cerealjoe | Those Montreux photos will never end!


Yeah... try going up all the damn time. Isn't there a story about someone who tried to go to fast and then they ended nowhere? I remember the story of the guy who tried to fly too high and ended up crashing... but the other one. It wasn't really the hare, the hare just went super duper fast and then ended being tired. Oh well. I sucked at those stories anyway. (Btw, the above photos are from a hike I went on while in Montreux, further photos under the cut, it was really lovely but walking up all those damned stairs killed me and I could barely walk because muscles I didn't even know existed started hurting.) The point is that today I went to a meeting for international staff about some new stuff at our "new" university. For those who didn't know, three universities in Helsinki joined forces and became "Aalto University". Why not University of Helsinki? Because there is already one... so they looked for another name and what exports well besides Muumin and Marimekko? Alvar Aalto. Plus the name starts with a double A, try beating that to be the first one on the list. Anywho... as previous seen it really looks like they're doing everything too fast! I remember that when I came to TKK a little over two years ago there were just starting to talk about Aalto University. It became a reality about a year and a half later and it seems like a huge mess! We didn't get any clear answers! We still have no idea about the tenure tracks, who'll finance them, what are the specific areas, etc. And now they also announce that the university will not be three schools but six because the current "School of Science and Technology" (ex-TKK) will be separated into four schools based on the current faculties. Bah. I have a feeling that when I leave to do my year in France everything will change again. I'll come back and I won't even recognise Otaniemi! Alright, so maybe not to that point but still so many things will change and perhaps a tad too fast. I really hope that they're just really bad at presenting stuff to people and that they know what they're doing because it would be a shame to lose great people who could have come to work for the different universities in Finland. That was the "Gali must complain about something work-related at least once a day" part of the post. Now let's go back to Montreux!
Proper focus is for losers! Once again I blame the wind, it's hard when plants are moving! At the top of the stairs, I really had a feeling that I wasn't much below the clouds!

The stairs basically go from Montreux to Glion. I should look up at what altitude Glion is but it's a lot of stairs away from Montreux. It's a small town and in case you don't feel like visiting too much they have a replica of everything for you to look at. I was rather disappointed that they only had one bar open and it didn't look too good so I didn't even have somewhere to stop. Ah well, no rest for the wicked.
To be honest the real interest in those stairs is to see if you can make it on top. And you get a pretty good view of the highway right above Montreux. I suppose there are much better hiking places but alas on that day we had a train to take to go back to Geneva so that was not a possibility. That's about it, really. Oh yeah and the fun part is that I just found some more photos of food from Shanghai I haven't posted. I really should get around to that!