Swiss - French!

Le Bouveret is a lakeside resort known mainly for its huge marina and its tourist attractions. It is a charming village situated at the mouth of the Rhone where it feeds into Lake Geneva.  It offers a vast variety of water sports - catamarans, water skiing, windsurfing, pedal boats and big bananas, and of course magnificent cruises to other towns around the lake.

I would have difficulty living here because I can't understand the language.  They speak a dialect of Swiss-French that on the surface sounds like French, but the words are all different.  The little bit of French that I know is the pure French as is spoken in Paris and no matter how hard I try to understand what they are saying it all sounds like gobbledegook to me.  I pick up a few words here and there but when put all together and spoken quickly it is mostly incomprehensible.  I can understand how this dialect developed because it is the same in Italy where different dialects developed in the towns which, back in history, were totally isolated from other villages.

On my nightly walk (when I say nightly, I mean around 8 or 9 pm because it stays light here till about 10pm) around the town and the marina area I ran into Stan, the 'American who sounds Irish' who I met last night on the train.  He was enjoying a drink with 2 other gentlemen who didn't speak any English.  They invited me to join them, and, not having any other prior engagement, I sat with them for a while over a glass of rose (naturellement) and tried to conduct a conversation with the non-English speaking guys.  Very difficult.  Shortly afterwards a young girl in her twenties joined us as Stan had invited her for a raclette (a Swiss dish using raclette cheese).  This was a first date for Stan, he confided in me, and she was half his age and she spoke no English either, but she was a very lovely girl he had befriended over 6 months on the train.

Shortly afterwards I thanked them for the wine and took my leave to let them continue with their meal and made my way back home.  I'd given my legs the stretch they needed after sitting most of the day at the computer doing my assignment.