October 1: Rest Day

After two tough days in a row of more than seven hours driving, the trip had a planned rest day in Lausanne. When I woke up and opened the shutters in the room, I said:

– Man, this is just like El Hoyo de Pinares.

Dani found it funny, but what I meant by comparing one of the most important cities in Switzerland with a small village in Gredos was that they shared the same layout, with houses growing like mushrooms at random along the slope of a mountain.

The first place we visited was the city’s harbor on Lake Geneva, a quiet area for a walk, where I took these photos:

People playing chess at the harbor

Lake Geneva

The lake and the mountains

You could also rent a pedal boat:

Pedal boat

As I mentioned yesterday, Lausanne is home to the International Olympic Committee and other sports organizations (such as the Court of Arbitration for Sport), and they remind you of it as soon as you arrive at the train station:

Olympic station

There is also an Olympic Museum inaugurated by Juan Antonio Samaranch next to the harbor. Its gardens are full of sculptures and gifts from different national Olympic committees. What surprised me most was the gift from the city of Barcelona to the museum: one square meter of flooring from the Olympic Village—in other words, a pile of prefabricated slabs:

Gift from the city of Barcelona

Since I already knew the city center from the previous night, when I had gone out for a few beers there, Dani took me to his university to show it to me. As always, this kind of visit did wonders for my morale… The EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) has an incredible campus where students can spend the whole day because, in addition to classrooms, laboratories, and professors’ offices, there are also sports facilities, cafés, shops, bookstores…

EPFL

The EPFL Cubotron

The university looks excellent; it is considered one of the top 30 in the world (the University of Salamanca is around position 470), and according to Daniel, the professors are outstanding.

If you check Wikipedia, you can see how the Swiss political system works—a direct or semi-direct democracy. I’ll copy and paste how it functions:

Switzerland has a particular system of government that differs from many in force today, commonly known as direct democracy, although it is more accurately a semi-direct democracy and in practice only two cantons currently preserve this system. Referendums on the most important laws have been held since the constitution of 1848. Any citizen may oppose a law that has been approved by parliament. If they manage to collect 50,000 signatures against that law within 100 days, a national referendum must be held in which voters decide by simple majority whether to accept or reject the law. In addition, any citizen may request that a decision be made on an amendment they wish to introduce to the constitution. For such an amendment to proceed, 100,000 signatures must be collected within 18 months. This popular initiative can be formulated as a general proposal or, more frequently, as a new text whose content cannot later be changed by parliament or the government. After the signatures are collected, the Federal Council (Government) may create a counterproposal and hold a vote on the same day. This counterproposal is usually a compromise between the current system and the new proposal. Voters decide again in a national referendum whether to accept the initiative, the counterproposal, or both. If both are accepted, voters must additionally indicate a preference. Initiatives must be approved by a double majority: a majority of the popular vote and a majority of the cantons.

You can see all this reflected in the streets (especially now that elections are coming up), which are full of posters encouraging a particular response to any referendum (in this case from the canton of Vaduz):

Referendum Yes

Referendum No

One who isn’t very popular

Tomorrow the longest stretch of the journey awaits me, from Switzerland to Berlin. I’m leaving with a bit of regret for not having tried a typical Swiss fondue—dipping bread on a skewer into melted cheese—like Asterix in Helvetia.

1 October 2007

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October 2: The Unfortunate Arrival in Berlin

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September 30: I Arrive in Switzerland