Ok, Nicole - Here You Go...!

It was a birthday for the history books - or at least for facebook, though Mathias might lose a few of the memories, if that is the case...Spirits were high, extra chairs were in demand, and pants were sparse (Nicole, LOL) as we partied into the night.

Well, ok, to be a little more precise, the rest of them partied into the night. I hopped a train back toward Geneva and my two hour journey home. I find it strange that I would never have considered traveling two hours in the States (so four hours altogether) just to go to dinner with friends, but here I think nothing of jumping up to Nyon or Lausanne on random evenings. Nyon isn't quite as far...just an hour and a bit, but I still end up there three nights a week or so...

But back to our evening. So Nicole is turning twenty-three on Tuesday (here's a shout out to her) and since the thing to do in Switzerland is to throw your own parties, she invited a bunch of people to Lausanne for dinner, dessert and dancing. I only made it to the dinner part of the evening, but it was FUN. The restaurant we went to was a hole-in-the-wall German place called Le Bavaria where the tables were close together and the atmosphere was loud. It was hard to hear myself think, but that wasn't a problem since I was doing more laughing than thinking anyway. lol...good memories, good memories.

Nicole, who is from Rhode Island, followed the current European trend of wearing leggings instead of pants and ended up freezing the entire night. She did look adorable, though. :-) She also wore the tiniest bit of blush on her nose, which made for a lot of laughs as she rubbed and rubbed to get it off when she realized that it was showing up too much in pictures - and all the rubbing just made her nose more and more pink! We took loads of pictures! And all of them amazingly happy. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera in my haste to get out the door, so I'll have to rip pics off of friends' facebooks at a later point in time. But there were a few I really hope don't end up on facebook...(please, Nicole, if you read this, as I'm sure you will...please, please don't put up that ugly one of me...please, I beg you...just put up that last cute one...please.)

My personal biggest laugh of the evening (which won't seem nearly as funny now, but I'll blog it anyway for the memory's sake) happened as we were wrapping up our dinner. I had told Mathias earlier in the evening that there was a picture of him on my facebook (TNT evening album, pic of three guys and a girl holding up their pinkies, man to the right), but he said that he isn't a member of facebook because he "is a member of various other internet portals." (Mathias, btw, is from Germany, and he is cool.)

So when the subject came up later and Nicole asked me why Mathias wasn't on facebook, I said, "Because he is a member of various other internet portals," thinking that since I was just quoting, it would make perfect sense.

Instead, about six people started laughing as I heard Mathias say over my shoulder, "Heather, that sounds weird."

So then I couldn't stop laughing as I told him that I was just quoting him, and then he got confused because he didn't remember saying it, and so we all just laughed and laughed for a long time. But I think I laughed the hardest. And the others were really just laughing at me. But it was funny!

Maybe stuff like that sounds better when it isn't said by an American. But who could really know until after the fact??

The most insulting comment of the evening happened when the waiter got really aggravated as he was cleaning up our plates. Tension was already high with our waiters because instead of the nine people who were supposed to be there, thirteen showed up, and there weren't any extra seats to be had...They had to ask some other customers to move to different tables, and tell even others to come back later...it was kind of a big mess for a bit there, and just when we thought people would stop showing up, another one of us would walk through the door. So the waiters were aggravated. So later as they were cleaning up, we girls were still taking pictures, and Nicole and I heard the guy closest to us mumble, "...you girls are really stupid!"

Nicole and I were just shocked. We thought about complaining to the manager, but since Nicole's boss owns the place, we didn't want to cause a scene. And they guy would just have said that he didn't say it...But still...thirteen people show up to eat their food and instead of saying "thanks for coming!" they have to call us stupid?? Come on??! We were just having fun. And I have to say, if I had been that waiter, I could have found a less adolescent word than "stupid." Just a thought.

So once again this has turned into a much longer blog than I meant it to be. This is how you can tell the difference between a writer at heart, and those who blog just to keep up with friends or share jokes or pictures.

Nicole, have a really happy birthday, and I'll see you at church tomorrow!

Ta, daahlings,
That girl in Switzerland