Nöel

I organised a secret santa for the inn, before the Masters students began to leave mid-December, and it worked! No one was left present-less. We had a party that same night all the presents were opened, welcoming anyone from the school and more, which has apparently put us in the hall of fame of successful parties in Sierre.

I paid my third visit to the MAXXX gallery to see a friend’s work - ‘Notes on Mountaintops’ by Hanne Van Dyck. There was so much magical narrative in her work, including collections of ghost stories which she’d been told about a room in her residency at the Villa Mercier in Sierre, and others. Beneath the main floor of the project space is a sort of basement, which i didn’t discover until after roughly 20 minutes was also being used for exhibiting! It was a projector displaying some fantastic imagery of the mountains, and several pairs of headphones each emitting a different style of musical sound, which when listened to gave varying feelings whilst watching the images of the mountains fade out and into each other. 

Marché de Noël Montreux 

If you want to visit the mother of all christmas markets, this is it. For me anyway, but Chelsea said it even dwarfed the Birmingham Christmas Markets which I imagine must be pretty big. We had our first taste of fondue! Albeit poured into a baguette, but this only cost 9.- whereas the traditional pot costs over 20.-. I hadn’t realised how strong the flavour of the wine is in it, but it was enjoyable.

We paid a visit to the Queen Studio Experience, which was tucked away in a casino. Despite seeing them live a couple of years ago I had never really known much about them so all the information and items displayed were very interesting. We also got a typical photo stood next to the Freddie Mercury Statue on the waterfront.

A couple of days before we broke up for christmas, there was a small meal held at the school for students involved in particular courses, and I went to check it out. Spaghetti galore! And an abundance of funky looking cakes..

National hummus shortage

Seriously. Nowhere has had hummus in stock for weeks. We kind of had a spontaneous Inn film night on sunday, watching The Mummy and realising how awful the graphics/cgi were. Monday was back to same old 9-6 lectures, but afterwards we went down into the town to explore the ‘Foire de Ste Catherine’ (a fair celebrating St catherine). we had looked round some of the stalls on our lunch break, which consisted of speciality foods/sweets, clothes and other items. We had a taste of all the free samples we could, especially nougat, which i then went on to buy in denner (175g for 2.95.-!!) later on we met with a few friends from class and had some vin chaud (mulled wine, new favourite drink). There was a huge tent by the train station which seemed to be full of the entire population of Sierre and more, we left quite early because we were tired and hungry, and found out the next day that there had been a knife attack in that same tent! I think the victim survived… switzerland is sounding less sweet and innocent by the month

I now have a swiss bank account! Going to have to take out swiss franc using my british card as usual, and then pay the money into my new account, so to avoid the ridiculous £22 fee that incurs when sending money internationally through online banking (thanks natwest). Received my parcel from home which consisted of thermal underclothes and chocolate rice cakes, which didn’t last long.

Spent a lot of time in the studio this week throwing out some new ideas and trying to paint without using it all up. Kind of takes the fun and freedom out of it if you’re feeling limited by your materials. We went to have a look in another classmate’s studio, who has an entire room to himself, filled with random items and trinkets that he finds. He said he buys nothing but hot glue, for everything he finds he believes already is art itself and does not need major editing apart from maybe the combining of it with other items. very ‘one man’s trash is another man’s treasure’. With my work (finally decided) i am trying to explore the concept of the language barrier and communications being lost in translation, through a whole range of mediums, planning to attempt at some photography and sound, which isn’t normally my forte

It’s getting really cold now. Missing the brief warmth we had when we arrived

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Ditched Sierre for the week and went to Madrid to see Ash. (Here is his blog) At first i was resenting Swiss Air for having such pricey flights but once they started offering free baguettes apple strudels and chocolate on board i forgave them. Also they had looney tunes as the inflight entertainment on the return journey, so all sins forgiven 

There’s no need to mention how cheap food and other things are in Spain compared to Switzerland, I think i put on several pounds at least in an attempt to stuff myself before returning back to “frozen pizza for 6 franc” land. (I do love it here really just feeling nostalgic for reasonably affordable food)

We went to a lot of places whilst there, but the most memorable would have to be the visit to the Guadarrama mountain range in northern Madrid in an attempt to reach the highest peak of the region - Peñalara. After much sim-swapping, map reading and bus taking, we arrived there in time to watch the sunset from one of the lower peaks. Then it dawned on us that there were no more buses, no more trains, to get back down the nearest town with a metro. This is where the hitchhiking came in! Sadly didn’t actually get to stick our thumbs out as we asked some people who were already parked, and after much Spanish spoken debate between the couple they decided to help us. Dropping us off at burger king back down in civilisation, we waved goodbye and thanked the lord (the burger king himself) that we didn’t have to spend the whole night freezing to death in the wilderness.

