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The Swiss Strip-show (October, 2009).

It all started out very innocently... I promise!

I was on my way from Interlaken to Lausanne to meet up with a French girl I had met in Egypt a few weeks prior. Caroline lives in the Alps on the French side of the Swiss/French border. She works as a nurse in Switzerland and offered to let me stay with her family (Yes, a French nurse, I know! This isn't where the story takes a turn towards the perverse, however). The train arrived in Lausanne around 10 pm, reasonably early for nearly every other city in the world. I exited the train station and entered into a world of silence. The night was cold and everyone was inside... somewhere. Caroline was working the nightshift at a nearby clinic and would pick me up at the train station around 7 am the following day. I had no hotel reservations as it was nearly impossible to justify spending over $150 on a mere 6 hours of sleep. I had a plan.

My plan sucked. The glow of golden arches across the street caught my attention and I headed to the familiar grease-joint to kill a few (8) hours. As I crossed the cobblestone streets, which I typically appreciate for their craftsmanship and intrinsic beauty, the last wheel of my tattered Thai bag succumbed to injuries from previous weeks of abuse. These horrible streets were now my enemy; remnants from an outdated era where the smoothness of asphalt was a merely a pipe dream. Exposed to the stone, my bag ripped as I angrily dragged it onwards.

The McDonalds advertised free wifi, which I used as justification for consuming yet another $11 Bigmac. I engulfed the hamburger in about 11 seconds and turned on the netbook, noticeably excited about checking my facebook after a horribly painful 3-day hiatus. I connected to the wifi only to discover you had to register with McDonalds for a free account. After spending 15 minutes filling out the detailed information form, they explained that a confirmation code would be sent to the Swiss mobile number that I didn't have. IT ISN'T FREE IF YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR SOMETHING ALONG THE WAY! McLiars... To make matters significantly worse, at a quarter till midnight a worker approached me and explained they were closing in 15 minutes... super.

I walked back to the train station, found a nice chair, and decided to finish a book I had started about 7 months before. There's something to be said for progress. It wasn't such a bad place to spend the night... really. The station was the epitome of Victorian architecture and fairly warm. Unfortunately, I didn't actually spend the night there as it closed after the last train arrived at 2 am. There was no place to go, and even if there was, I didn't know how to get there. I created a makeshift fort with my bags to shelter me from the cold drizzle falling from the sky... this would be the only time during this trip that I would be grateful for such a copious amount of luggage. I sat in the fetal position for hours waiting for the drizzle to transform into snow. I would freeze to death here in Switzerland... There were lots of taxi drivers there to pick up passengers that weren't. They gave me a sense of security until they began driving away around 3 am. I tried to be diligent in my efforts to read, but my hands were cold and the shivers gave way to bouncy words that were near impossible to read. Relief was on its way.

As the brigade of taxis dwindled down to a lonesome four, one of the drivers walked over and asked if I wanted to join them for coffee. I must have looked poor and miserable (which couldn't have been more true) because she assured me it would be free of charge. She directed me to another cab and we were on our way to the coffee shop. The driver's English was quite poor and must have been completely limited to basic directions. This was OK... it reminded me of Bangkok.

After a scenic drive through a sleeping Lausanne, we pulled into a lot. The building was quite plain and stood out among what was otherwise some very remarkable architecture. The inside was far from impressive and "full of character" in a bad way. The tight corridors were dimly lit; half concealing their peeling exteriors. The elevator slowly sputtered to the second floor where we entered what was meant to be an Italian restaurant. The menu had pizza. It even had ravioli. But everything else about the place screamed Brazil; from the faux palm trees to the neon "Copacabana" marquee. Loud dance beats pulsated through the paper-thin walls making it even harder to understand the taxi driver's attempts at English. He asked if I wanted a beer. "Coffee," I replied, quietly thinking to myself, "who starts drinking at 4 am?!?!?! " He must have either misunderstood me, or been really desperate for a drinking buddy because the waiter returned with two bottles of beer... and a pizza. The driver kept offering me slices, and I kept politely refusing them... I wasn't about to eat this nice man's dinner. We played this polite game for what seemed like hours until the other drivers arrived. The woman who had originally invited me had gone home, but there was another man who could carry on a semi-decent conversation. He was large and slightly balding with a thick beard. He asked where I was from and what I was doing in Lausanne, and then tried his best to understand my response. He insisted upon ordering me a pizza. And then insisted upon paying for it. The language barrier was a gigantic wall of separation, but I could tell my dinner companions were a genuinely nice group of guys.

After everyone had finished eating, the guys sat around chatting in German. One of them stood up to leave and the bearded driver said, "He is going to the club next door and wants to invite you." Not wanting to be impolite, and genuinely feeling curious about the commotion pouring out of the next room, I obliged. We slipped through a black curtain hanging between two pink bathroom doors and entered a dark room sparsely populated with Swiss 30-somethings standing around with drinks and cigarettes. They were all facing the far corner and were clearly fixated on something just beyond the bar. That something turned out to be a young, curvy Brazilian woman... bouncing around and losing a new piece of clothing with every overblown bass note. Of all the places in Switzerland I could have been, I had ended up at an underground Brazilian strip club! Before I had time to consider the morality of being there (and how to explain such a thing to people who I can't really communicate with), she began bouncing her way through the crowd, randomly dragging guys up to her makeshift "stage" and removing their clothes. Definitely my cue to leave. Being in such a venue in Switzerland of all places definitely met my criteria for a unique travel story... there was no need to allow myself to become part of the show.

The rest of the night paled in comparison. The taxi drivers took me back to the station and refused payment for the ride or dinner. I graciously thanked them and sat on bench waiting for Caroline to finish work. A few feet away sat a crazy man punching himself in the face every few minutes... I felt bad for the guy, but found a bit of twisted entertainment when he ordered coffee and a sandwich from the station's kiosk. Would a problematic involuntary action trump the need to maintain control of a scalding cup of coffee? To my surprise, he didn't spill a drop, which made me wonder why he didn't just hold a cup of Joe all the time... I didn't dwell on the thought too long. I was quite exhausted and my brain was busy processing the previous few hours.

Bombs Over Bangkok