The holiday season is upon Switzerland. Throughout the month of November Christmas decorations gradually appeared in apartment windows and along city streets. Thanksgiving is not celebrated in Switzerland, therefore there is no clear marker for when it is appropriate to start decorating. We even saw a tree go up right before Halloween!
We, however, were good Americans and waited until after Thanksgiving to decorate our apartment with cutout snowflakes, garland, and of course our Christmas tree. Thanksgiving is too important of a holiday to brush aside; a time to give thanks… and of course to overeat. We felt like it was our duty to honor our culture by eating a feast of turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, and pecan pie. As the two of us ate it felt strange to think of our friends and families gathered back home in big parties, while for everyone else in Switzerland it was just another boring workday Thursday.
Our big party came a week late, when last Thursday, Melissa’s group held a Thanksgiving dinner. Melissa’s boss is also American, so he did his best to propagate the American holiday with catered appetizers, turkey, potatoes, carrots, and apple pie, (but I liked the meal I cooked better). The party was interestingly located in a building called a “refuge”. We learned that most communities will have at least one refuge building, and that they are only allowed to be rented out to residents who live in the community.
With one holiday down, the next one up is Christmas! Since it is officially December, Christmas decorations and Christmas markets are in full swing. In Lausanne Christmas decorating is a big deal with lights strung all over, and along the streets, as well as commissioned works of light-focused art called the Festival Lausanne Lumieres scattered around. Walking the streets and admiring the lights brought back many memories of the city from a year ago, when we first arrived and it looked much the same. Melissa wrote a short post (here) about our thoughts then.
This year there are 13 different art exhibits to discover, among the lit up streets. Melissa and I walked all over Lausanne yesterday until we found them all, and we only had to stop at Lausanne’s small Christmas market to buy hot wine once to keep us going. Below is an album from our walk.
