Hiking in Switzerland

I'll skip through the boring class stuff. Now that I was settled into A2.2, I felt like I was really starting to pick up on my French. There were plenty of interesting lessons; plenty of times that the way we learned the material had us all cracking up laughing. But I'd rather skip through those twenty-five hours of class and jump straight into the story of my second weekend in Besancon.

The view from my and Pearl's room at our house family's second house near the Swiss border.

I will mention Friday night. It was just another night out, and I met up with Jeannette and Brittany, who lived about ten minutes from me, and we continued into town to meet up with a few other people from Penn State and a bunch of the Arkansas people. We went to Madigan's, our normal meeting point (all the Americans met at the Irish bar in a little city in France...I'm still not quite sure what to make of that), and then we headed out to find a karaoke bar. When we finally found the karoake bar, there were probably about fifteen of us. I didn't sing (my excuse is that there weren't any songs that I liked), but Adriana, one of the Arkansas girls that was in my class, sang a few songs. Her voice was pretty good, and Brittany jumped in at one point. Overall, it was a good time.

After the karaoke bar, Adriana and I left to go to the gay club in town. We'd heard good things about it, so we decided to go check it out. It's hard to find somewhere in Besancon that's got music—basically there's a lot of bars and no clubs. So we went there, only to find that there were three people at the bar. The guy who took the cover charge told us that people didn't really start to come out until two in the morning. Since it was only midnight, Adriana and I agreed that we didn't want to hang around an empty club for so long, so we headed down to the river to hang out for a while. We were there for maybe half an hour to an hour before the group of Penn State and Arkansas students crossed the bridge Adriana and I were sitting under. They called to us, and Adriana and I hurried to join them.

Somehow we'd ended up by the CLA, and we stopped there, trying to figure out where we wanted to go. A few of us decided to go to a club up the street from the CLA, but everyone decided to go home. I decided to go to the club with Adriana and Daniel, who were both from my class, along with Brittany (from Arkansas), and another girl from Arkansas named Suzanne. The five of us went to the club, which was the best club we'd found in Besancon thus far. We stayed out for about an hour before we all felt it was time to go home. I walked with Suzanne, and ended up back home around four—definitely a long night. And I knew I'd be regretting it later that day.

Part of the little lake by the second house.

For the second weekend, Astrid had invited Pearl and I to go with her to her husband's home near the Swiss border. We hadn't yet met her husband, who I'll call Jacques, as he was on a business trip in Southeast Asia, but Astrid said that he'd be back on Saturday, so Pearl and I would meet him then. I was excited to head out and see more of France, and some of Switzerland. So on Saturday morning, after I'd gotten about three hours of sleep, Pearl, Astrid and I headed out.

Astrid's driving terrifies me. I don't know if it's just a different style of driving in France compared to what I'm used to in the United States, but I felt like Astrid was all over the place, jerking from one side of the road to the other—all while driving at what felt like 70 mph. As someone who frequently gets car sick when I'm not the one driving, I felt like I was on one of the longest car rides of my life. It didn't help that I'd gone out to a club with friends the night before and hadn't gotten home until almost four, so I was exhausted.

Finally, we made it safely to Astrid and Jacques's home, which is an adorable little house tucked away in the foothills of a set of mountains. The scenery was stunning, and certainly not quite what I'd been expecting. Everything was just so beautiful. Pearl and I were both fascinated by the paragliders floating through the air just over the top of the mountain behind the house. Both of us kind of wanted to go paragliding, but that idea didn't go over too well with our host mother.

Astrid left after about an hour to go pick Jacques up from the airport...or the train station, I can't quite remember which. She gave Pearl and I a key to the house and the two of us went for a walk into the

Just hanging out by the lake...this tree was made for this!

little town surrounding our host family's second house. Before we'd even walked five minutes, Pearl and I stumbled onto a little lake a little ways off the side of the road. The water was such a stunning, clear blue that I couldn't help but wish that a) it was a little warmer out and b) I had a swimsuit with me. Pearl and I walked around the length of the lake, snapping pictures the whole way. Finally, we decided we should head back to the house—we thought that Astrid would be back with Jacques by that point.

