So this pre-weekend (Thursday onwards) did not start off well. Thursday would have been a totally exciting day because it was the day of the Fribourg-Fribourg leg of the Tour de Romandie, which is the Swiss Tour de France. I did go see the start of the race after lunch and took some pictures, which you might get to see later. I guess these cyclists are some of the same who ride in the Tour de France, but I wouldn't really know. The biggest effect this event had was that it forced all of the bus stops to move to temporary bus stops about a block away from the normal route. This was only slightly annoying because I didn't have to use any of the displaced bus stops. Unfortunately, I began to feel worse and worse as the day wore on and ended up with a nasty stomach flu sort of thing at night, which I should have expected since some of my host family had been sick earlier in the week.
The next day I obviously didn't go to school but I did make it to the orchestra rehearsal in the evening (the Vorhauptprobe, which I guess would translate as the dress-dress-rehearsal). I think musicians are really special people. They just tend to be nicer, smarter, and, in the case of Swiss people, who are normally pretty closed-off, more outgoing than everyone else. This was proven when I was asked about twenty different times how I was feeling and if I was better. Out of all musicians, I would have to say organists are the smartest and most creative, based on the sample population of organists that I know. I think it has to do with the playing-with-both-hands-and-both-feet thing. But that's a whole 'nother post.
Thanks to a few well-placed doses of Coca Cola, I was pretty much healed by Friday evening, which left my weekend plans intact. These involved a Rotex version of Geneva, complete with UN tour, random walking around, Calvin's church, a park full of political party tents, food, and giant chess games, the flower clock, and the jet d'eau. Most of this I had experienced by myself or with my first host family already, but it was fun to go with about 40 inbounds and Rotexlers to see it all again. Unfortunately, it was raining.
A few of my exchange student friends came back with me to Fribourg that night and we ate dinner at a Tex-Mex restaurant, which I was a little surprised to find. I don't know the restaurants of Fribourg very well, because I usually eat at home or nourish myself straight from the shelves of Migros and Coop (and occasionally Denner). Then we picked up some ingredients from the undersized, overpriced grocery store in the train station because all the other grocery stores had closed at 4pm, and went back to my host family's place and made cookies. This was a great idea, except that we were so tired from walking around Geneva all day that we were about ready to fall asleep and had trouble staying up even to wait for the cookies to finish cooking. It was a bit pathetic. So the cookies were finally eaten in the pre-noon hours.
On Sunday afternoon we went into Fribourg. The plan had been to walk around and see what there was to see (which, in Fribourg, isn't much), but it was raining, so the tour was stopped a bit short for a trip to an ice cream place, where we cooled off even more from the ever-chillier weather with a frozen treat and then waited until I had to be at the concert place for the sound check. Afterwards was the concert, which I thought went pretty well. A couple of other exchange students who live in Fribourg came too, which was nice. I was a little disappointed that none of the Swiss people I invited (including my host family) ended up coming. Maybe the rain just made them want to stay home.
So with that, I wish you all rain-free and sun-filled spring days that you can enjoy outside, even if you don't have the option of walking around in Fribourg.
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happy mothers day....
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