Given that at time I find the kitschiness factor unbearable, I promised myself I wouldn’t bang on too much about Christmas markets - be they Dutch, German, general Euro or whatever. So I’ll limit myself to a short comment on someone else’s attempt at doing them justice. This post is making me nostalgic, and I’ve actually got a Dutch Chrissie market right down the road…nothing like lots of fairy lights and a bucket or two of Gluehwein to help you get into the spirit of things!

It really is a momentous occasion. Unprecedented, in fact. This is a big day, a big day indeed - the first ever Christanzalia. (That’s Christmas in Konstanz for Team Australia).

There were no holds barred when we stormed the supermarket early this morning in search of much sought-after supplies. Not willing to brave the age-old battle between turkey, inexperienced kitchenhands (us) and the most disgusting oven the world has ever seen (that in our residence hall) we settled for a roast chicken. Didn’t hold back on anything else, though, no indeedy - we’re talking fresh cream puffs from the bakery at two euros a pop, none of that frozen 79 cent rubbish.

After careful deliberation we select Lozz’s kitchen as the scene of our roast because the cleaning ladies have allegedly made an appearance there at some point in the last five months and, shockingly, it’s equipped with slightly more than one rusted pot with broken handle.

Our white plastic Christmas tree with only two of a dozen flashing lights in working order is undoubtedly tacky but erected with love and a liberal helping of vodka - hey, it’s cold out. With the classic Mariah Carey Christmas Anthology in the background, we whip up a meal unparalleled in the history of the world, providing you’re not fussy about soggy vegetables and solid gravy.

Merry Christmas. Oops – Christanzalia, that is.

Ok, so it’s not a very festive post given the time of year, but I couldn’t resist since I was only yesterday on about my stellar performance at the Kreuzlingen ice rink…Watching this vid almost makes me glad to hand my rental boots back in and cut my fledgling - ok, one-attempt-only - ice skating career short. A warning for those of you with weak stomachs: don’t go here.

It doesn’t normally follow that one would undertake an activity where legs can be broken, heads split and fingers sliced off underfoot willingly, but the weather man promised us snow this week and has so far delivered only a dribble of dirty slush. So when we reached the ice rink in the border town of Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, we traded in our dribbly dirty slush for a solid hunk of ice. At least, I hope it was solid.

Lozz, the veteran among us with four previous visits to ice rinks (this was my first), got a little carried away with the need for speed and started swooshing up to Laura and I every lap and asking breathlessly ‘What was that then? Eight, nine seconds?’ ‘Um, I think about 4:54 actually.’ After this she resigned herself to trying icy pirouettes but soon strayed into the violent game of hockey in the centre of the rink and caused a domino-effect series of particularly impressive falls.

Meanwhile, back by the fence, Laura and I were clinging on for dear life. There’s something unnerving about teetering precariously on a paper-thin metal edge while dozens of Swiss maniacs tooting party blowers and wearing Santa hats fly past with no regard for the general uncoordination of others.

But it was all in all a successful, if chilly outing, with not a damaged limb or disfiguration to be spoken of, provided the Bulgarian exchange student’s dislocated shoulder can be classed as a minor surface wound.

Given that it poured yesterday, our one and only full day in Vevey, it was only natural that the sun came into view this morning just as we were checking out, and of course we ended up spending practically the whole day on the train.

And this wasn’t your typical souped-up Swiss master train - we’d discovered it was cheaper to ride the ‘panoramic train’, which provides the best views of Switzerland by way of travelling at 3kms per hour and stopping at every possible station along the way.

The train was packed with kids and old people, meaning that we were the only ones older than 4 but less than 400, so as we boarded we had to make a snap decision as to whether we wanted to be the disturbers or the disturbees. All having a natural tendency for the former, we squeezed into a carriage full of pensioners and I was rewarded for this indiscretion by being seated next to an old woman with a goiter so monstrous she almost knocked me out with it every time she turned her head.

But as for the scenery, it was straight out of the The Sound of Music. We trundled over snowy mountain peaks, fields of sunflowers and cows with bells around their necks, and through tiny villages dotted with log cabins and townsfolk who stood by their gates and waved the train through.

Inside our carriage though, we were all ravenous but the only thing we had that vaguely resembled something edible was a three-day-old loaf of bread. So we sat there in first class (we’d taken the liberty of upgrading ourselves) amongst the Swiss rich and elderly dining on our dry crusts of bread and ocassionally breaking into Julie Andrews songs.

