Lausanne

So yes, the snoring was annoying at 3am. At midnight I was up because I was worried - earplugs would mean better sleep but then I would miss my important alarm. The girls came back to the room around 1 am and at 5:30 am I was woken by the sun. Clearly I didn't get a lot of sleep. I got up shortly after 6am and you would think that would be plenty of time to make it to Lausanne for 9am but that wasn't the case. I suppose it would have been faster if I had already purchased tickets, but every time, I missed the first bus/train because I had to stand in line for a ticket. It was good that I had done a dry run of campus using Google maps and knew what I was looking for because I made my meeting with 10 minutes to spare.

After my meeting I headed into Lausanne for some lunch and to check out the fantastic gothic cathedral.

Yes, I am Jesus'd out after Italy but it was still interesting, plus I had a great view of the city and the lake.
Then I walked to museum of L'art Brut, outsider art. Like outsider music (as I learned from that fantastic and now gone podcast Ongoing History of New Music) outsider art is made by people with no training, they are social outsiders, can be mentally ill and they make their art soley to please themselves. The museum was fantastic. The art had the appearance of 'modern' art but I guess I liked it more because it was made by people who just made it because it looked good, not because they had some grand story to tell or some comment on the human condition.

The first artist was a man who had invented a machine to automate vine grafting and when he forgot to renew the patent one year, other companies took it over and he never made any profit from it. This drove him to deep depression and into an institution where he would construct fanciful machinery 'lubricated with his own excrement'. Those were not on display but his paintings were. Some of the art was quite stunning, one man ate copious amounts of seafood so he would have enough shells for his art. In the museum were these stuning diorama's of his shell art, multicoloured and very intricate reefs of corals and fish. Certainly what characterized most of the art was the sheer amount of time that went into it. For example there were careful fine ink drawings that went on for meters, or the one man confined to a narrow room with wooden panelling who carved it using his sharpened spoon for years.

Many of the artists I noticed were committed to institutions after or during a war. It seems like the shock of the war and going off to fight was so great it was a turning point in many people's lives. I wonder about the robustness of people, if circumstances changed, who would come out with their head straight. There were also many examples of people who developed schizophrenia in their 30's and 40's. How's that for life. In the story of the Ant and the Grasshopper I'm the Ant. I try hard to prepare today for what is coming tomorrow but my difficulty comes in that you can't do that with happiness. Life doesn't end when you find the job/man/home and now you are stuck on happy (ever after). So even these people who were more settled at one point - married perhaps with kids, they then develop schizophrenia or are called off to war and lose it. Who knows what is coming up in life. Of course, this is sadly what happens when Carly is alone in her thoughts for merely two days, way too much existentialism. When I settle with my next job I'll have to make friends quickly so I have people to talk to! A boyfriend would be nice too. But then again in life a SO could cheat, your children could be disappointments, but your true place of contentment could be creating structures lubricated with your own excrement.

After the Outsider Art I caught a bus with a street name I thought I recognized - excellent, I ended up at the train station. I took the tram down to Ouchy (yes, that's the name and I can't pronounce it). This is a lovely suburb? continuation of the city? on the water. I walked along the water to the Olympic museum and (free pass yeah! only 387 museums to go!) went inside. They had a display of all the Olympic torches which started with Berlin as the Nazis used it as a tool for rousing national unity and pride. There was stirring music playing continually, and videos of the torch relay playing constantly on background televisions. Lausanne is the headquarters? of that favourite committee, the IOC hence the museum. I skimmed through the museum but the gardens outside were very lovely. Damn, I need to buy a book. Or talk to someone. Where's a frenchman with an offer for coffee when you need him!