Delayed Gratification

The Swiss take a lot of pride in the appearance of their cities. A prime example is a tree they call "platane". There must be thousands of these trees, and for each one in the city, they hire people to put on helmets, climb up ladders, and prune the buds with a technique called "pollarding." This method gives the trees a distinctive look and keeps them from getting too tall or wide in an urban setting. I have no idea what they look like with leaves, but I'm sure all the work is worth it when they finally do bloom.

Meg came to see me on Friday. She is enjoying her spring break by seeing the sights and reading Shakespeare while I am in class and working at CERN.

Meat Runs to France

Vegetarians, vegans, animal lovers, I'm sorry. You can skip to the next section.

No, the meat does not run to France. We run to France to buy the meat. Except instead of running we take the 12 tram from Terrassière to the Swiss/French border, walk for a minute or two, and then enter the meat store.

It's totally worth the effort of getting there, because meat in France is literally three times cheaper than in Switzerland, and protein is important. There are stories of people driving across the border and filling their trunks with meat to avoid the high prices.

They literally have every part of every animal in this place. Pig feet? Yep. Snakes? You bet. A whole rabbit? Definitely. Just the head of an antelope? Most likely. The left hind quarter of an Australian Kangaroo? They can probably order it.

The guys behind the counter are always fun, too. They make fun of our french and try to sustain ironic small talk about American politics in broken English while weighing and cutting raw carcasses.

I love skiing.

On Saturday we woke up early early early to ski at Les Contamines. It was about 1.5 hours by bus, and we spent the whole day going down hills, be it on the skis, on our backs, upside-down... certainly covered in snow.

For the green (easy) slopes, instead of an actual ski lift they have these poles with pancake seats that go around and around and whenever you want to go up, you grab it, put it under your butt, and it pulls you up the mountain "by your ass" as our instructor said.

The worst part of the whole thing is carrying the skis when you aren't using them. Those things are heavy. Also, ski boots are super uncomfortable, and you have to wear them all day.

But I love to go straight and fast, so skiing gets to be added to my list of best ways to do this.

It was a gorgeous day in the alps, but skiing is a lot of work and we were dripping in sweat by lunch time.

I did not think that the earth could be this white. There are currently 41 feet of snow at the summit.

This was the most fun I have had here so far, and I will definitely ski again.