Still ticked off about yesterday’s let-down with the Chocolate Train. Have been scouting about other random blogs to see if anyone else has managed to pull it off, but I’m starting to think it’s all one big Swiss-chocolatey conspiracy and there really is no Chocolate Train at all. “Mike” here claims to have been on it, but the lack of detail and suspiciously inconspicuous name makes me wonder…

To our eternal misery, the Chocolate Train that we’d seen advertised in Vevey runs only from June to October. This is a crushing blow. We’re forced to settle for the chocolate museum instead - Vevey is, after all, home to the world headquarters of Nestle.

Being the sassy and vibrant women that we are, we marched into the factory posing as international taste-testers and demanded to speak with Mr Nestle’s sons, who are reportedly all of marriageable age. Not. What actually happened was we spent our morning wandering around what is quite possibly the most boring museum in the history of the world.

It looked promising at first. The brochure boasted of four floors, each more delicious-sounding than the last: Production, Digestion, Consumption, and Restaurant. But all we found in the first room was a thirty-year old plastic display case, and in the next, and the next, until with increasing panic we surged towards the purported climax - the legendary ‘Nestle room’- only to find it was just a boarding room that happened to be panelled in brown. Oh, the inhumanity.

Half of the displays weren’t even chocolate related: one sign in the ‘Food Room’ informed us dully that ‘Alcohol can cause a variety of problems, including weight gain, if taken regularly in substantial quantities. Alcohol abuse seriously impairs both physical and mental health.’ We all nodded solemnly and wisely when we read this, even taking a photograph for future reference, then promptly forgot all about it.

Next to this was one of those machines that calculates how much exercise is needed to work off the naughtiness of certain junk foods. Our most recent sugary obsession, the Berliner (like a closed donut with jam inside) = 1 match of football. Our minds were cast back guiltily to the day we asked for 25 of these, hoping to get a discount for bulk buying…

The highlight of the museum was without doubt the interactive 3D film about digestion, during which we could be found ducking flying flecks of bile and mucus. The narrator explained ‘Once a certain amount of feces has accumulated one feels an automatic urge to defecate’, and encouraged us to wiggle our joysticks in order to help loosen the stools. Nice.

All evidence points to Switzerland being the most prosperous nation on earth. Where else are all the taxis Jaguars, and the truck drivers decked out in Ralph Lauren polos?

One of the oddest things is hearing contruction workers - true yobbos with their coin slot pants - calling out to each other in French, which still sounds to me like the language of aristocrats, artists and other assorted romanticals (my newly-coined word). Although this isn’t as funny as being in the German speaking part of the country - you haven’t witnessed phlegm at its most prevalent until you’ve heard people speaking Swiss-German.

At night we prowl about Vevey in search of entertainment but for some unexplained reason all the bars and restaurants are shut and barred. The one place that projects any liveliness at all is a sole establishment by the lake, which we make a beeline for, only to find it floating away just as we approach - a party boat.

So, with nothing else to do with ourselves, we strip off and go skinny dipping in Lake Geneva in the middle of the night. Well, that’s not strictly true, but it would have made a better story. What we actually do is trudge back to our hostel and crawl into bed.

Unsurprisingly, seems I’m not the only one loitering about Vevey in the rain with a camera. Check out some more stellar pics here….

The scenery around Lake Geneva looks like nothing so much as an unfinished painting, because the clouds hide the bulk of the French Alps from view, meaning there seems to be a whole row of mountain peaks just floating about in the middle of the sky.

It really is a spectacular area though, if a little culturally confused - the Swiss can’t seem to decide if they’re French, German or Italian, so they’ve ended up like the rebellious little kid of Europe: making everyone change currency to go there is mildly irritating, but the fact that they use different electrical outlets to the rest of Europe is pure petulance (think trying to plug in a hair-straightener in a hostel with the most demented outlets you’ve ever seen).

But, like everywhere else in Europe, every person with hands and a mouth is smoking - Sherlock Holmes pipes hanging out of the mouths of taxi drivers, even motorbike riders squeezing their fags out through their helmet visors.

It isn’t long before we’re napping by a fountain, despite the cold, only to be woken by the sound of a jet engine approaching. It’s a mutant bee. Lozz stirs drowsily in her sleep and we other three freeze in unison, hoping it will forget we’re there and take its leave. ‘Lozz - don’t move. Don’t move…don’t move…’ But it only circled closer and closer, until - ‘MOOOOOOVE!!!!!!!’ I’ve never seen a person move so fast.