Week of May 30th -
Before I left for Switzerland there was a whole fiasco with getting a visa.  Well, as fast as that whole process is, I didn't get it in time.  At first this may seem like a problem, but what it meant for Anthony and I, is a trip to Lyon, France.  Apparently, you cannot pick up your visa in the country you will be working.  So, early Monday morning we departed our home on a quest to obtain my visa.  Since our goal from the beginning was to explore Switzerland to its fullest, we hadn't intended to leave the country much, if at all.  So, having a specific reason to journey beyond our beloved country was perfect.  Neither of us had been to France and we were excited to be doing this mini-adventure together. When we arrived in Genève and went to switch trains, we discovered that the train we needed doesn't run this time of year. Fortunately, we were not the only people who made this mistake.  There was an American who had the same destination and spoke much better French; we latched on to him through another train and bus ride to Lyon.  Once we arrived, we hit the ground running, literally.  Again, as hard as the embassies work, you will be shocked to know that their hours for visa pick-up are 10-11:30 AM.  Our unplanned routing changes began to infringe on a successful trip and a bit of hurriedness set in.  Additionally, it had started to rain.  (Which always helps the overall mood of things, don't you think?) We finally unlocked the mystery of the public transit system and arrived at the embassy at a daring 11:15 AM.  Again, given the extreme organization and outstanding communication of embassies, I was horrified to discover that they had no idea who I was or why I was there.  Had I not had approved visa papers in hand, this whole ordeal would have been a royal pain.  She kindly indicated that she would need to speak with Chicago and to call back to find out the status this afternoon.

We had planned to stay in Lyon overnight anyway, so we set out to find a hotel.  We found one located in the Bellecour area of Lyon.  Wet and exhausted we decided that a nap was more than appropriate.  3 hours later we awoke dry and refreshed. :)  I called the embassy and the woman said we were squared away and to come in tomorrow.  After a shower we headed out to explore the city. (It had stopped raining. Yea!)  We were both famished and as we walked began to get more and more delirious.  We quickly found a grocery store and went to town!  Our purchase also included some beer and wine.  We took our picnic and found a bench overlooking a water fountain (see pictures of Trip to Lyon, France).  After we had demolished all our food goods, we were still hungry and went back to buy more!  In all, our feast consisted of bread, apples, bananas, chocolate, turkey, cheese and Pringles.  So yummy.   It was a night of eating, drinking, walking and more eating! Ahhh, life is good.  When we returned home, we turned on the TV.  I instantly fell asleep and Anthony stayed up watching Star Wars in French.  What?

The next morning we continued our eating spree with our breakfast at the hotel, which consisted of a piece of bread and a croissant.  Mind the "a" in this folks.  When Anthony asked for more, she said she needed to count how many were left and upon returning kindly indicated that we could not have another.  Where are the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffets?  There are some things I miss about home. :)  After breakfast, we headed to the embassy.  There was almost a hiccup when the same lady as yesterday informed me that now that she had everything, she needed 2 hours to place a sticker in my passport. Seriously, who is she kidding?  We looked super confused, told her we needed to catch a train and said we would be happy to wait around in hopes that she would find a spare minute (there was only 1 other person waiting for a visa) to peel the backing off the sticker and slap it into my passport.  5 minutes later we were out of there, passport in hand with a warning not to tell anyone that she turned it around so quickly.  Ahhh, yea.  No worries.  We guided ourselves backwards through buses and train system and arrived home in time to make it to our track workout.   All in all, it was a really fun, really busy couple of days.

As I said last week, the days are becoming fairly routine, so the next notable moments were Saturday night and Sunday.  On Saturday night we stopped down at the Fête de la Bière - Beer Festival!  They had a pretty good band planning - it was a few kids playing Green Day type music, sounded a lot like them too.  Anthony remembered to wear running shoes (inside joke) and we goofed around for a bit.  Since we were biking the next day, we didn't partake in the actual beer part of the party; truly the music and people were enough.  For Sunday, TTP had planned a bike tour going over three cols (a col is a mountain pass).  We shagged a ride from a younger TTP member, Reda.  (Since he still has his learners permit his dad drove with us to Villeneuve - about 20 miles from Lausanne - and then proceeded to bike home!  We were the legal guardians on the way home. ;)  As we took off into the mountains, I was already worried about holding up the group.  Within seconds I was losing ground.  Rédha, my biking buddy, hung back.  The group was also nice enough to stop periodically and wait a LONG time for me to catch up.  To enjoy the trip to its fullest I took lots of pictures (see Biking from Villeneuve pictures).  It was an excellent reason to stop and catch my breath and also document the journey.  We ended up completing only 2 passes, which was honestly fine by me!  I feel very accomplished for having finished the ride, but no joking around; it was really hard for me. Somehow, in the mix of things, we got invited to Reda's family BBQ.  It was an oddly fun experience.  They just kept feeding us and there was only one other person besides Reda's dad who spoke English.  She spoke to us the whole time.  The setting was a neat old farmhouse.  It is hard to explain, but just really cool.