Spring Break Part 1: Coppet/Geneva

I would like to start off by saying that I love trains. I've said it before and I will say it a million more times. Trains are the greatest. They're quiet, smooth, and they don't prompt me to ponder the possibility of a plane-related demise. For spring break, I originally planned to go skiing in Switzerland and stay in a lodge 50m from the main lift. For someone with no significant income, I have expensive tastes. Luckily, Amy's aunt lives in a little town called Coppet about 20 minutes north of Geneva. So, we decided that if we stayed with her for a few days, it was likely that I would be able to get myself on a mountain at some point or another. We took a train from Bonn and it was probably one of my favorite days of this entire semester. I sat and read a book about the theory of relativity that was very pleasantly written. I even understood some of it. We even got off a stop too early at one point but the guy at the counter printed us new tickets and we were only set back by 20 minutes. The view out of the window was beautiful the whole day, and as we passed out of a tunnel onto a hill overlooking Lake Geneva with the mountains surrounding everything, I felt quite happy (it would take too many words to describe exactly how beautiful it was and how happy I felt so I'll just leave it at that). Amy's aunt (Suzanne) picked us up from the train station and took us home for dinner. Staying there was a weirdly awesome experience. It was weird in the sense that I don't think anybody has ever said the phrase "I stayed at my girlfriend's aunts house over spring break and it was really amazing". Suzanne (and her husband, Hannu, who was sick but still made some appearances) are very interesting to talk to, we ate very healthy food that actually tasted good, and had great conversations throughout every day. She took us cross country skiing which was fun in a painful way, and took us to lunch with one of the CERN engineers and some other very smart people. I got to see Geneva, which was beautiful (and expensive). The only thing that I didn't do was go downhill skiing, because the day we would've gone, the buses weren't running up the mountain (but we didn't know until we got halfway there). After we finally returned from that hilariously disappointing venture, we just spent our afternoon walking around Coppet. It was exactly like what you would imagine a tiny Swiss lakeside town to be. I drank some really great tea and spent more money than I should have in a chocolate shop. Overall, even though I spent my spring break doing absolutely nothing that I originally intended, I think I had a better time than if my original plans worked out. And that's saying a lot, because I love skiing even more than I love trains.