Seriously, lakes are EVERYWHERE.

We started off on Day 1 with a rainy jaunt around Burgaschisee, the little lake in my friend Sina’s hometown.

burgashisee
You know he’s a legit Swiss when he’s fishing in the rain

Day 2: We went back to Burgaschisee and got distracted by some geese and some rowboats, and also discovered that I don’t know the names of any fish in English so learning them in German only marginally useful.

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I’m not in the habit of taking a ton of pictures except when it gets me out of boat-cleaning duty
rowboat
My mother made fun of my (in)ability to row the boat in a straight line until she tried herself and was even less effective. Rowing in high school turned out to not be completely useless, sort of

Day 2 also involved visits to a cheese factory (Emmental) and a cookie factor (Kambly) and a very full tummy.

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Somehow the cheese is less appealing in a giant vat that the lady pictured is literally pouring cartons of cream into
cheeseMaking
We did a fresh cheese-making demo, and all of the (5-8 year old) kids got to keep a mini heart-shaped cheese and also me because I’m basically a kid

Day 3 brought us to Lausanne, next to Lake Geneva, to visit my mother’s friend who happens to have the most energetic almost-two-year-old I’ve met. (To be fair, I don’t spend a huge chunk of time hanging out with two-year-olds, so this data could be skewed.)

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I swear we didn’t match on purpose, but I wasn’t sad about it per se

Day 4 in Switzerland involved not one but TWO lakes, Thunersee (also pictured in the cover photo for this post) and Blausee, which were just lovely.

AnotherLakeThon
Touching Thunersee because obviously you have to touch every lake you visit. My mother takes pictures at the weirdest moments, and expects me to smile or something
Blausee
Bluest, clearest lake I’ve seen. Blausee was absolutely stunning
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Aaand that’s Sina’s entrance ticket you see floating in the middle of the water. She dropped it off the bridge and her legacy will live on until however long it takes paper to disintegrate in water, or until the fish get hungry enough to try eating it

We obviously had to stop by Burgaschisee again on the last day (Day 5) to say goodbye to all the lakes of Switzerland before jetting off to Amsterdam for the last bit of the trip. But what I really want to leave you with is this picture I took in Bern, the capital of Switzerland, because child-eating statues aren’t exactly commonplace in the United States, or normal in any place.

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Because a statue of an ogre devouring naked children obviously belongs on a fountain in the center of the capital city of Switzerland

Thanks to my mother for most of the pictures, and to my friend Sina for being a wonderful host!