Almost three weeks ago, we had a wee race, a HITCHHIKING race. Folk were keen to do this after hearing how easy it was to hitch here and of course I was keen. Keenidy keen. Also meant an excuse to visit the stunning city of Lausanne. Very nice place indeed.
So it started by team formation – team Scotland (Kiera and Myself), Team Yorkshire (Leo & Georgie), the other team underwent several line-up changes before being Team Fifty Two (Ben & Vivian because they both are from latitude 52 and that sounds better than Team-Everywhere-South-of-Yorkshire).
So we went to the brilliant Pratteln station and hitched one after the other, the ‘race’ started as soon as you get in your first car, rules being no public transport apart from inner-city trasport. Fifty Two left in about 20 mins, Yorkshire left in the time it took Scotland to sneak around the building, take some shite photos and spy on them – i.e. 2 secs. We also made friends with the poster from the Erotic Megastore and watched two fat hairy lorry drivers go into the shop together. Hmm
So then we had a rubbish time standing there for 1 hour 30 mins rejecting every lift that was offered to Zürich. Eventually two guys – an old guy and his freshly-off-the-plane nephew who was driving picked us up. They were on their way to Geneva so took as all the way! Lucky or what! The old guy spoke French and looked like Santa. A Serbian Santa! Madness. The other guy spoke English a bit. It was like a linguistic rainbow in that car – Serbian, English, French and German, luckily Kiera speaks much better French than me, so all good. Good craic in the car and the sharing of chocolate. We arrived at Lausanne in the outskirts and met an English IT guy on a business trip, he helped with directions and was really friendly, I enjoyed his chat about the cable-shop he had just been to, enthralling. He came with us to the cathedral, but didn’t stick around all day as I thought he might.
Oh! The cathedral! Yeah, I suppose we won. Though only really on a technicality as our time of travel was slightly shorter than Fifty Two. A trophy was waiting for us when we arrived which I engraved and WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
The other teams:
Fifty Two: Did extremely well! Got two lifts, one to Bern and one immediately after getting out of the car to go to Lausanne. They were actually exploring Lausanne for about 2 hours before we arrived due to this. I guess this means they did better than us, as I said it was a technicality. So their initials were also engraved.
Yorkshire: HA! Exactly what was expected of these two happened. They got five lifts, only got to Bern and arrived in Lausanne at 8pm by train. They went to some wee villages, had a drink in a military base with an enthusiastic woman who made them signs. They then got to Bern, found a nice salami and bread shop and had a lovely lunch in this beautiful city watching the bears. After unsuccessfully trying to hitch in the dark on a busy road, they hopped on a train and joined us in Lausanne.
A bit about Lausanne. Lausanne is nice. Standard Swiss city situation. It has a lake – Lake Geneva which almost feels like the sea, actually some impressively sized waves. We walked along that, which was awesome. Will got soaked by a freak huge wave, hilarious.
All 12 of us stayed in a lovely hostel, it had a free breakfast, very posh. Got drunk here at night and had a great meal in this random place. Felt like a school trip. Spiel und Spaß!
Went to Cathedral several times at several light-levels. People left all through the day gradually. When it was just five of us we decided to do several crazy things so as to make more fun.
Crazy Thing #1 – Give shoulder rides and run around like idiots
Crazy Thing #2 – Throw leaves up in the air only to have them blasted in your face by the wind.
Crazy Thing #3 – Go to an aviary
Crazy Thing #4 – Draw a giant face in the leaves
Finished off by myself and Alina walking up the hill behind the city, climbing a tower and seeing the city at night in the heavy rain. Speil und Spaß indeed.
Anyway, that was that, what a great weekend!
Tatty Bye now
A Bolas About 
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