Day 3 – A Tale of Four Cities

The Gruyere cheese factory tour was a hoot. The audio guide was narrated (English was an option, thankfully) by a young female with a Britishy accent pretending to be a cow named Cherry. If this all sounds weird to you… it was.

We walked down the hall of smells and turned the corner to see the cheese factory proper. As it turns out, one can make a very large amount of cheese in a fairly small amount of space. The factory consisted of four large vats where the milk was being processed, some salt baths, and some cheese squeezes. All told, it probably took no more than about 2500 square feet of space to make approximately 280 pounds of cheesy goodness.

After watching the cheese wranglers work their magic for a bit, we proceeded to get quizzed on our newfound knowledge (don’t pick the wrong answer or you make the cow mad, and no one wants that.) before doing a bit of shopping in the gift shop.

After satisfying our consumeristic needs we hopped back in Das Auto and tootled down the road to the Castle of Gruyères. And a funny thing happened on the way to the castle, as they say.

At the base of the castle is the little town of Old Gruyères. This quaint town is the very epitome of rustic old-world charm. The roads are cobblestone and slope wildly about the town. Everywhere you look you see giant mountains and tiny houses with steepled roofs. It is the town that time forgot. Oh, and located right across the street from the cozy tavern is home to the official H.R. Geiger museum.

For those who don’t know, Geiger was the Oscar-winning artist who designed the non-Sigourney-Weaver creatures in the films Alien(s). He also did work on Species and a number of other smaller films. His work is largely a collection of low-chromatic sketches of nightmarish biotechnological portraitures and landscapes.

The museum that bears his name is very surreal. Upon entering through the large alien-themed doors one encounters the receptionist. Naturally, she is wearing all black, has tattoos and piercings, and is listening to Disposable Heroes. One imagines the local populace gathering across the street, hunched over a cup of mead while they speak softly to one another about which large body of water the receptionist will be thrown into so as to determine the level of her witchery.

Also inside the museum is a lot of art from the movies proper in the museum and a bunch of related alien-themed drawings, paintings, and sculptures. There are life-sized statues of the alien monsters hanging from the walls and a table-and-chair set that Marylin Manson would be proud to own. I wanted to see about picking up one of the large wall-sized murals. Megan voted no.

After wandering the alien world, we moved on to medieval times at the Gruyères castle. Think Knights of the Round Table x 10,000,000 awesomeness points. It was amazing. The castle sits atop a huge hill with amazing views of the surrounding country side. Once inside, you start in the basement prison and then work your way up to the towers at the top. Along the way you see beautiful art (both period and modern, as the castle doubles as an art gallery) and displays of the way it all supposedly looked in the 14th Century. Though I’m guessing they tidied up a little for us, though; I usually hide the junk mail and dirty laundry when I have people coming over, too.

The next stop on our tour was the Chocolate factory in Broc. Yes, chocolate factory. The initial tour was like a Disney ride (if you had to walk on a Disney Ride). Each room was designed to explain a particular aspect of chocolate-making or the Cailler/Nestle chocolate dynasty. It was well done, but of course, the real awesomeisity occurred in the last room where they set out a chocolate buffet of wonderfabulousity in which you can gorge yourself on chocolate until your completely sick or you’re ready to move onto the gift shop where you can buy more… Chocolate!!!

Our final stop of the day was Bern, which apparently means “Everything in this city is bear-themed” in German. It was a very charming town with a beautiful clock tower and a camera shop where we could get the card reader that Rolf needed to download photos off his camera. So, in general, a great place.

After a long day on the road, we finally headed back to Geneva for some foodstuffs and drinks (7-up + beer = Heaven) before heading off to sleepy-bye for the night.

P.S. Somewhere in all of this we managed to pose with a statue of Freddie Mercury, because that’s how we roll in Switzerland.



-Rolf & Megan