And he was! It was the first time Pearl and I had met Jacques, and we were both keen to see what he was like. He was very sweet; not nearly as talkative as Astrid; but he seemed very genuine and down-to-earth. And he seemed to balance Astrid out quite well. Where she was overly chatty and sometimes a little overwhelming, he was quiet and knew how to calm things down. I think if he'd lived with us in Besancon, things would have been different. We had lunch together, talking about Jacques's work trip (he works for Nestle, and I think he was basically inspecting facilites in the countries he visited).

The view of the lake from the top of Cret du Locle. 

After lunch, we headed out to Cret du Locle for a hike. We took two cars so that we only had to hike up the mountain—not back down it. I took a ride with Jacques and Pearl rode with Astrid. I don't know how long the drive was—I was nodding off the whole time, snapping back awake everytime Jacques asked a question or started explaining something. I was definitely kicking myself for staying out so late the night before. Jacques parked his car and the two of us joined Astrid and Pearl and we headed to the top of a hill that rose above the city.

Another view from the trail alongside Cret du Locle.

It was another half hour drive to the top of the mountain we were going to hike. We weren't hiking up the mountain—just along the ride at the top, so we could see the lake. It was a really pleasant hike, and it was an easy hike as well, since it was just a flat trail. When we finally got closer to the edge and the lake below came into view, the image was nothing short of stunning. The cliffs just kind of dropped off, and about a hundred feet below, I could see the treetops stretching from the base of the cliffs to the edge of the lake, which curved around the bases of several mountains. The whole thing had a kind of eery feel to it as well because it was a cloudy day, so there were low-hanging clouds and general fogginess that hung about the mountains.

We took a lot of pictures alongside the edges of the cliffs, but eventually we continued down the trail. There was a storm that we'd heard off in the distance when we'd arrived, but now it was getting even closer. The thunder was getting louder and louder, and the dark grey clouds were coming closer to us, so there was a new sense of urgency in our steps. We tried very, very hard to get back to the car as quickly as we could; there was no way we could have gotten to the base of the mountain and back to Jacques's car before the rain hit. But we couldn't move fast enough. The rain started first, and we picked up the pace even more. And then it started to hail.

The ground, coated in hail after the storm passed through.

The hail started as tiny little pieces, maybe the size of a few grains of rice. But then they started getting bigger. By the time we stopped to huddle under a tree for shelter, the balls of hail were like marbles raining down on us. I'd brought my sweatshirt, but I didn't have a raincoat, so Pearl and I both huddled under her raincoat, and Pearl leant me her baseball cap to protect my head. We must have stayed huddled under that tree for at least ten minutes. Finally, the hail started getting smaller, so we made our break for it. It felt like a very long walk, uphill, hail crunching underfoot as I tried to keep my footing. And now, my sweatshirt and pants were wet, which made the whole thing that much more interesting.

Finally, the hail stopped and the rain cleared up, making the walk much more bearable. Jacques gave me his fleece to switch out for my soaked-through sweatshirt, so I felt much warmer, and then we had some crackers and chocolates. The day had definitely taken a turn for the better after the hail stopped. We decided to just go back to Astrid's car at the top of the mountain rather than trying to hike back down to Jacques's car at the bottom, so it was another easy walk. And then, halfway to Astrid's car, we spotted some deer off in the woods, munching on the grass. It was so cool—I'd seen pictures of these creatures before (I call them deer, because that's what they're closest too, but they're not deer like we know from the US), but I never expected to see them up-close! They were so adorable!

The two little deer-like things we saw after the storm!

After an incredibly interesting day, we headed back to Jacques and Astrid's house in France. We crossed the border from Switzerland back into France—which is astonishingly easy. There wasn't even anyone standing at the border when we drove through! We got back to the house and had dinner and looked at Jacques's photos from his trip to Southeast Asia before finally going to bed. I fell asleep almost instantly—by the end of that night, I was definitely regretting my decision to stay out late the night before. But finally, it was time to go to sleep and get as much rest as possible before we went for another trip the next day.