huck

Meet my friend Aude (pronounced “ode”), my beautiful host in Avignon. It didn’t take long for me to realize that she – and every city has one of these – is the girl that all the dudes are totally in love with, but since she’s so humble, most abandon their pursuit of her and resign themselves to friendship, where they’re allowed to bask in her awesomeness and be extremely protective. You know EXACTLY what Im talking about.

As soon as I arrived into town, she picked me up at the station, dropped my things off at her house and took me downtown where we met a bunch of her grear friends from “Uni” for drinks.

My friends Julie and Stephanie introduced me to the wild world of monocycling. Right in front of the elephants at the Lyon Zoo. Notice I am holding on to the railing. Notice, also, that I have no pictures of anyone upright…

Notice there are no pictures of me sweaty and exhausted on a train. That’s because I caught the damned thing in time, strangling that French cobra before she pounced!

On my way to the train station, I spotted this gem of a POS. At first I thought it belonged to my old metalhead friend Dirty Steve, but he would not be in Switzerland this time of year.

At any rate, no bumper sticker overladen vehicle in Austin can hold a candle to this badass. What’s more, if you make him angry, his atheist anthropomorphic rat friend will have sex with you.

My friend, you CANNOT stop the rock, not even in Geneva..

In the Old City, we went for dinner at a place with a rather truculent waiter…

The wine we ordered was really bad, and when we suggested as much to him, he responsed, “Eh, il est Dolé,” (which was the name of the Swiss wine.) My friends thought he said, “il est dobé,” which is French slang for, “this wine is shit.” We all had a good laugh and drank the Swiss piss, regardless.

I ordered La Reclette. This dish includes a mini grill for melting huge pieces of the tower of cheese I was served, placing the melted cheese on slices of the pound of charcuterie you receive, about a dozen abnormally small potatoes, and enough cornichons and pickled onions to choke an entire cocktail party. I didn’t finish, and, alas, there’s no French term for “doggie bag.”