Montreux

In just a short hop, skip and a jump we find ourselves having to ditch our now fluent German 🙂 and switch to French! Fortunately the Swiss are a lot friendlier than their neighbours so we’ve all been having a few chuckles with “Danke… thank… Merci!!) and “Ja.. yes … I mean … Oui” – or the occasional blank look as the brain just completely fails to register anything in its confusion.

A quick Trivial Pursuit Question: What do Queen (as in Freddie, not Elizabeth), Deep Purple and Frank Zappa all have in common? I think you may have guessed it by now ….
Freddie Mercury settled in Montreux due to its serenity and, long story short, Queen went on to record no less than seven albums here, including their last one “Made in Heaven”.

Which leads us to Frank Zappa and Deep Purple … On 4 December 1971, at a Frank Zappa (The Mothers of Invention) concert, some idiot fan shot off a flare gun (indoors) which set the casino on fire. Deep Purple were in town at the time and wrote “Smoke on the Water” as a result.

But back to Montreux – very pretty town, surrounded by vineyards, with lovely French architecture (it feels as if you are in France the second you drive into town), gorgeous French-speaking men and at least alcohol at a more reasonable price even though food and hotels still outrageously expensive.

Weather has been hot and humid here … so much so that we even went for a dip in Lake Geneva.

Also spent every evening in our favourite spot – at the lake’s edge in deck chairs, having a drink watching the sun go down and watching a storm roll in one evening.