Sluglife

First things first – I’m home! It was a great trip, I learned a lot, worked my ass off, and had a fantastic time. I hope everyone has enjoyed the pictures. I’ve got one last big update to do. It’s kinda fun having been back for almost a week now and going through these pictures again, the memories are still so close and yet the location is so far away.
But, alas, on with the pictures!
First we have to backtrack to downtown Lausanne with Bernard Farve in the last, August 26th update. I took a couple of pictures as a panorama, but didn’t have the software on the laptop to stitch them together, so here’s the panorama – click on the image below for a bigger version. Not perfect, but it certainly gives you the idea.

On Wednesday, August 27th we went with Bernard V out to Montreux to have dinner with a former employee, Ali, who Dave worked with quite a bit.

As it was, we didn’t get there until the evening. We did get some great sunset shots, though:

and

This one, too!

We could tell we barely scratched the surface of Montreux, but what can you do? We only had so much time. This is one of the famous hotels along the waterfront:

The following day, Thursday, we went out with Jocelyn, another IT person. Before going to the restaurant, we drove east out of Lausanne into the vineyards above and around. This is looking back west, towards Lausanne:

And east towards Montreux, which is just behind the hillside here:

And another picture just to get a scope of the vineyards – these are the same ones that Bernard F took us to but I didn’t have my camera for.

And then, wouldn’t you know it, it became Friday, our last full day in Switzerland. So I decided to try to capture a bit of our workday. Each morning (except for the weekend) we began our day at 7:30am in the cafeteria. The cafeteria staff set out our breakfast every morning:

Then to work!
At lunch, everyone in the IT department would go down to the cafeteria together and sit together. I’m all for department cohesiveness, but this seemed a bit ridiculous. Here’s the IT table:

And what did we eat? We had some dishes that, for our tastes were a bit exotic. After the beef tongue incident, David adopted a don’t-ask-just-eat attitude. I was too curious for my own good, which didn’t serve me well when we had horse stew. Yup, I ate Seabiscuit. On our last day, however, nothing so exotic. It was pork with a gravy, noodles, a broccoli dish, and some cabbage dish. It was quite tasty, I must say.

It was odd at first having an entire meal like this at midday, but one thing we noticed during the first week is that they don’t snack. No one in the department had any snacky items whatsoever – no candies, chips, fruit, nothing. They took a fairly regimented coffee break twice a day, but other than that no sodas, no waters on the desk. It was certainly a change.
And where did we spend most of our time? I mentioned in a post below that IT is split into administration and development. I spent my entire time up in development and 95% of that time next to Bernard V here:

If the other guy in the picture looks a little young, that’s because he is. They have an apprenticeship program where they take a student at 16 and have him work in the department for the next four years. They’ve got a girl down in the administration group who’s been there for three years, but Mateo here just started Monday. I can’t imagine going into an IT department at 16. But what great experience!
The other half of the development team to the right:

Through the glass is Bernard’s office, where David is working. Here’s a better picture:

The building is extremely distinctive – as if you couldn’t tell from the shot of the bulbous, rounded exterior from the beginning of my trip posts. Inside is just as distinctive, but to get an idea of it, I cribbed this shot from Google’s sat maps:

The overlapping squares are the HQ building itself. Just above and to the right is the little house where our apartments were. Below that in the picture is a big green field where they’re planning on expanding into in the near future. The Xs crossing the squares are skylights. And in the middle of the center square you can see it opens up. Well, that is where the offices we were in are, and the central hallways reminded me of those habitrails for hamsters:

And it makes for some odd angles, which you can see through:

And also some pretty courtyard spaces:

At the very center of the top square is a central shaft that the elevator runs up. Around it winds a staircase. This is looking at it from the third floor:

One thing you notice quickly is the very last stair:

It might be a little hard to make out in this picture, but that top step is noticeably thicker than the rest of the stairs. I only managed to trip on my first time up the stairs, but it’s not something you’d expect.
On the bottom floor, here’s the elevator and stairs:

And the lobby:

So it’s Friday, our last night in Switzerland, and we were supposed to go out with Bernard F for one last night, but it turns out he had a prior engagement and we were on our own. We hopped into the mule and headed into Lausanne

For what? What would be our last meal out in Switzerland?

Kababs!! This is the place across the street from the laundry. We wanted something tasty and, most importantly, fast. We wanted to get packed, so while we didn’t want to literally eat on the run, we didn’t want the usual two to three hour event that we learned was dinner. So David had the mighty Kabab Burger:

And I had the same Kabab-burrito thing from our first visit to the Kabab place:

After a delicious meal, we bid our Kabab maestro adieu and headed back to pack

Saturday morning. Our plane leaves shortly before noon. Bernard F picks us up to take us to the train, but first, what else? Engines!

The one place I really really wanted to go but we kept missing the opportunity is the Speedy garage, which is owned by the same guy as Lemo. Bernard decided we’d swing by there on the way to dropping us off at the train in Morges. So it was we parked the mule (note the cute carwash sign in the background):

Here’s the outside of the main showroom:

While there are many marquees represented, Speedy garage is the only Spyker dealer in Switzerland:

Spyker what? If you’ve never heard of the Dutch supercar builder, don’t worry – they don’t sell them here in the states, and rumor has it they’re not doing terribly well financially. Don’t mention that around the garage, though. Part of the love of these cars is that Alex – the owner – also sponsors a LeMans team which drives Spykers. The other part, well, just look at it:

And:

In addition, however, you also had all kinds of beautiful automobiles. A stunning Ferrari:


Some classic cars, too:

And this beautiful Jag E type:

Two from Lotus: the Elise:

And it’s more hard-core brother, the Exige:

If Spyker isn’t a make you’re familiar with, then you probably don’t know Wiesmann, either. That’s fine – they’re extremely rare. The important thing isn’t the BMW-sourced V8 under that stunning matte-black hood, but just the body itself. What a stunner!

In addition to the unobtainable cars, they also sell quite a number of everyday cars – a full complement of Alphas lined the parking lot outside, and inside they had a pair of these adorable Fiat 500s, which we will likely see stateside to compete with the Mini Cooper soon. This model is actually a little special, it’s the Aberth model, so it’s been hopped up a little more:

If I were to drive out of the shop, though, one car stole my heart that morning – the Maserati GranTurismo S:

Far from the most expensive, but nonetheless, meow.
On our way out, we passed Alex’s Airstream – he bought this in the States and had it brought over so he could take it to the LeMans races. However, he ran into a snag in that the Swiss government wouldn’t license it because, they claimed, it’s too reflective! No word on the resolution of that issue, but here’s the trailer:

And with that, we headed to the train, and then to our (not full!) flights home. Jetlag recovery was minor, and now I’m back home with Anna and the cats and Winston! Thanks for looking at all my pictures! I’ll leave you with David and my bags packed, ready to head home: