Party in the Swiss ambassador's residence

When I took this photo, the ambassador asked me if I was doing some form of industrial espionage to steal business from Swiss chocolate manufacturers. I said no.

Last Tuesday I had to go to Tokyo, to the home of the Swiss ambassador to Japan, for a research meeting. Actually they wanted my professor to come, but he is travelling abroad somewhere so he e-mailed them and said that I would go instead. He did cc me on that e-mail, but actually being asked might have been nice too...

Very tiny but very good beef.

The meeting was to start at 9:15 on Tuesday morning, so I would have to leave Sapporo on Monday night to be there in time. Monday was however a Holiday here in Japan (the "Sea day") and I had other plans (a wedding). In the end, I got up at 4:30 am and took the first flight out of Sapporo to Tokyo, which meant I arrived at the ambassador's residence slightly before 10. By then, the presentation that my professor thought was most important was just about finishing (it ended slightly before the scheduled time), so I missed 97% of that.

The desserts were covered in gold. I guess Switzerland just has too much gold and stuff.

There were three more presentations after that, and then a panel discussion. There were two very good presentations that I enjoyed, and there was also some very nice food.

I did however get a very bad cold on Monday evening, so flying back and forth to Tokyo was not great. The super hot summer of Tokyo was not that nice either, but my ears going weird from the flying had me most distracted. Last year I got "sudden deafness" and lost the hearing on one ear. Though most of the hearing came back three weeks later, I would very much prefer not to experience that again (and some hearing never came back). At that time my ear felt weird but did not hurt. After flying, it felt quite similar... I figured it was just the combination of a cold and flying, but it still made me uneasy, haha. I kept checking "do I still hear low frequencies OK?" with ear phones in the plane etc., many times. I am getting paranoid about my ears acting weird. Especially since the chances of not becoming permanently deaf from sudden deafness decrease quickly with time from onset to when you start treatment. If I get that crap again, I want to find out quickly :-)

Japanese calabrese and Suiss calabrese

Japanese calabrese

A guy I know runs his own little Italian restaurant in Sapporo. He makes excellent pizzas, and he throws the pizza dough in the air in a fairly spectacular way. One of my favorite pizzas at his place is the calabrese, spicy sausage pizza. I had the same in a very Italian place in Switzerland to compare, and they were quite similar. Both were good.

Swiss calabrese

One last Swiss meal

We had lunch at the Geneva train station before leaving for the airport. My colleague had pizza, my boss had pasta carbonara, and I had meat with cheese. Switzerland is famous for cheese, so I figured it was somewhat Swiss at least. It was good.

Switzerland is also famous for chocolate, and this chocolate drink was very nice.

Last supper, Lausanne version

Our last night in Lausanne, my colleague suggested we have pizza again. I suggested we not. Our boss just wanted a salad. In the end we compromised and went to a cheap looking place that had salads, pizzas, and other food.

I ordered some local version of cheese fondue where they mix tomatoes into the cheese. Instead of bread you dip potatoes in the tomato cheese. It was pretty good, but normal cheese fondue is better.

Salad, with the boss's beloved mushrooms. Apparently this type of lettuce is called "Lion's tooth" in Lausanne. Every menu everywhere in the city had Lion's tooth salad with something. We asked our English speaking waitress what these lion's teeth were, and she said she did not know the English word (which is "dandelion", coming from the French "dent de lion" = lion's tooth) but she pointed to a photo of salad and said: "This".

The second pizza of the day for my colleague.

 

Pizza!

The last day of work, we got off work early enough to go have lunch somewhere other than the student cafeteria. My colleague wanted to have pizza, since pizza in Japan is usually not very exciting compared to European pizza.

Lausanne is close to Italy, so we found lots of Italian restaurants. We picked one more or less at random and went inside to have pizza. The staff did not speak English, but they spoke French and Italian (neither of which we spoke). The menu was in French, but that is close enough to English to understand pizza toppings.

