I WENT TO WHERE THE CHEESE COMES FROM!!

Also called, EXPLAINING CANADA TO EUROPE

Today, sadly, or happily (depends on how you look at it) I had my FINAL "thing" for French before I'm done like dinner! It was a question that asked me to respond to a friend's letter saying that she had just gotten married and that she was moving away to Canada ("Ontario" to be specific...sort of...). She had big plans of marrying her lumberjack husband (actually, the question said her husband was a "bucheron", or lumberjack en Francais! No s***!) and that she was asking for my blessings. In English I would have written, "This is a blatant stereotype of the Canadian mannerism, confining this grand nation's inhabitants to a historical term that has been redesigned for today's "eco" mentality. The correct phrase would be "Kimberly et son mari revienneront 'tree planters', pas 'lumberjacks' au Canada"". But alas my French was limited and I had to stick with "Kimberly that sounds like a great idea...not." Seemed simple enough.

The other Canadianism that needed explaining, mostly due to my lack of "politically correct terms" en Francais, came when we were explaining historical origins of "naissance" or birth. The Brazilian girl said that her people thought baby's came from eating pumpkins. "Birth control must be given out with candy at Halloween then" I thought. She didn't think it was funny...The teacher always looks to me when there's a lull in the classroom's conversation, I'm assuming she'd like me to ad a little "North American Pizzazz" to the Europeans who all STILL think I'm American. She always asks me, "What is this situation like in Canada?" And I usually don't think too hard in my answer, as there are no other Americans or Canadians to challenge my stories, so for all the other students know, Canada is the largest producer of plastic forks in the world!!

So during our baby popping discussion, the prof asked me if there were any Canadian stories about how babies were born...I said "stork?" and then I remembered about all the legends the First Nations had created about how Canadians came to be. I kinda pulled one off the top of my head that I remembered about how the Vancouver Islands were formed and just changed the word "island" with "babies" and there you go! All the other kids nodded with a glaze of "I don't understand" and "It could be true I guess, I've never been to Canada."

But must just nodded and said, "Ah, oui, les Indiens." Well actually, my European amigos, in Canada we say 'First Nations'. This didn't go over well with my internal Babelfish. "Au Canada...on s'appelle..." (look for confirmation from the teacher) "On s'appelle les gens 'les premier nations?" (look of confirmation turns into look of shock from the professor) "Ce n'est pas le meme chose d'ici. Vous êtes...raciste? » (More shock, maybe even a gasp...s***...deep hole now) « Parce que, au Canada, les mots "Indiens" sont racistes? Oui ? Ca va ?»

This didn't go over very well with my classmates…It's so hard to explain "CANADA IS MULTICULTURAL, WE"RE ALWAYS CHANGING THE NAMES OF CULTURAL GROUPS COS WE HATE OFFENDING EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING" to people who don't live in Canada...Sigh. I'm assuming they'll let me back into the class tomorrow, my name tag may have been changed to "Canadian Peace Monger" by the prof, but I feel that it's deserved.

After my Canadian faux pas trying to explain why 'Indian' is just as inappropriate as insinuating that all Canadians are lumberjacks, some friends and I decided to drown our Swiss maladies in a bowl of bubbling, cheesy goodness, otherwise known the world over as FOOOOOOONDUE!!

If you read the "food blog special" I made a few days ago, you'll have already been well educated in the way of the cheese. If not, well fine, I'll explain again: Fondue comes from a concoction of Gruyere cheese and white wine, bubbled into a thick pot and then prodded at with forks with bread on the end. The result is sheer astronomical bliss. We had to take a labyrinth of trains to get to Gruyere, the whole time we were thinking "the cheese place is gonna close, the CHEESE PLACE IS GONNA CLOSE!!" This is after I slept through my alarm and ran to class, only feasting on half a croissant before going to class. So needless to say, my stomach was well prepared to be coated in cheese. We were quite short with our waitress as we had waited 3 hours to get to this point and we were not welcoming any hold ups "THREEPLATESOFCHEESEONTHETABLENOWb****!!" was what we shouted as we ran through the door.

My friend Cristina summed it up quite nicely, "Heaven costs 22 francs and 50 cents." And it was. Cheese fondue is....dangerously good, too good for the untrained palette. I've been here 4 weeks and I've only JUST tasted the true bounty of Swiss food. I. Love. Fondue. Until a point... In economics class, we called it the point of over consumption; when you consume a product to a certain point and then you get tired of it and your consumption drops. Or for normal folks, TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING MAKES YOU ILL!!

Fondue = delicious, too much fondue = unknown. But on the train ride home we did contemplate what the puke consistency of a full meal of fondue would look like: Results may vary, was the best we could come up with.

But before we departed on the train, WE WENT TO THE MUSEUM OF CHEESE!! WOW COOL NEAT and above all NECESSARY!! From what I've discovered here in Switzerland, with their expansive collection of natural beauty, they sure as hell have skimped out on their museum department. Aside from the Museum of Cheese, there was also the Museum of Wheat and Bread! "Come on kids! Get your asses out of the car, IT'S BREAD TIME!!" Um...no thanks. BUT we went anyways, as there were free samples of CHEESE!! WOOWOO!!

This museum had an audio tour! BALLIN'! Needless to say I got bored of the English Bird yaking in my ear about how what cows eat ends up in the cheese and decided to spice up the tour by listening to it in JAPANESE!!Needless to say the little Japanese girl in my audio device thing with a consistant supply of helium in her system made the tour much more interesting! "GOOREEAAARRUUU (gruyere) CHEESUUU KAWAII!!" she screamed at the end of the tour. Cool. I also learned that watching cheese made is gross. It's like watching a birth in reverse, and slow motion. The end result is awesome (baby or cheese) but the process is something you don't really find necessary to delve into!

After the tour we decided to hit up the gift shop, a necessity at ANY Cheese Museum! We had to fend of the hoards of twatty British children who were buying up armfuls of Swiss crap to take home to their parents, a kind gesture I'm sure, but NOT ON MY TIME!! I gathered that they were there tryingto learn French too, but from their interactions at the till, I was guessing it wasn't going well. Their teacher, who was standing behind me, kept having to prompt them "SAY BONJOUR!! NOW SAY MERCI!! GOOD JOB TIMMY!! YOU'RE SPEAKING FRENCH NOW!!" When I got to the till to pay for my chocolate and Evian (it tastes better in North America for some reason...weird) I said "Bonjour" and she mumbled something, and then just to be nice, as she seemed stressed after being submitted to what I like to call, "British children tourture", I asked her "comment ca va" (how are you?). "OH MON DIEU!! You actually speak French. GREAT!! These kids, I tell you..." She rambled on for a while in French, but the fact that she said "You actually speak French!" boosted my confidence tenfold! I guess that means things are working here on this end! I'm speaking clearly, I can carry on a conversation (in non stressful situations only), and am actually enjoying the language!

So that's been the report from this week! Kelsey is coming in a matter of DAYS, I'm done the hard stuff in French, and life is great. Now just my Visa bill to sort out and life shall be SUPER DANDY once more!!

J'espère que tous les choses avec vous sont amiables et agréables! Bon Journée Tout !!

Robinson