London Open House 2006
My laziest
Open House weekend for a good few years. I spent the morning shamelessly doing nothing, then decided to cut my losses an go somewhere fairly local in the afternoon.
So I headed off to Peckham to see
Will Alsop's Library. It's a bit of an odd building that's not sure whether it should be clad in copper or brightly coulored glass, nor whether it is tall and thin or short and fat. Raising the bulk of the building 5 stories up creates a useful public space underneith (and gets around the problems of burried cables running through the site), but it also makes for an odd and unwelcoming entrance (I couldn't help wondering why no space was made for a librarian's desk and main entrance on the ground floor). The main floors include three of Alsop's trademark pods that make for an unusual, but still very functional space, and it's a shame that the fourth pod has been omitted from the ground floor to create more space.
While in Peckham, I dropped in on the
Peckham House (as seen on
Grand Designs). It's a very interesting and innovative house - it had to be to fit within the constrained site. Sorry, no photos though, as Monty was overwhelmed with visitors, and we were ushered through very quickly as a result, but take a look at
his website.
An A to Z of Switzerland
A is for
airport - Where we started our journey. Actually that's not true, our journey started at silly o'clock in the morning when we attempted to fit a weeks worth of luggage into the boot of Phil's tiny Japanese sports car. Having got to the airport and packed things back into the bags they came out of, things went a bit more smoothly. We found a handy parking space next to the control tower and popped into the terminal for a quick coffee before take off.
B is for
balloon - The one thing our destination, Château-d'Oex, is famous for is the hot air balloon festival that takes place every January, it's in all the guide books, apparently its pretty good, oh, and it's good for ski-ing too - except it's now September, hmmm!
C is for
castles - There is no shortage of castles in Switzerland. Here is a selection of our favourites:
Château de Chillon, Château de Gruyères and Château d'Aigle
D is for
daisy - There is also no shortage of cows in Switzerland. I have no idea whether any of them are actually called Daisy though, so I guess I'm cheating a bit (and I only made it to 'C', the shame). To distract you from that, I could tell you that cowbells are not only for waking the tourists up each morning. Cow herds are quite hierarchical, and the important cows have the biggest bells. To impress some cows (momentarily) ring a very large bell and watch them come running.
E is for
English - "Many people speak English well enough to help you find your way around", proclaims the guidebook. Unfortunately the waitress in the cafe where we had lunch on our first day doesn't and, despite three years of lessons at school, we don't speak enough french to find our own way around (although we can hold reasonable conversations about birthdays, family members, and talk at some length about a range of fictional pets). Fortunately though the universal language of pointing is sufficient for purchasing an unidentified sandwich and a warm beverage.
F is for
fondue - Bread dipped into a big pot of molten cheese, you probably know the score. Sadly Ruth and Emma went home early and missed our chocolate and fruit extravaganza.
G is for
Gstaad - Celebrities are frequently spotted here...
...except by us, perhaps we were preocupied by the best breakfast in town - tip: have breakfast at Charleys.
H is for
hire car - Hire cars are expensive at Geneva Airpot. Especially so on Sundays
I is for
internet - Internet access is free at Geneva Airport. Even on Sundays (can you see where I'm heading with this?). The internet is a good place to book a hire car at a discount, for immediate collection, ahem!
J is for
jokers - Despite there being no shortage of wonderful scenery, one of us decided to spend a morning making a two pack house of cards (yeah, okay it was me). I did complete the top row, but then it fell down a few seconds later. Phil has video evidence, honest.
K is for
kilometres - The European measurement of road distance. We must have liked kilometers because we covered a lot of them (mainly on the way to and from Vevey).
L is for
Lousanne - We spent an afternoon in Lousanne and visited the Cathedral, which looms over the town.
Deciding to stop for a coffee, we smiled and waved at a cafe owner as we sat down at what turned out to be one of the neighbouring cafe's tables - oops, sorry!. On the way back to the car I spotted the stunning Palais de Rumine, but we didn't have time to visit any of it's museums.
M is for
mountain - Our chalet was about 2/3 of the way up a mountain, or perhaps it was just a steep hill. It certainly felt like a mountain when we walked up it, but the views were fantastic.
N is for
night - We didn't really work out what there was in the way of nightlife locally. We had a quiet drink in the village with Ruth and Emma one night, and some raucous games of boggle on several others.
O is for
Ouchy and
Olympics - Ouchy, near Lousanne has a museum celebrating the Olympics, with a park of interesting Olympics realted sculptures. Why? - Who knows? A good place to spend an hour or two though.
The picture on the left includes sculptures showing the trajectory of the long and high jumps, while the sculpture on the right represents the change in an athlete's lung capacity
P is for
painting - Janet and Michael spent a large part of the week painting. This is Janet's picture of the view from our chalet
Q is for
quote - For more details of our linguistic deficiencies see 'E for English', but quote of the week goes to Phil for this classic conversation at the Chateau de Chillon ticket office:
Phil - Do you speak English?
Salesman - Yes, I'll try.
Phil (holding up fingers and speaking as slowly and clearly as possible) - t-w-o!
It turned out that the salesman had been an au pair in Golders Green and was reasonably familiar with English numbers.
R is for
Raclette - A feast of warm cheese and potatoes, apparently. We were a little cheesed out and opted for roast lamb at Phil's friends' house near Lousanne instead.
S is for
supermarket - Fortunately Switzerland has some decent supermarkets. Otherwise our linguistic shortcomings would have seen us both starve and fail to return home with suitcases full of chocolate. And luckily, we knew that fruit and veg needed to be pre-weighed to avoid embarrassment at the checkout.
T is for
tour - We were lead on a tour of the cheese factory at Gruyère by a disembodied cow's voice, which was interesting. We also tried to visit the local chocolate factory, which smelled great, but was exceptionally closed. We were given free samples to make us go away though, and Emma was determined enough to return another day.
U is for
up - We only went up from our chalet once. It was the hottest part of the hottest day of the week, and it was quite hard work...
V is for
view -
...but the view was worth it.
W is for
winter sports - Alas, there were no winter sports to be had in Switzerland in September. Phil had been quite keen to find a little summer snow, and I did my best to feign disappointment.
X is for
eXtra - In another hillarious display of our inadequate language skills, I managed to add an extra pear to our sausage and leek casserole one evening (though it would be slightly more honest to say that the recipe card included no pears at all - in my defence the French words for pear and pepper are very similar). I think we did quite well to work the other ingredients out, and the pear added a little je ne sais quoi anyway.
Y is for
yummy - The most appropriate word for describing Swiss chocolate
Z is for
zero - The number of local radio stations that we liked. What an odd selection of music. A humourous distraction from the roadworks on our most commonly used stretch of motorway though.
