June 3 -- Friday. Okki had to work at his job today. Before he started work we walked from his apartment into the city center for breakfast, and then he cuts me loose to go back to his flat for the day to work remotely (his job is all remote), while I walk around the old city. In 1985, I had walked the other direction from the station, and had not even known there was an old city to Lausanne, as well as cathedral, which is generally now the immediate focus of my attention in any city I visit these days. Using a map Okki had given me, I climbed the hill, went inside the cathedral (which ceased being Catholic in the Reformation and was adapted to Evangelical Swiss Protestantism). I sat in the pews an prayed the rosary with the beads I had bought in San Francisco a year and half before.It was my attention to pray the rosary in as many places as possible, where it was appropriate.
I enjoyed the spontaneous experience of lingering among the folks on the terrace in front of the cathedral, with its view over the city towards the lake. Young couples were hanging out together, and other small groups of people, skewed towards the young. It is good among young people and feel their energy. It can be hard thing to do, if one is not comfortable with how one lived one's own youth.
The central part of Lausanne--the old Roman part dating from antiquity--is very hilly, no doubt on a naturally well-defendable bluff overlooking the center of the great lake along its axis. It's a natural point of control in the geography. It is not like Zurich, or Geneva, which are built along the banks of rivers where meet one of these lakes. Lausanne feels more ancient, and it is.
Of course you probably known it is the birthplace of the modern Olympics, and its headquarters, along the such things as the International Gymnastics Federation, which I passed multiple times as it was near Okki's rented apartment building. I hadn't known that before this trip. I'm a bit nonplussed about the Olympics lately. They have come to feel to me to be part of general Globalist religious movement, of which I do not care to participate. I was hoping Okki wouldn't insisting on visiting such places in Lausanne with me, and to my relief, he didn't care to make that the center of our exploration.
In the evening, as the sun faded late, we walked along the lake front in the park, talked to random people we met, which Okki loves to do, and had dinner on the patio terrace of restaurant a block from the late. It fun was to speak French. Then we walked home, up the hill on the meandering streets, cutting through a long tunnel, and were exhausted when we got home.
No politics that night. Just fellowship and random strangers in the waterfront park.
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