Our boss was very skeptical about having pizza but the pizzas were very good and he later said that he actually was glad we had pizza. No one forced him to come with us but he usually wants to spend 100% of the time together. The only two times he has not come with us on trips abroad were when we went to have "junk food kebab" in Germany (he had a meeting with someone else) and when we had goat testicles in Greece (he refused because he thought it would be disgusting). He loves mushrooms and was very happy that there was pizza with mushrooms available. I don't think I have ever seen a European pizza place without mushroom available on at least some pizza, but he found it exciting.

I ordered a "Calabrese" since that is a type of pizza I often have at a friends place in Sapporo. I wanted to see how similar they were. They both have spicy sausage, so they were fairly similar.

My pizza loving colleague in the end ended up having pizza for lunch, pizza for dinner, and then pizza for lunch the next day too... I like pizza too, but when visiting a new country for the first time, having only pizza seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity.

The second Lausanne dinner

The restaurant of the second Lausanne dinner was located very close to our hotel. Less than five minutes walking. So of course we decided to walk there. Our professor was skeptical of our sense of direction. There were lots of other participants staying at the same hotel, so we left the hotel in a group of 15 or so. In an intersection, the group stopped and no one seemed to know where to go, but me and my Swedish colleague at least managed to convince one British cancer researcher that we knew what we were doing and she followed us when we walked ahead to the restaurant. The rest of the party came later, but about 5 minutes later so either they went the wrong way or they were standing around indecisive for a long time. Our professor stuck to that group this evening.

A "small" starter.

The food was again very good. We got "meat fondue". This means boiling different types of meat in oil and then dipping them in different sauces. There was curry sauce, garlic sauce, spicy sauce, etc. There were three types of meat: chicken, beef, and horse. In Sweden we also eat horse, but some of the other guests were skeptical. The food is somewhat similar to Japanese shabu-shabu, though the meat is much thicker.

Horse, beef, and chicken.

Some people instead wanted to have cheese fondue, including the woman sitting next to me. I managed to steal some cheese fondue from here at an unguarded movement. The famous Swiss cheese fondue was good, but the cheese fondue you can get in Japan if you go to an expensive place tastes pretty much the same. Something I like in Japan is that you get not only bread, like in Switzerland and France, but you also get various vegetables, sausages, etc. to dip in the cheese. More variety.

Cheese fondue

Stolen cheese fondue

Some vegetarians had a potato, cheese, and egg dish instead.

The green tea did not taste like any green tea in Japan (where there are several sorts).

When the dessert showed up, we were all pretty much full but it was still good. 

Dinner in Lausanne

Swiss dinner

The first day of work there was a dinner scheduled for everyone. It was not that far from our hotel, so me and my Swedish colleague planned to walk there. Then we would get to see something of the city too, which would be nice since we would not really have time to do any sightseeing.

Not the corner where we should have turned.

On the map it looked like about a 30 minutes walk, which would have been nice. We ended up getting lost so it took 45 minutes instead. We turned left one street too early and then there was no way to get back to were we wanted to go. It also turns out to be mainly uphill climbing wherever you go in Lausanne. I would have though that around half the time you would go downwards, but that never happened to us during our four days in the city...

The restaurant on top of a mountain.

Our Japanese professor who had decided that if we though it was walking distance he would walk with us was very upset with me. I have no idea why it is always my fault when we get lost of my responsibility to get us where we are going. I have never been to Switzerland but he has been in Lausanne several times... It is the same wherever we go.

The restaurant looked very nice inside too.

Soup

Dessert

Anyway, we reached the top of a mountain about 10 seconds before the time the dinner was supposed to start, and we had a very nice dinner. We got smoked sausages, mustard sauce, some potato based dish, and a very nice dessert. All of it (except maybe the dessert) were local specialties, they said.

On our way home we saw a lit cathedral.

Student food in Lausanne

My first lunch in Lausanne

We did not have much time for lunch, so we went to the student cafeteria and ate there. The food was good, but cost about 4 times more than cafeteria food in Japan. So it cost about twice what I used to pay in Sweden.

My second lunch in Lausanne

My Swedish colleague tried the rhubarb pie one day, and said that it was good.