into a cow pasture to take this shot. While curious, the cows left me to my photography, preferring to eat their lovely green grass!

Signs leading to various Leysin activities! As you can see, there are lots of schools and hotels in Leysin.

Tagged as: Leysin, life partner, Swiss Alps, Switzerland, Switzerland pictures, travel in Switzerland