For the fettered students from this part of the world, the idea of student exchange radiates an alluring aura. It is a portal to another world, alien and wonderful. It is a heaven populated with nice people, where exams are easy, where girls are good-looking, and where snow falls like it never will fall in Singapore.
The cynic in me disparages such rose-tinted views: a country is a country, where people get born, live and then die. And people from different countries are essentially the same. A polite Englishman is like a polite Singaporean, an antisocial Finn is as good as an antisocial Singaporean, and a Frenchman is to be treated the same way as a Singaporean who speaks French. No real rapport and cultural exchange between people can happen before the honeymoon stage of Exchange is done with.
The other issue is survival. A student on exchange whose prime obsession is travel forgets the rigours of academia. Being used to trips of only up to a few weeks at the time, he forgets to prepare for a stay of a half-year away from home. Problems will rain from the heavens and ambush him in bed, catching him unawares, ill-prepared, though later on all of them are eventually overcome.
My coming exchange is to Lausanne, at the shores of Leman, close by where they sell the overpriced timekeeping produce. It is a long swim across to Evian-les-Bains in French land, where purportedly there are a few resorts for the nouveaux-riches.
The school, EPFL, is one of my targets for postgraduate studies, which is why I am here.
My secondary objective is to avoid visiting as few of the national capitals in Europe as possible, avoiding especially also Paris, the French Riviera, Venice, Pisa, Milan, and any other place which must have been trampled flat already by tourists.
