Day hike

This region is full of tourists. The "doing" sort. The ones here to hike, and not the groups that will bomb all your landscape photos by their mere presence, or the sort that is out to get piss drunk. I love seeing old couples up here, from all over Europe and beyond. The ones that haven't lost their youthful energy. I love the athletic, good looking young people. Everyone is so friendly up the trails as well, there's almost a standard compulsory greeting or occasional nod that every hiker is expected to give to the passerby.

We spent the day hiking up the Swiss Alps across to one of the nearby little towns, Furri, though it rained quite heavily from midday as was forecasted for today and tomorrow. It was great to experience some cooler weather after all these weeks. Didn't take away from its beauty nonetheless.

Train Travel

Yesterday afternoon we took the eight-hour train ride via Geneva to Zermatt, Switzerland. I've found that I really love long journeys, especially when they're scenic rides. Especially after you've explored whole cities, and have a little bit of stimuli to reflect over. 

Au Revoir Lyon

Swiss Alps tomorrow. 

Semantics of unhappiness

"There is something to be said here about the word "depression," which has almost entirely eliminated the word and even the concept of unhappiness from modern life. Of the thousands of patients I have seen, only two or three have ever claimed to be unhappy: all the rest have said that they were depressed. This semantic shift is deeply significant, for it implies that dissatisfaction with life is itself pathological, a medical condition, which it is the responsibility of the doctor to alleviate by medical means. Everyone has a right to health; depression is unhealthy; therefore everyone has a right to be happy (the opposite of being depressed). This idea in turn implies that one's state of mind, or one's mood, is or should be independent of the way that one lives one's life, a belief that must deprive human existence of all meaning, radically disconnecting reward from conduct. A ridiculous pas de deux between doctor and patient ensues: the patient pretends to be ill, and the doctor pretends to cure him. In the process, the patient is willfully blinded to the conduct that inevitably causes his misery in the first place"

- Theodore Dalrymple (The Frivolity of Evil)

Psychology

One of my other great loves in life. To read it. To play around and make it up a bit. To talk about it sometimes. The mediator that attempts to explain what we can possibly know of the core sciences, and of higher-order reasoning in philosophy! My obsession is getting bigger and better, and I'm finding it even more exciting a subject than I ever did before. Why peak now? I have just done three years of it at university, encountering some great intellectual pioneers and likeminded classmates, yet I'd taken it all for granted. It's now, when I don't have obligation, that I'm beginning to realise its significance for me, and can look up academia tailored for my own interests. Maybe because I also have more free time.

But since deferring university, my mind is not directed towards learning to achieve the best grades anymore. Maturity has something to do with it as well. I've seen and done so much more than I had as a first-year. When I examine myself internally, I've changed so much - such different interests, ways of spending time. Yet I'm so grateful for the university experience and its opportunities, forcing me to learn even when I didn't want to keep going. Don't always go by your feelings. How sporadic they are! 

And now I can't wait to go back for more. It's months away though... Oh feelings don't you die down.

Vieux Lyon

France is still amazing. I could stay here forever. I love it even more than I did when I wrote my original post. Anna is cool because she's pretty laid back at night time, so we just get some awesome food and go right back to our hotel room for "movie night" (aka movie-for-her night. I tend to lay back and do random crap so as not to fall asleep..)

We pass by a couple of the same streets every day but there's always some new thing that turns up that we'd never spotted before. Then there's certain places which we have to stop by every time we pass… the good old Patisserie de Pasion or something like that, just along the entrance to Vieux Lyon. Everything looks so delectable and cute, I vow to eat everything in it! Quiches, pizzas, little pastries with the usual and slightly more interesting flavours. I had a pistachio and apricot tart today just to add some extra fun. It's nice eating outside the cafe for breakfast, but Anna hates that we're always accompanied by suspicious little sparrows… We also treated ourselves to Bouchon Lyonnais last night for a traditional three-course French dinner. I had an entree of Salade Lyonnais (pretty much a Caesar salad), some pork sausages for main, and panna cotta for dessert.

We've been exploring a lot of the city. The newer part of Lyon is really great for its shopping districts and designer boutiques. But what I'm really loving is old city, Vieux Lyon. To reach it, you cross the Saone River through Pont Bonaparte and it's really just the whole region below that hilltop Fouviere Basilica. Yesterday we ditched the furnicular/cable car, and instead climbed up the hilltop to reach Fouviere! It was a great little hike - foresty, and there were delicate orchards and rose gardens dedicated to Our Lady.

The most exciting thing about Vieux Lyon in my opinion, is not only for its dainty shops and the cute restaurants, but because of these things called "traboules". Traboules are secret passageways along the city, that were used by the resistance during World War II to hinder German occupation. How cool is that. They were originally built for silk traders in the fourth century to facilitate their transport of textile merchandise along the river and to the rest of the city, but these days some of them are blocked off because they're actually on private property -entrances to private apartments and such. I sort of of think of them as awesome mazes from Alice in Wonderland. A lot of the doors are identical: two adjacent doors could be next to each other and one leads to some awesome winding open-air courtyard, and the other would lead to a dead end. Seriously cool stuff, check it out. I took all these photos already having passed the passageway doors and tunnels.

Lyon

I adore France. Adore it. There are moments when I still can't believe I'm finally here. I want to explore every single small town of this country. The small towns are the best. So far I've been to three regions of France, and each has had its own quaint little thing about it that makes it just a little bit different from the previous one. Yet they all have charm, and understated class. I love Lyon in that it's sophisticated, yet in a totally non-obnoxious way. The food is great, I could eat everything. The people are all so friendly and helpful, and I love practising what little French I know with them.

Today we went bike riding all along the Rhone river. We rented the bikes for the day, and were a bit confused at how the system worked at first, but people would always stop and try and help us. Good looking people! How embarrassing that I completely stacked it while walking my bike out. Bruises and swelling and everything hah. I love this place so much that I've found myself taking charge a little more than I used to compared to the other countries. I love navigating, and thinking up things to do this time with Grace's advice. We biked halfway through the city to a very large park, called Parc de Tete d'Or. We'd planned to do a picnic, because again the weather is wonderfully hot here. It's such a beautiful park -a large lake, botanic gardens,  a greenhouse, giraffes, lions, and apparently elephants too! I got a bit distracted with the scenery and veered off for a bit off-track, and so, lost Anna for the rest of the day! That's cool because I think sometimes you can appreciate natural places better if you're alone for at least part (in this case, most) of it. Happy ending because I got to see her later in the evening at Mass, stayed to do norms, etc.

Yesterday we went to the Cathedral de Fouviere, which is a beautiful cathedral on a hilltop, overlooking the city of Lyon. You had to take a cable-car up. It's kind of like Lyon's version of the Parisian Sacre Coer, in that it offers a nice panoramic view of the whole city. It's the most incredibly detailed cathedral I've ever seen so far (can't wait till Rome, I bet this is nothing compared to St Peter's Basilica). Anyway there were beautiful images of the Madonna everywhere. It also houses the Black Madonna: it's said that during the Black Plague the country began to be cured through people's intercessions, and this statue got blacker, like she was taking it all for the city. I whatsapp'd Mum the usual daily pics, and she said those were the most beautiful pictures I'd sent so far. Pretty funny considering I've sent her the most picturesque landscape images of misty mountains, huge cliffs, natural wonders, but hey that's just her opinion!