Lausanne and Montreux

The train connections went like clockwork. One of the glories of the European rail system is how overnight carriages are routed by coupling and recoupling to trains to reach diverse ultimate destinations. For example, at Lyon, some carriages of my train would have been routed to Paris and others to Geneva and points east. Some of those connections involve waits but of course sound asleep passengers don't know about those. That is also why it's important to be in the right carriage, especially if you don't have a sleeper but a normal seat.

Dawn found me in Geneva where I cleared immigration and hopped onto the local to Vevey. I was now in the land of clockwork. And expensive everything. I stopped mentally converting to Aussie dollars, it was too depressing. Instead I converted to Euros, which was less but still depressing. Fortunately my Eurailpass was good for the rest of the day so I could travel as much as I wanted on the Swiss rail system. I was in Vevey only long enough to check into the hostel and have breakfast. Then I caught a train back to Lausanne to meet L, whom I had made the acquaintance of back in 1997.

She had only the morning free because she had to vote as an expatriate in the elections of her homeland, so we walked the streets of Lausanne while chatting. She seemed a bit preoccupied. I think the burden of living apart from her family weighed upon her. She also mentioned that her employer had to implement an austerity drive. I saw signs that Swiss railways were also under pressure to cut costs. Only France seemed to be bucking the trend towards the doldrums. However the Swiss mountains are always a great backdrop for walking and talking. You'd have to go to somewhere like Norway or Scotland to have such dramatic scenery.

After we parted I had the rest of the day free so I decided to revisit Montreux, after an absence of some 20 years. It has a long lakeside promenade and I wondered I would recognise it.

It still looked like a picture postcard.

I walked all the way to Château de Chillon, one of the most recognisable landmarks on Lake Geneva.

A closer view.

Evening found me back in Vevey where I walked along the lake shore. This is one of the tourist cruise boats that ply the lake. There were quite a few foreign tourists about. Was Switzerland popular at the moment because it seemed further away from terrorism concerns?

The lake was home to a large flock of swans.

The mountain scenery got more dramatic as the twilight deepened.

Three facts I knew about Vevey: It was mentioned in Little Women. Charlie Chaplin lived his last years there. It's the headquarters of the Nestlé corporation.


A man I encountered on the path stopped to ask me if I was Japanese. Perhaps he imagined that every Asiatic looking tourist was Japanese.

There is a Bar Charly by the lake. Whether this was a tribute I don't know.


It was a cold evening so I abandoned an idea to visit Geneva by night.

I dined at Maccas because it was the cheapest place. Even so it was more expensive than in other countries. There were a lot of noisy football fans in town. I wondered what the teams were and which team won. Afterwards I took in an Argentinian film, Historias Minimas, at the local art cinema. It was a good story and distracted me for a couple of hours.