Day 24: Vevey Day 1 - Gruyere and Broc

Today was a very busy day. We spent between 3 and 4 hours on the train today, and had many transfers. We visited 3 locations, involving the 3 C’s: cheese, chocolate, castle.

We began our day at around 7.30am. We had issues sleeping last night due to the state of the hostel. First, our room does not have any blinds, curtains, or shutters. Apparently none of the rooms in the hostel do. And our room looks out over a very popular platz, so the lights are on all night long. Fortunately, we managed to fashion a way to mount our towels to hang in front of the windows in such a way that they block out most of the light (but not all). It took a few tries, but using the clothesline we had packed, and a bit of duct tape (we don’t love the idea of putting duct tape on the window frame, but the alternative is the wall…), we managed to get a line strong enough to hold the two towels that we clothes pinned to the line.

Second, our room is located right next to the “common” room for our floor. This room has a television in it, and apparently French people like to watch tv VERY loud. We kindly asked the man to turn down the volume at about 10.30pm, but he didn’t do anything. We eventually resorted to earplugs, which Mary didn’t mind, but Jeff hasn’t learned how to sleep with them in.

Third, there is only one kitchen in the hostel, and it is on the same floor as reception. There were at least a dozen people trying to get their food and cook and wash up, and this made the tiny space a little chaotic. One Asian lady was frying her already cooked spaghetti… we found this a little strange, especially when she then put it in a plastic bag?

Anyway, we finally got out the door and made it to the train station after stopping at the coop pronto to grab some lunch (bread and what turned out to be Fresh cheese… something we hadn’t tried before). We caught a train that would eventually take us to Gruyere, but needed to transfer twice. Once we got to Gruyere, we walked up into the old town through the gate.

Once we were in the old town, we made our way down the main street towards the castle. Once inside the castle, we watched an 18 minute video about the history of the castle. This video was pretty impressive, and involved projects throughout the interior of the tiny theatre, and lots of sound effects. Everyone was given a set of headphones that were used so everyone could get the words in a language they would understand. After the movie, we explored the castle. It was set up very well to take you through the castle by a single path, and had many informative blurbs about the rooms. The strange thing about the castle was that it displayed a lot of modern art. It was very surreal art, and supposedly depicted artists’ impressions of the castle, but we didn’t really appreciate the art. There were also a lot of statues of mummy bound people that were a little strange. All of the modern art was post 1990.

Mary’s favourite room was the “Music Room”. In this room, there was a pianoforte that was built for use by Franz Liszt when he visited the area.

When we were finished breezing through the castle (we took it pretty quickly, as we had a busy day ahead of us), we walked down the road to the cheese factory, stopping on the way to catch a quick lunch of bread with fresh cheese and an apple. Inside this building, they have demonstrations of how Gruyere cheese is made. We were given an audio guide that walked us through the cheese making process, from the view of a cow named Cherry (named so because apparently she was born during cherry season...). Near the end of the tour, we came to an area that overlooked the area where cheese was made. We stood and watched for a while as the chef monitored the slicing of the curd.

After cheese making, we headed to the train station to go to Broc. In the town of Broc, we found the Nestle/Cailler chocolate factory. The entire town smelled like chocolate – it was amazing! From the moment we got off the train, we could smell the chocolate being made. We followed our noses (well, actually we followed signs, since our noses were of no help – the scent was everywhere) to the entrance to the touristy part of the factory, and entered. We were quickly tacked onto an English tour, and were hurried ahead of a massive tour group to join 3 other English speakers. Our group waited maybe 2 minutes before being invited into the tour area.

This tour of chocolate was unlike any tour I’d ever been on. It was not guided by a person, but rather by doors that opened and shut. When we entered into the first room, the door closed behind us, and a voice began introducing the history of chocolate. The floor then slowly moved downwards about 3 feet, like an elevator, and a door opened. We walked through the door into an Aztec land, and the door closed behind us. In the dark, a voice gave us some more information, and a few lights lit up features inside the room. Some curtains opened to reveal hidden secrets, and eventually the next door opened to let us through. The tour continued in this way for about 25 minutes, and took us through the history of chocolate as it made it’s way across the ocean into Europe, and how it was received by the church, etc. (Interesting fact – apparently Marie Antoinette requested a cup of hot chocolate as her last meal.)

When we were finished going through the tour area, we came out to an area where they explained where all their products came from (interesting fact – they only use Swiss sugar). They also had an area where you could walk along a chococlate making line (behind glass of course), and see the chocolate go from being hot and liquid, to being cooled in a shape, cut into pieces, covered in topping, cooled again, and then packaged – all done automatically by machines. And the best part was that we got to try a sample of the freshly made product when we were at the end of the line :).

After emerging from this area, we entered a chocolate tasting area. There was a large sign at the beginning describing proper chocolate tasting, but most people skipped quickly over this part. Jeff and I took the time to read about how you should first smell the chocolate and break it in half, then try a little bit and let it melt in your mouth and wait for the fruity flavours. Then you swallow and get the aftertaste. With the other half, you put it in your mouth and chew it, looking for special textures.

There were approximately a dozen different chocolates that they had for us to try, and we tried most of them. We split a few of the ones near the end, since we were starting to feel as though we’d had pleanty of chocolate. After the tasting, we went into the shop area, and Mary bought 6 bars of chocolate for 10fr, which was very reasonable in comparison to the prices in the grocery stores. Some of these bars may make it back to Canada, but some of them will be eaten while we’re in Switzerland. :p

We left the chocolate place at about 3:40, and made our way back to the train station. We found that we had an hour to waste before the next train came, so we found some water and visited the Nestle outlet store next to the station (which was more like a grocery store). We also had a carrot each.

The train trip back to Vevey was very long, and it was 6.30 before we were back in town. At this point, we needed to purchase dinner, so we headed towards the nearest Migros. Turns out everything in town closes at 6.30, so we very nearly didn’t get dinner. We were even kicked out of one store (That was a confusing conversation – we walked in and the person told us they were closing, but the only way out was to go through the whole store, but she wouldn’t let us. Eventually she called over her English speaking colleague that understood us and moved the one-way turn gate aside to let us out).  We eventually managed to purchase a frozen pizza and some dressing.

Back at the hostel, Jeff offered to make Mary dinner while she relaxed outside on the terrace in the sun. This was much appreciated since Mary didn’t do too well motion-sickness wise on the train today. He heated up the frozen pizza, which was pre-cooked, and made a lovely salad with lettuce and grated carrot (and balsamic dressing). We had wine to drink, and a bit of lemon water (we purchased some lemons the other day to use as dressing, but didn’t).

We are now relaxing, and plan on going for a walk along the lake later this evening.

We ended up going for a walk. We saw a bit of sunset red sky and a giant`s fork. Here are some images:

Tomorrow we hope to see two castles. The famous Chataeu Chillon and Chataeu Aigle.