Into the 4th week now:

In the first week, I counted how many weeks to go before I return but now as I have entered my 4th week of stay here in Lausanne I have started counting how many weeks of “mountains, lakes, cheese ,chocolates and EPFL” I can still cherish before I leave. The past three weeks and the weekends have been a perfect combination of work and leisure that I always longed for. The best thing about this place is that I can visit places over a day without having to plan too much – just get a train ticket (now cheaper with my “demi tariff”) , reach the desired destination, get a map from the information “I” centre and go around. That’s what I have been doing along with my flatmate, nasreen and a fellow thinkswiss recipient, Erin over the weekends. Now, I have already seen Geneva, Zurich, Montreux along with a mountain ride up the roche de Naye. Montreux and Roche de naye were simply magnificent and have been described in details by Erin, so I leave out that part. Both Geneva and zurich being the 2 big cities, have similarities in that both are set along lake geneva and lake zurich respectively. However they have a lot of differences too, the major ones being the different languages and cultures. I was fortunate enough to get to see the inside of the United Nations headquarters in Geneva. The old town in Geneva is a place that one should definitely visit and I have to go back there before I leave for my swiss shopping . I visited Zurich mainly to meet up with an old friend of mine and we went to the Rhine Falls which according to google is the largest waterfall in Europe. A boat-ride allowed me to get a very close view of the falls which was quite enjoyable except for the overcast sky and frequent drizzling. I also went up a cathedral in the old town of Zurich to get a 360 degrees view of the city which was awe-inspiring. I also got a chance to taste the swiss McDonalds sandwich and chicken wings which were far better in taste than the American counterpart . To give you a flavor of the diverse places that I went to, I am attaching a few pictures that I took. Next week hopefully I will be seeing the swiss capital city.