The “Bean Counters” of Lausanne & a Welcome Return to New York City
Our host, Mark, offered to show us around Lausanne as his office, the Starbucks trading center in downtown Lausanne, made it an ideal starting point. It was yet another most generous offer from this lovely couple that we could not refuse. This morning, when we awoke, the children were still at home. Wednesdays are not school days in France. We shared breakfast of croissant and Pain au chocolat with the rest of the family, they left as we packed our bags for our return home. We locked up the house, deposited the key in its appropriate secret hiding place and drove off. The drive to Lausanne took us easily through the border again and past a “factory outlet” mall. As we were early for our appointment with Mark, we took advantage of the situation to explore, and found absolutely nothing that we wanted or would consider buying for anyone else. As usual Mark was intrigued by the contrast of the proximity of the old and the new.
On arrival in Lausanne, Gertrude had difficulty finding the precise address so we drove around a bit in circles, noticing that we were at the same location as two days earlier when we had driven right through the center of town with no appreciation of what we had seen.
We parked, found the building
and, after accidentally, setting off the security alarm, were welcomed to the offices of Starbucks’ coffee bean trading center. Mark showed us around the office, its special kitchen, roasting, grinding and tasting stations as well as the trading (computer) stations and its mini-Starbucks café, where he took our photo beside a coffee plant.
Mark then took us to visit his favorite chocolate shop in Lausanne, a block away inside part of the old city of Lausanne. The shop itself, Blondel, dates from 1850 and was family owned until recently.
We had thought that this was the chocolate shop that Susanna had mentioned on our flight to Zurich. However, we forgot, or neglected to check our notes and only on our return home did we learn that on the three drives along the road between Lausanne and Geneva we had missed visiting Tristan in Bougy-Villars, yet another reason why we’ll have to return to Switzerland.
Mark led us past the two Starbucks outlets in town as we walked up and down a few of the old streets of the city filled with farmers’ and craftspeople’s stalls, to the local Coop for our last meal in Switzerland, on the rooftop terrace overlooking old Lausanne, the lake and the mountains in France to the south.
Since we had driven by the vineyards hugging the lake on Monday we were curious about the local wines. Switzerland makes some lovely wines but not enough to support an export industry, so we brought some home. We said our goodbyes as we aimed for one of the Starbucks where we found some “gelt.”
We headed back to Geneva and the airport with more than enough time. However, about five miles from the airport traffic stopped to a crawl, due to a rather messy auto-truck accident. We were stopped still for minutes at a time, long enough for Mark to get a photograph out his side of the car of Mont Blanc… which we had not been able to see clearly until then.
We arrived at the airport in plenty of time for our flight because it was delayed in its arrival. That became an issue at Heathrow where the bus from Terminal 5 to Terminal 3, security and customs check, had Debbie running in her socks to the gate. Just barely were allowed on the plane, we settled into our seats for an uneventful flight home.
