In Search of Dessert

Saturday night we celebrated Jon’s 30th a little belated, at his family farm. The farm is always difficult for me, being that it feels incredibly lonely and isolated. It’s a mental thing. First you drive through a beautiful, pastoral valley which is populated by farmers, then you turn up a tiny road and into a protected cove with four farms. His is the last one. And every time we turn on to that road, I get the shivers. I feel worlds, and worlds away from anything familiar to me. It strikes me as so odd that after we marry, and someday far down the road, this farm might be partly mine. Not mine, but through Jonathan, a part of my life, really, in a much closer fashion. This is a very bizarre feeling to think of that.

Now enough about me.

We had a nice long Raclette dinner, and I know that people tried to
convince me that people were not really eating that much, but I feel like people were eating their
weight in cheese! The thing is, it is an incredibly long meal. Each person’s portion must be heated and served, and so people would eat one portion and have to wait for 15 other people to be served before getting more.

The Raclette is really a half a Raclette – meaning that the round is cut in half. Then the half is placed into a machine that rotates, and heats the top. When the top becomes gooey, someone slides their plate under, and then the cheese is scraped off and onto the plate, and the fixings. The fixings, shown below, are generally Cornichons (pickled cucumber, mushroom and onion) and Potatoes. I have got to say, this is my least favorite Swiss meal and I did not eat a bite of it. I had cake for dinner instead. My only saving excuse is that our good friends had fixed us a really great fondue the night before, and unfortunately I liked it so much that I ate too much and got the Fondue-Stomach ache all night. That meal is not one to mess around with.

I was exhausted (since I’d been awake sick all Friday night) and
crept away from the table around midnight to go to bed. Somewhere
around 1 a.m. I was jolted awake by a band playing in the living room of the plature. Yes, a band. A band made up of incredibly drunk and rambunctious people
using sticks and spoons on every possible surface and screaming and
singing and oh, this went on at the loudest volume humanly possible for
about two hours. Even Jon came into bed earlier than the music quit!! (This farm is just as much his friends’ as it is his, he says). I was somewhat relieved to hear someone mention – the following morning – that this had been their biggest, or most debaucherous, party to date. Why was I relieved? I am not sure, but I guess because I cannot imagine how they could have kept up this banging for two hours with screaming and Yee Hawing and EYEE EYEE EYEE CARAMBAing more than once in their lives.

So we have declared it necessary that these talented musicians perform something at our dinner at the marriage: We have our fingers crossed. And you can forget whatever you’ve heard about the Swiss not expressing themselves. All you need is a completely isolated location, and once they feel sufficiently secure of not being discovered.