Oh mon dieu

i’ve recently began to watch Friends in french, to help with my learning of the language. I’m very familiar with the dialogue in the show (sad I know) so I find that I already know what they’re saying, but simultaneously now learning the french version too.

La Fête Du Slip

I’d heard about a weekend long festival in Lausanne at the beginning of March, which featured artistic films and videos, and so I planned to check it out, however, during my search for more information I found that it was actually a festival of sexuality, and the film events that I had heard about were just a scratch on the surface! There are several venues across the city in which its held, and the one we visited at the Arsenic Theatre hosted pornography competitions, where throughout the day/night they would show screenings of several films to an audience and then we would vote at the end which film we preferred. Chelsea and I only made it in to one screening however as it was so busy! Afterwards we went to Le Bourg further up in town, which was the resident music venue for the night. It was an experience like none other, and would definitely like to go next year if possible.

International Women’s Day

My friend Jasmine, who also lives at the Auberge, was asked by someone back in her home of Argentina to photograph a women’s march in Switzerland. But, as it was highly unlikely that anything on that scale would be happening in our little town, or anywhere nearby, she resorted to the idea of taking photos of women she lives with - including me - and women on her course. She had left her trusty polaroid camera in Berlin, but luckily I had bought one and it had just been delivered that week, and lent it to her. Here is one of the photos she took with it

Lausanne: second attempt

Not much luck. It rained all day. However we did find a cool comic book shop where i managed to find something in english, and then we stumbled upon a protest against the Dublin referrals, which i later read up about here 

‘STOP WARS NOT PEOPLE’

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