que onda lausanne

Switzerland is the Orinda of Europe. Orinda is a town I used to pass on the BART the autumn that I lived in Walnut Creek. It has a movie theater marquis that looks beautiful from the train, and people say it's one of the most desirable places to live in northern California. I often thought about what it would be like to live there, although I never actually got off the train to look around.

Here, people are really friendly at the bank, and at the supermarket everyone calls you "madame" and tells you to have a good weekend in French that's as sing-songy as my elementary school French teacher's.

Lausanne, the city I'm going to live in, is pristine and boring-looking, with a mixture of nineteenth-century apartment buildings that have big windows (kind of Paris style, but frillier) and 1970s Euro apartment blocks.

We're going to be living in a Euro apartment block, but for right now we're staying in a town about 20 minutes from Lausanne on the train, with an American expatriate who got laid off from her finance job in Geneva that she moved here for from Paris last year. She sits on her patio and smokes and talks to her other expatriate friends back in Paris on the phone. I've been cooking a lot, missing home a little, swimming in the lake, and trying to avoid spending any money whatsoever.

It's hard to remember what the new apartment looks like, because we only saw it quickly last Thursday, after a week of apartment-related rejections and immediately after seeing a share occupied by a Polish science graduate student, a ferret and a cat, and by the time we got to this place (our place) I think we both felt too desperate to judge the tile floors and peach-colored wardrobe too harshly. When the woman told us she was offering it to us, I didn't believe it would really work out. I still don't completely believe it, but something clicked for me when we went back to the building on Saturday and accidentally met the super, and he knew about us: the young American couple.

On the streets of Lausanne ladies wear bright colored jogging suits and sit at outdoor cafes with purebred dogs and shopping bags. The public art features giant squirrels, swirls, dream-catchers, and "murals" made out of different kinds of plants.

But on our street there's an Asian grocery store that sells jars of pickled shrimp and giant spiky fruits, and a Salvation Army. Down the street you can buy young coconuts for only 3.50, which would be a good price anywhere. I think this apartment, whatever it actually looks like, is going to be a nice place to sit and write, listen to neighbors talking, and drink coffee while it gets cold outside.

Come visit!