Queen...the Alps...homelessness

I don't have my video of me speaking in front of the UN looking and sounding pretty yet, so i'll hold off and talk about my last weekend. We decided to go to a few of the different towns on Lake Geneva scattered amongst the Alps. Our first stop was Montreux. Its famous for the world's greatest jazz festival. Queen also had a studio there and recorded half their songs there because they loved it there. It is quite gorgeous there.

This is a statue of Freddy Mercury, the lead singer of Queen, who the city honored with a statue on the lake front. More than anything though, it is a testament to the piss poor ability of European picture-takers. Seriously. After we took and looked at it, my colleague that speaks french kindly explained to them that we wanted the whole statue with us in it. OH? REALLY??? You're standing in front of Freddy Mercury because you'd like him involved? No shit.

Next we went to Castle de Chillon, an old Swiss fortress. It was really cool, but the highlight for me was the view from the top of the tower, and the water closet (WC, lavatory, or pooper). They had a nice little wooden toilet on the side of the castle so it is situated on a cliff overhanging the lake, so no flushing needed. The breeze when you sit there though was remarkable.
Nice view from the top. The water was pretty that day.
It was never blue skies, but sunset gave a real surreal to the mountains, which we saw from the town of Vevey.

We had booked hostel in a small town just 10 km east of Montreux. Unofortunately you have to scale a mountain to get there or go around, a train of an hour. We could have gotten back to Geneva for that. Being that it is Europe, and stuff is never open when you need it (hostels close around 9 pm...great logic there) we had limited options. We took a train further west to Lausanne. This lovely picture shows Masha, my colleague, doing her hobo impression. It was cold, and she was trying to stay warm in the train station with the stuff sheet my sister encouraged me to take to Europe that has proved quite helpful.


We ended up crashing at a friend of a friend's house there. We had a great day the next day. An amazing modern art museum, possibly the best ice cream i've ever had, and a conversation about love and god. I'm going to read a book called "conversations with god" as a result.

I finished East of Eden, and really enjoyed it. Next i'm reading On the Road by Kerouac. Should be fun. I'll get my video of fame up ASAP.

Salud.