Day 3: Castle and Cheese

on

by Tiara Kemp 

The two big cities toured on this day were Gruyere and Montreux. In Gruyere, it is home to the "La Maison du Gruyere". This is where they make the famous Switzerland Cheese. They annually make about 29,000 tons of cheese. This "show dairy" was opened in 1969. Here, you can view workers making the cheese while being on a self guided tour. This tour was interactive and entertaining. The voice was spoken from the perspective of a cow, which sheds light as to how they treat their animals in Switzerland (with kindness). After spending time at the Gruyere "La Maison du Gruyere", we enjoyed a nice picnic lunch outside. 

group on the bus to the cheese factory
















Lily & T post picnic
Smelling one of the flowers
that cows in Geneva eat for cheese
















group picture with silly cow
picnic lunch
















cheese wheel
cheese wheel
















Dayana & T listening to the audio cheese tour















Following lunch, we went to the famous Gruyere Castle. It was built in the 13th century.

view from cheese factory















view of garden from castle






 







view from balcony of children's room
castle garden
view from castle








hidden stairwell

 












Lily & T
Dayana & T









cat at the castle 















chicken at Gruyere Castle

















Haly & T in the castle 









fireplace in castle bigger than me










group photo in pretty dining room










One of the things that I wanted to take special note in is some of the big differences within Switz culture and American culture. Some things that were pretty shocking to me is how physically active they are and how much they smoke. In America, cigarettes aren't very common. The main method of smoking is via vape. Here, everyone and their brother is smoking cigarettes... the stinky kind too. In addition, they bring their dogs EVERYWHERE. They are also very sustainable and eco friendly. They are also very into their bread. They have bread with everything.      

freshly baked bread in the grocery store
sustainable cutlery
















While we were at the cheese factory and castle, we met this amazing group of people that were celebrating their 50th anniversary. There were so fun to communicate with. The girl in the striped shirt, Suzanne, also graduated Maryville College. She minored in ASL (american sign language). She was able to translate their French sign language to American sign language and help us have a conversation. After about 20 minutes of conversing, the hearing daughter came out and helped to have an even more in depth conversation. They had the same plan we did to go to the castle, so we got to hang out with them at the castle too! 


group photo of deaf and hearing friends
















We are all one