A Walk Along Lausanne (Satis Shroff)

A Walk Along Lausanne (Satis Shroff)

Come with me to the town hall of Lausanne, which is an imposing 18^th century building. The roof recalls the rich homes of wealthy Swiss landowners from the region.

The pedestrian streets are cobble-stoned. You cross the Bessieres Bridge and enter the Caroline district with its shopping malls, bars, boutiques and eating places. You can’t miss the Saint Laurent church, which is used by visitors as a resting place and for picknicks on its steps. An elegant place to stay awhile and take in the Swiss atmosphere. All around you, French is the prevalent tongue, so are the signs on the shops and the metro, buses and trains.

Of the fifty towers and gates that held off enemies of Lausanne, only one stands today, the Tour de I’Ale, which was saved by a people’s movement, despite the invasion of cars. If you go further to the right you come to Place de la Palud, which is the mercantile heart of Lausanne. You stand on the steps of the Fountain of Justice and watch the famous clock that displays lively figures every hour. All around you are to be seen the adornments of the 18^th century residence’ facades.

If you walk towards the cathedral you come across a dwelling named after bailiff Gaudard, a place of contrast with heavy walls, the ‘mudac’ museum, where you meet designers, stylists, architects, artists and exhibits from the fine and decorative arts.

Lausanne Cathedral: Lausanne’s cathedral is a majestic edifice facing Lake Geneva and the blue mountains. It was constructed between 1170 and 1275 and is the most beautiful Gothic building in Switzerland. Like in the old days, a night watchman calls out the hours between 10pm and 2am from the top of the belfry.

Further up you come across the former faculty of theology created by the Bernese, which became the first French-speaking reformed academy of Europe in 1537.

A prominent building catches your attention—the Chateau Saint-Maire. It served once both as a residence and a donjon, topped with Italian-style bricks. The castle now houses the headquarters of the cantonal authorities headquarters. An entirely wooden, covered stairway, dating to the 16^th century and the stairs take you up a steep ascent, a link between the upper and lower part of the city—to a panoramic view of Lausanne from the belfry when you have climbed the 224 stairs. The Montfalcon portal was rebuilt of Lens limestone between 1892 and 1909. The tower of belfry has seven belts suspended on two gallery floors. The oldest dates to the end of the 13^th century. Lausanne’s cathedral has a medieval rose window. The oldest part of the building is the ambulatory with gravestones and monuments of illustrious and privileged natives from Vaud and Berne dating back to the 16^th century and the end of the 18^th century.

Geneva is Switzerland's third wine-producing canton and it has the country's stronger vineyard density. The hills around the western end of the Lake of Geneva favour a very diverse production and allow the use of the most modern wine-producing techniques. Although the Chasselas still dominates the white vines, Geneva's winegrowers have won great successes at international wine competitions with classic grape varieties, such as the Chardonnay.

Among the red vines, the Gamay dominates with excellent, well-structured wines. However, the Pinot Noir and other red varieties are taking more and more importance.

Ouchy is the place where I put up in Lausanne. All roads lead to this place and the landing pier and terraces remind you of the Riviera. A beautiful atmosphere of tranquillity seems to pervade in the lakeside. Impressive and elegant Belle Epoche buildings border the broad avenues and a couple of museums.

Swiss Grandvaux Vineyards: The medieval village Lutry was the first stage on the route to the Alps. It has old rooftops overlooking the serene lake and from the beach you get a lovely view of the Alps.

From the hamlet of Grandvaux, I took a stroll to Lutry through the vineyards. It was a spectacular landscape—even for someone who lives in the vicinity of the loess-rich vineyards of Kaiserstuhl, from where you can see the Schwarzwald as well as the Vosges (France).

The Lavaux vineyard has been listed as a Unesco World Heritage site. It’s a great place for lovers of good wine and has ancestral methods of planting vines. The village of Grandvaux is a window to Lavaux. You see the terraced vineyards against an imposing backdrop of Lake Geneva and the Alps. This view has inspired painters and photographs from all over the world.

There are several techniques to prune vines. In the past the grapes were secured in wooden canes. Today, the plants hang along metal trellises that run parallel to the hillside. Grandvaux is the main wine growing area. When you walk along the vineyards you discover the Chasselas, which is the main Lavaux grape variety. There are small huts in the vineyards called ‘capites’ in which the winegrowers  store their tools. When it’s aperitif-time, you’re always welcome to partake of drinks and tit-bits to eat.