We also took a visit to the Faro de Moncloa, a viewing tower over 100 metres high, and had a momentary feeling of vertigo whilst travelling up in their lovely glass lift. El Rastro, a flea market held in the centre every Sunday, was another one already on my list to visit

Templo de Debod. Ash had class so thought i’d take a hike. Whilst here i purchased the travelcard, with which you have access to free travel on all buses and trains (i think) and only 20€ for the month! It’s extremely handy *cough* Switzerland sort it out *cough* and i only needed it for the week.

Overall the week trip was over far too quickly and next time we need to get down to art student business and visit some galleries, the city itself is not short of art though, on the streets, stalls, etc.

Half n half. We found the resident McDonalds and large shopping malls!

Soundfiles 2

We went to the city of Lausanne after the workshop, and Lora took us to some shops before they closed. i say “took us” i mean “she was running ahead urging us to hurry with us sweating and crawling along behind”. Huge art shop which we’re making a note of going back to. It’s so strange to see people drinking freely in the streets, everywhere. We watched the sunset from above the town with the Cathédrale de Notre-Dame behind us, an enormous gothic building which we circled twice trying to find an entrance but with no luck. We got the subway back to the main train station and then so came the two hour journey back to Sierre. it isn’t as fun when you can’t see anything out of the window. When we got back at about…. half 10? The others were having a party in the lounge but we were so tired we went to bed and conked out

On Saturday several of us from the Inn took the train to Sion, where i bought a bike and ate the second best burger I’ve ever had, at a place called Holy Cow. The first is one i had only a few weeks ago back in wales. this year is a real burger discovery year

In the evening we were given a musical performance in the living room by another inn-mate and his friend, who both play drums. It was kind of mesmerising to listen to… The drums were passed round throughout, and i found the rhythm quite easily but then keeping up with it was a different matter. needless to say i won’t be becoming a musician any time soon

Later that night we went to a nearby music venue/club/thing (there’s clubs in sierre??) where there were a variety of live acts playing all sorts of music, it was gr8. The place is called The Hacienda, apparently used to be an abattoir, and is hidden within the building below, which i’d taken a photo of a couple of days ago before knowing what it was

Bloody Londoners (soupermarket)

Anyhow today! Was the first day of our course. Even though the whole introduction was in French I’m not that worried - of course I’m still trying to learn it and have begun to pick up on some words - butttttt it’s art. Art speaks all languages

We went to a bar after our last class at 4pm, and having been told they didn’t serve my typical spontaneous decision drink of cider - went straight for wine, not too bad a choice at 4.50 a glass (i was expecting a hell of a lot more okay) we chatted with the others for a bit, by others i mean basically the whole class had shown up to this pub, resulting in the rearrangement of several tables and chairs. They seem pretty interested about us, asking us where we are from and how long we’d be there. I managed to get two names, Julie and…. Tybbu? (It’s swiss and shakespeare inspired) Everyone is swiss apart from the 4 of us from the Inn

We went grocery shopping, and may have bought wayyyyy too much pasta…. And in between classes on our lunch break the sun finally came out!! Me and Chels wandered about the streets for a bit staring in awe at the views - I’ll post photos at some point. At the inn later the last of the masters students arrived and there was a lot of catch ups going on so after we’d been introduced and eaten tea we left them to continue, BUT an hour or so later Chrisantha (I remembered a name) came to my room and said they’d cleared out the whole inn of leftover belongings from previous students, had placed them all in the living room and invited us to scavenge, which I maybe shouldn’t have done as I’ve ended up with more clothes…. But also a new hand luggage case so it’s okay

santé!!