how many trains can you almost miss in 36 hours?

okay, upon returning to switzerland, life got all crazy-like almost immediately. mostly work shittyness, since the simulation plugin i was trying to write at home wasn't working yet, and the lab we were supposed to use it in for the class was rapidly approaching. there were some looong days put in... however, i took off the following thursday (the 12th) so that i could do stuff with mike turk and his friends, who were blitzing through town for (no joke) approximately 36 hours. mike and jason came and met me at work on wednesday afternoon, and i showed them around a little and explained what we do, and they were kind enough to feign interest. ha. then we grabbed the necessaries at the grocery store on the way home, and once kelly, adam, and wendy showed up, we had a very nice fondue evening. six people sleeping in my little apartment required a tiny bit of creative engineering, but we made it, and were all reasonably comfortable, as far as i could tell.

the only problem was that i, in classic fashion, forgot once again that moving multiple people around takes much, much longer than getting just myself somewhere. so getting packed up and trying to get to the train station to go skiing the next morning involved a fair bit of sprinting, and i honestly didn't think there was any chance in hell that we were going to make our desired train (there would be another one an hour later), but somehow we did (with naught but about 2.7 seconds to spare), and in the rush, i think the lady at the window had screwed up, since even without the demi-tariff, their train+lift tickets were only about 60 francs (this is a phenomenally good deal). then, naturally, i let my guard down, since we were on the train, and we came within a hair's breadth of not getting off at the right stop to make the change. unbelievable.

but we did get off, and caught the little line going up the mountain to champery, where we rented them skis, and somehow the guy didn't charge them for the boots, so all in all, this day turned out to be a real steal. it was awesome.

once on the slopes, kelly pulled a deer-in-the-headlights, and suddenly couldn't do anything. she said she had been skiing before, just not for a long time, but for some reason she was too scared to try a lot of the time, so for the morning, mike, jason, and i took turns staying with her and trying to teach her stuff while the other two would take a run or so. eventually, we got her up and moving, if slowly, which was good. she wanted to stay on one of the smaller slopes, so at the beginning of the afternoon, the three of us took a quick loop around the near part of the french side of the mountain (we've got pictures of us in france [grin]), and then when we got back we took one more short run with kelly and it was time to head down so as not to miss the train back. got their equipment returned, got the train, and met adam and wendy back at the station in lausanne (they had opted to stay in lausanne for the day, not being interested in skiing). unfortunately, i had the dumb idea of trying to go across the street to the restaurant "ticino" where i had been before, and in general, it's a pretty nice restaurant, but swiss people don't understand that when you say you're in a hurry, and you only have an hour to eat, and they say it's okay, they're expected to make good on this promise. by the time we got our food, we had about 8 minutes to eat it, and the waiter was really pissy because we had the audacity [gasp!] to not order drinks. fucking bastard. well, at least the visitors got to see first-hand that i wasn't lying, and the stupid people here really are as irrational regarding beverage sales as i had said.

after inhaling dinner, and running back across the street to get their suitcases out of the locker in the train station, we got them onto their train to the airport, but only just barely [rolls eyes]. it was a rough and tumble 36 hours, with (as you may have noticed) what seemed like more than it's share of close calls, but i had a blast, and am really glad that they could come.

actually, i'm going to visit turk next weekend (march 3-5) in cambridge. i'm pretty excited about it. never been there. should be fun.