Day 15 - Montreux, Martigny, Orsieres

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Switzerland According To Hobbit

The French are supposed to be so decadent, but they aren’t. At least, the Normans aren’t. Their toilet paper is super thin and the roll is maybe like about an inch thick. So you have to use about a quarter of the roll each time. The Swiss TP, on the other hand, is very plush, and you can use about two squares and have enough. I’m thinking I might swap my illicitly gotten ferry roll from England for the one in our Swiss hotel room.
We came up to Orsieres today. This is our jumping off point for skiing to St. Bernard Hospice. First though we went to the Rodin exhibit in Martigny. My coffee ran out, and I crashed and got grumpy, and Wendell got grumpy at me. (Result of a short night of sleep on the train.) Unfortunately, we got done right as school let out. Where do all these kids come from? It was like being at Wild Waves Water Park in the summer. Luckily, they have to ride in second class and we ride in first, so once the train came, we could get away from them. The Rodin exhibit is a much more interesting when Wendell explains it - the stuff about Rodin and his girl friend that is. Plus, there was some stuff you could see where Geiger got his ideas from. Like the baby heads.
Outside, they had some other sculptures. There were some sheep sculptures, and some very lifelike duck sculptures. They even moved their heads and blinked. But they did not get up when approached, so they must be sculptures.
Switzerland is amazing in that you ride the train up and up and up and then come around the corner and, lo and behold, there is a city up in the mountains. Here their tops of mountains come to points, but the valleys don’t come to a V because three thousand years of cultivation have kind of filled them in. So the valley will be totally flat with steep mountainsides all around it and little houses and farms up on the sides.

Hobbit Now Understands That Sculpture Can Be Funny

There's A Giant Bronze Breast In The Lawn ...

Sheep On The Lawn, Just Like Home ...

Vogons

The Germans are total Vogons but that can be a good thing. Because we are over 26 we cannot purchase a 2nd class Eurail pass and had to get 1st class. But to get a space to sleep on the night trains we have to pay extra. Our choices were; Euro 80.00 each for a first class cabin for two, or euro 20.00 each to sleep in the second class cabin with six. Since this is a 7 hour trip (short night) we opted to get the 2nd class bunks. But when we got onto the train the cabin steward looked at our Eurail pass and our sleeping assignments and tskd "dis es nein gut" and bustled us off to the first class car and into a 1st class sleeper for two. I guess the mis match between the Eurail pass and the cabin was nein gut.
Compare this to our overnight train experience in France last week. We had gotten the second class sleeper bunk. When we got onto the train we asked the cabin steward if there were any better available. He said there was a cabin for two but we had to pay euro 54.00 in cash. No problem we dug it out and got the cabin for two. In the morning he came around and said he'd made a mistake and it was 70.00 euro's more! It's a little late for that! We didn't have that much cash on us so he ended up having to take what we had which was about euro 30.00.
Obeying Vogon rules has it's rewards. When we were in the train station needing to make some reservations we went over to where the reservation counter area was. There were four windows, each with a Vogon in it. There was a marked off back-and-forth-and-back-and-fourth like you encounter at Disneyland. There were no people at any of the counters and nobody in line. Wendell and I looked at the windows. looked at the exit. Looked at the back-and-fourth. Thought to oursleves "Vogons", so we went back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth-and-back-and-fourth then stood at the 'wait here' line on the floor. Within moments one of the Vogons summoned us over and as a reward for obeying the rules gave us excellent service.

Interesting Sign From Montreux, Switzerland.

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