To the west of Grandvaux is Bertholod Tower, a medieval architectural heritage and this tower belongs to the commune of Payerne since the 16^th century. Chatelard, which is located between Arau and Savuit, is a winegrower’s hamlet with a few houses, gardens and vines. The path leading to the hamlet crosses a brook that marks the border between Lutry and Villette.  In Savuit there’s a 17th century scale that was used to weigh the grape harvest and hay, and was inspired by a Roman technique.

The grapes are ripe and the picking season has begun. But the winemakers have an enemy. It's the star. The stars come in thousands to the ripe vineyards and love to eat the grapes. The green vineyards terraces are interspersed with houses. I talked with a local woman as hundreds of migratory flew above us. The stars come in formations to the vineyards, swoop down and have a great feast and create a great deal of gleeful noise.

 ‘They eat a good many ripe grapes,’ she said making a long face.

The only way to scare them away for a while was to let out a big bang from a gun-like contraption, and the stars would leave the vineyards hurriedly and head for the lower fields near Lake Geneva.

It was the harvesting season with Swiss workers, both men and women, busy picking the grapes in big colourful plastic boxes. Aside from the pesky stars in the vineyards, the place was serene and tranquil.

The four most cultivated grapes are Pinot Noir, Chasselas (indigenous), Gamay and Merlot, they represent 72% of the harvest. The indigenous grape include the Chasselas with 27% associated with Gamaret, Garanoir, Arvine, Amigne and many others that account for 9% of crops. Universal varieties such as Chardonnay, Sauvignon and Syrah allow Swiss producers to demonstrate the quality of the soil and their know-how in international comparisons.

Geneva’s climate is influenced by the proximity of the Jura and the pre-Alps, which divert the clouds coming from the west. Microclimates also provide favourable conditions for wine-cultivation: the slopes near the Lake of Geneva are less sensitive to spring frosts, and the well-exposed hillcrests get rapidly warmer in the morning.

Geneva's vineyards possess a great variety of soil compositions, from moraine to alluvial deposits left by its two rivers, the Rhône and the Arve. The Chasselas grapes transform these soils into a variety of unique and delicate bouquets.

The wages are good in Switzerland, which has French, Italian, German and Romand-speaking Cantons. An example of how diversity functions without any problems in Europe. There were yellow and dark blue grapes growing above Cully. The trains arrive and leave with Swiss precision, not so the German ones. At the railway station the train to Lausanne comes every half an hour, so you have time at your disposal to do a bit of sight-seeing among the vineyards.

One of the superlatives of Lausanne is the metro-train. In this town it’s not possible for a madman to push a passenger to the tracks because you stand in front of a spacious, fixed window-frame and the train arrive behind it. The doors of the big windows on the platform and the metro-train doors open simultaneously. You board the train, the doors close and the train speeds to the next station—all without a driver. It’s all automatic. And the trains arrive every three minutes.

There are well-cultivated gardens everywhere in Lausanne. The free newspaper 20min was in French, of course.

Afternoon in Lausanne: It was drizzling in the lake-town. I loved promenading along the shore. A storm was underway and the wind was thrashing the waves on the big, black rocks. You’d get a lovely, cold spray now and then. It was fun. There were sea gulls flying around, excited by the sudden intensity of the wind, a pair of wet crows were shaking the water-drops from their feathers, and a group of swans were busy cleaning their white feathers with their orange beaks. A ship with a fluttering Swiss flag pulled up at the pier. It got really windy and my umbrella turned upside down a couple of times.

So I decided to go to a nearby café. There were Swiss mothers with their kids and two girls were kissing gently at a table, and solitary persons nursing their cappuccinos. A lone bespectacled girl, probably a student, was sitting at the corner table. In the Black Forest cafes and dwellings you have a Herrgottswinkel but here were piles of books above the girl, placed neatly on seven shelves. A reading café with a random choice of German, English and French books at the Coccinelle Café. The menu card said: Carasso Cafes —Geneve 1866. Beautiful people in the café, speaking animatedly in French.

Outside my window was a posh shop with the word ‘Siesta’ where a pair of blondes were selling veggie food. They looked rather bored due to the rain.

I experienced a glorious sunset on the way to Lausanne with blue, orange, golden yellow colours over the Berner Alps. And later in the evening a lustre silvery moon riding over the long greyish-blue clouds in Lausanne.