“Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun”.
- Marcus Aurelius
This is a short post because I got the hook up booking the church basement in Lausanne but couldn’t figure out the WiFi! Maybe a reminder to stay in the present moment...
I feel pretty hyped after today, the first full day of walking in Switzerland, over 30km, with energy to keep going! I went to sleep with a head full of worries about my aching back, but I woke up in the morning with a song in my head - “arise and walk on through, the world outside that door is calling out to you”. I listened to this song, “Yes I’m Changing” by Tame Impala, while I cut the weight of my backpack again.
Once I got going again I was good! And even better, after such a hard time yesterday, walking comfortably today, even for 7 hours, felt great!
I think it will take just a week or so to reach the Great St. Bernand Pass, following the footsteps of the Saints and Napoleon and Hannibal and all those elephants.
In the mean time, I am enjoying Switzerland! My walk was mostly flat and varied. There are plenty of places to walk and run between the Via Francigena and all the pedestrian paths you find getting lost! It’s also very easy to find coffee and things to eat everywhere, although the bread in France is truly in a class of its own!
I passed through Chavornay, Etagnieres, Morrens and Cugny, before finding the parish where I stayed just before central Lausanne, in the Bellevaux suburb.
In a fun twist, I found a tiny patch of WiFi at a bus stop and saw on google maps a hotel/restaurant was 30 minutes away from my location in Cugny at about 5:00PM. During this WiFi break, I also saw a reminder from my dad to watch the Switzerland/Sweden match.
By this time I had walked almost 30km and was ready to quit for the day and find my accommodation, so I walked the remaining 30 minutes the hotel on the map. When I got there, it was not only open, but so packed with people watching the soccer match I couldn’t get through to see the front desk. So I gave up the intention that brought me there, sat down and watched the rest of the game like my Dad suggested.
The mood was tense, even the children with Swiss flags painted on their cheeks were wincing, and the adults with beer were explaining the score to me like I understood any of it.
At the sobering conclusion, the crowd cleared and I got to the bar to ask about a hotel room.
« finished » the bartender told me, with the curt tone of any Swiss person who had just watched the game.
There was no hotel after all, it had closed and the hotel/restaurant was now just a restaurant, just a good spot in the area to watch a game.
So I found a place to call the number of the church parish I had on a post-it note, not a sure thing, but worth a try. It required a good bit of back and forth on the phone with the church secretary (who spoke a French from Togo to my American version), bus directions, and asking to use other people’s phones, but it worked! The tiny room in the church basement was free for the night, and for the modest sum of 5 Swiss Francs left in a church envelope in the mailbox this morning, I had a place to stay.
I was very grateful!
