Chateau de Gruyere

The third and final destination on our Sunday excursion was the Chateau de Gruyere. Towering majestically over the surrounding town of Gruyere, this hilltop citadel boasts eight centuries of architecture and artifacts. Inside the fortress walls was an open plaza populated with quaint restaurants and gift shops and filled with the aroma of cheese fondue. The best part of our visit, though, was touring the actual rooms of the castle and getting a glimpse of life in the Middle Ages. It was fascinating to walk through a castle that is more than three times as old as the U.S., and I couldn't help but feel a little like William Wallace (or some other epic medieval hero). I'll let the pictures do most of the storytelling.

View of Chateau de Gruyere from the train.

Side view from the bottom of the hill.

Turrets and walkways inside the castle walls.

Standing guard over Gruyere.

Myself, Amy, and Heidi atop the castle walls. Heidi (Harvard '11)

is doing research at University of Geneva this summer.

Heidi, Amy, and myself with foothills in the background.

Entrance to the plaza. Balcony view of the castle garden.

Church = office of tourism? Hmm...

All that chocolate and cheese and I still fit into my armor.

Armor for the knights who need to use enemy urinals.

"Eine gehackte Hande" (A real severed hand).

How the hand became "gehackte."

Living room, bedroom, and dining room inside the castle.

My fresh Gruyere creppe sizzling on the griddle.

Panoramic view of Gruyere from the castle balcony.

But the weekend journey wouldn't be complete without some unexpected turn of events. So before I conclude this entry, I must recount one more episode that occurred on the way home that evening. Still recovering from all the chocolate and cheese and exhausted from an early morning wake-up, I inevitably fell asleep on the train ride back to Geneva. When we finally arrived in Geneva, it was 6:50pm, and I had just enough time to grab a bite to eat before catching the 7:20pm bus to Bois Chatton (side note: this was an incredible stroke of good fortune to arrive on time. For one, I always manage to arrive to the bus stops here in Geneva five minutes after the last bus has left. In addition, after 7pm, my bus only goes every hour on the twenties, so the next bus was not until 8:20pm. And moreover, after 7:20pm on weekdays, the bus only services the second-to-last stop on my line and does not go all the way to Bois Chatton). What I did not realize was that my cell phone had slipped out of my pocket while I was slumbering on the train. Only as I was walking out of the Geneva train station did I reach into my pocket to check the time, quickly finding that my pocket was empty. Awesome.

It didn't take more than two seconds before I was sprinting back to the tracks and jumping aboard the train on which we'd arrived. I had no idea which train car we'd been in, and by this time they'd all been filled with new passengers. So I searched every car, trying pathetically to gesture to the French-speaking passengers that they were sitting on my phone and they didn't know it. I was well into my second lap when I decided to give up and escape from the train before it left for its next destination, but I was a moment too late. The doors locked and the train started rolling away with me on it. Not only that, it was an express train to Lucerne, a city on the other side of Switzerland. Awesome.

I approached one of the conductors who was checking tickets and told him that I wasn't supposed to be on that train, and he assured me that there would be one more stop in twenty minutes before continuing nonstop. So, I waited for the next stop, got off, waited for the next return train, hopped on, and waited another twenty minutes before I arrived back in Geneva just in time to...miss the 7:20pm bus by five minutes. Awesome. I couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of the situation.

But it was as frustrating as it was humorous. I had just emptied my wallet refilling my phone credit a day earlier. Not to mention, it was not even my phone in the first place (it belonged to the Imbrocks). And it was on its way to the other side of the country. The odds of me getting it back were about the same as the odds of me being able to resist free chocolate samples. With no means of communication, I was back to square one, unless there was some kind of miracle.

I suppose you could say that a miracle is exactly what happened. I filed a lost-and-found claim to the rail service online the next day and no sooner had I submitted it than I received an email notifying me that a phone perfectly matching my description had been turned in. It would be on its way back to Geneva in no time. A few days and a few more Swiss Francs of surcharges later, the phone was back in my hand, this time held there a little more securely. It'll take someone gehackte-ing my hand to make me lose the phone again.