Bonjour, France!

Chapitre III: Lyon

April 26

9:00: My roommate now understands how I felt the night before. I still don’t know how we managed that hill to the auberge de jeunesse with all our bags. The 200m climb must have taken us a good half an hour... Food poisoning is not pretty. The view from the hostel, however, was.

10:00: Granting ourselves this one morning to be lazy tourists, we jump on a double-decker bus. A crackling French recording explains us the sights while we click away madly on our cameras. Check out these wall paintings!

12:00: Already falling in love with this place – it ticks so many boxes on my “Perfect City” list. Permission to add to “Must Come Back One Day” and “Potential Residency” lists? Granted.

14:00: I walk my poor roommate, now an unsettling shade of wasabi green, to the emergency room to see a doctor. She, in turn, pushes me out to explore Lyon by myself with a: “On est en France – il faut que tu en profites!”

19:00: After a good five hours of walking around the city and across countless bridges over the blue, blue rivers, I sit down in a barber’s chair. Pierre gives me my first haircut in a year and we talk about his two daughters and my insane travel plans. He tells me I speak beautiful French and I let myself believe it. I am happy to leave a piece of me behind in this lovely city. Plus, I now have a French haircut!

April 27

9:00: My roommate is better, thank goodness! So, we're off to the Musée des Miniatures et Décors de Cinéma. It is one of my favourite museums in France – high praise in a group which includes the Musée d’Orsay, Louvre and the Orangerie. We see the set of the film Parfum and room after room of movie props: a mask worn by Arnie in The Terminator, Gibbs’ badge from NCIS, Indiana Jones’ hat and whip, Neo’s gun from the Matrix... There are also some unbelievable miniature artworks and sets. These artists would make excellent surgeons! (Left: 2x3cm paper cuttings. Right: a miniature set of about 20cm wide.)

12:00: Time for a taste of the gastronomic capital of France. Midday menu: salad with gizzard conserve, calf’s head with steamed potatoes and dessert of the day, pear in red wine. So. Good.

14:00: Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière. Jaw dropping. Every inch of the walls are covered with intricate mosaics. I feel so small and humble. The tears flow with no effort at all.

17:00: A traditional puppet show at the Théâtre du Guignol:“Guignol et le Croquemitou”, the mystery of the catnapper. It's a little sad that I don’t get some of the jokes the five-year-olds sitting beside me are giggling hysterically at, but all the same, I love it. One more box ticked!

Stop and smell the daffodils.

Upon reading my “internet” blog, a dear friend suggested that I detach myself from my computer desk and take a walk instead. Maybe with a camera and a notepad. It made sense – I was in Switzerland after all. And now, I have her to thank for a wonderful day. It was also the first day that I had spent alone in quite some time, and I liked it. 

First stop: Musée de l’Elysée, a photography exhibition by Hans Steiner of Switzerland during and after of WWII. Haunting images of Belgian orphans in Switzerland, women wearing the first bikinis by the river in Bern, machinery in a chocolate factory, children learning to ski for the first time...

I recently started a postcard collection – it’s the easiest and cheapest souvenir to find while travelling. I’ve also discovered that most art museums carry postcard copies of the artworks on display. A mini Picasso or Cezanne for two francs? Yes, please!

After that, I jumped on a bus to the Lausanne Vivarium. Or so I thought. But apparently not every bus goes through the city centre... Instead, I ended up in a remote little town called Pully: one of those places that you only know by the name of the train line, but never actually visit. But, determined to make the most of my day, I jumped off the bus and went exploring.

What I found were narrow cobblestone streets lined by beautiful European buildings and colourful flowerbeds already abloom with the first flowers of spring. As I reached the end of a narrow alleyway behind the church, I found myself staring at the most magnificent view of the Swiss countryside, Lac Léman and the Alps. Beneath the peaceful church courtyard, vineyards and country villages sprawled outward in every direction. In the distance, a train chugged along the hillside and disappeared into a tunnel. The birds chirped in the spindly trees and behind me, a church bell began to toll. I just stood there and smiled.

My day didn’t end there. On the way home, I decided, quite spontaneously, to get off one stop early. Why not visit the botanic gardens? Spring was just around the corner and the turn of the seasons was always an interesting time in the plant kingdom. What I found was a world in transition. There were some plants still deep asleep and some emerging from tiny green buds; others were already in full bloom, undeterred by the crisp wintery air. I loved them all. For the next few hours, I found myself on my knees in the soil or stretching out on tip toes, clicking away furiously on my camera. The garden didn’t need to be exploding with life for it to be incredibly beautiful. The process itself was enough to take my breath away.

Dawdling home at my own pace, I vowed to take the wrong bus again the next chance I got. It was time I reacquainted with my oldest friend: me.