We initially went to Lausanne because they have a satellite office for Starbucks. We had a tour scheduled for 9:30am, but got there kind of early, so we walked down the road and took in some of the sights near the office. There are lockers in the train station, which our luggage fit into, which was a lifesaver. It was $9 (Swiss Francs), but so worth it so we didn’t have to carry all of our stuff around. We stopped at a park that had mancala in it! We went back to starbucks (no pictures from this part of the trip, sorry) about 15 minutes before we were supposed to be there, and the person who answered the door asked us to come back. So we went to starbucks around the corner while waiting. When we came back, we were greeted with open arms. They were very excited to show us the (small) office and what they do. We had a brief tour (the office was really small, so it was quick), then were taken into the kitchen area for a “cupping.” This is quality assurance in the coffee world. We were handed an apron and a spoon and told to grab a spittoon to take with us (they were on wheels). There were bowls of coffee beans and 6 small cups of coffee, brewed from those beans. We watched as one of the employees showed us that you take a spoonful of coffee, make sure to slurp it and get it to the back of your mouth to ensure it gets to the taste buds in the back of your mouth, then swish it around in your mouth, then spit it into the spittoon. The employees did this 6 times per bowl (there were about 20 bowls), but we just tried a few from each country. The people who were working would take notes after each, and if something seemed off, they would compare notes. After the cupping, we were taken into a meeting room and shown a slideshow about what that office does. This small office buys all of the coffee for EVERY STARBUCKS IN THE WORLD. After the slideshow, as we were leaving, again, everyone was very welcoming and said they were happy that we came in. The man who toured us told us to reach out to him if we made it to Amsterdam (where there is another office), or if we needed help when we got to Germany. He told us that the waterfront was “just at the bottom of the hill,” so we decided to walk toward the waterfront. It was actually quite a ways down the hill, and realized that when Swiss people say “just over there,” it is actually further than you expect.
When we got to the bottom of the hill, we were very hungry, so we decided to get some food. After looking at a lot of the menus, we decided on pizza, which was SO GOOD at Boccalino. The pizzas are named after celebrities and they have Pharell Williams, Lady Gaga, George Cloony and Barack Obama, for example. We chose the John Kerry pizza and it was delicious. This was also the first full meal we had in Switzerland (not counting those hot dogs from the day before). After eating and grabbing a few souvenirs, we walked to the water front. They had checkers AND chess in the park. It seems that all of the parks in this city had some sort of giant game. When we decided to head up to Montreux, we thought about taking the bus up the hill, but then decided to walk (I think it was about 0.7 miles, all uphill). We grabbed our stuff from the lockers and moved onto the next part of our journey.
