sey085

Last night I attended Paléo -- an awesome music festival held each year in Nyon, about 25 minutes by train from Lausanne. Attracting a wide range of bands from all across the world, it is one of Europe's biggest and best music festivals. Last night, I saw the Pascale Picard Band (from Québec), the Ting Tings, Prodigy (who put on a crap live show, by the way), and the inimitable Franz Ferdinand. A brief aside: when did it become de rigeur for hip rock bands to dress as though they just got back from a photo shoot for the cover of Pulp's Different Class ? Anyway, Franz Ferdinand was excellent, the whole festival was pretty cool, and a good time was had by all. Around 1:45, I took the small shuttle train that was running from the festival grounds to the main train station at Nyon and once there, I got on one of the special late-night trains they had organized for the festival. According to the schedule, it was supposed to leave for Lausanne at 2:30. So, it came as a litt...

After hanging around Switzerland for a couple days, I decided that it was time to hit the road. As we have some friends of the family in Paris, that was our first destination. First, though, a couple general notes about driving in general. We rented a car from Europcar for about a week and a half, and although I requested a VW Golf (I thought it would be about the right size), what we got was oh so much more. Imagine, if you will, the ultimate driving machine -- the ultimate conduit between driver and road. Now, make it a station wagon. And have it built in the Czech Republic. Behold: the mighty Skoda. Fig. 1: The Skoda keeps a cat cool on a hot summer day. What can't a Skoda do? Power windows, power doors, power mirrors, an adjustable armrest, two (!) glove compartments, and a bucketful of class made this car a pleasure to drive for the nearly 3000 km that I put on it in 11 days. Really, my only complaint was that it had a diesel engine. On the one hand, this was pretty c...

As mentioned before, the 'rents were in town for about three weeks (although it certainly felt like longer), and as we did so much traveling, I think I have enough photos and such that I can milk it for at least a couple of blog updates. First up: our time in Switzerland! Fig. 1: From left to right: Dad, Mom. You can tell it's early in their visit as both are still smiling. After arriving Thursday afternoon, my parents spent Friday and Saturday largely hanging around Lausanne and recovering from jet lag. Sunday, we took the train out to Bern, which was nice but not particularly exciting. Although I have a bunch of pictures of the city, well, unfortunately none of them are particularly exciting either. As I was too dumb to bring a towel or swimsuit, I did not get to partake in that highlight of any Berne trip, swimming in the Aare river . Maybe next time. Monday, we did something that I've been meaning to do for a very long time: take a ride on the Train du Chocolat ! ...

Just said adios to the Parents, who were in town for nearly three weeks, so I hope I am forgiven for the total lack of updates of late. I will attempt to rectify the situation, post haste. As mentioned earlier, I have had a string of visitors and a series of minor adventures in the last few weeks (even before my parents arrived) and I have thus accumulated a small pile of mildly amusing photos which I thought suitable for publication online. None of these were really worthy of a whole post on their own, but collectively I hope they at least inspire a few smiles. Fig. 1: French Championship of Tarot Card Reading, in beautiful Evian. Presumably, you are given a group of people, one of whom is about to die, one who is about to meet the man of her dreams, etc., and it is your job to figure out who is who. I have to admit that I had no idea that there was even such a thing as a championship of Tarot card reading. I guess that just proves that I would not be qualified to compete. Fig. 2:...