Lausanne - 3 years later

Tuesday, 10/13/2009

I arrived and was picked up at the airport and brought to our hotel, Hotel Crystal (Minotel) in the pedestrian part of town. Modest little place, but very conveniently located amongst all the shops and restaurants, and only a few blocks from the club where my gig is, the King Size Pub, which is in the Flon area of town. My piano partner Mark met me in the lobby and, after I settled in, took me around to show me what had changed since I was here last and what cool things were in this part of town. It's only been three years, but holy crap - Lausanne now has a metro! I guess on some level I saw all the construction that was going on while I was here last time, but I never made the connection. It really made it much easier to get around without going up quite so many steep hills. This city really does seem like a combination of San Francisco and a mini-Paris.

The city had also done a lot of work on the Flon. It was mostly old industrial buildings and warehouses before...some had been renovated into clubs and a couple of shops and restaurants, but still a slightly seedy area with huge open lots. Now there are fancy new buildings and art installations where the lots were, and some very chic shops and restaurants have moved in. The King Size Pub is still doing very well, it seems, as well as their sister club, Mad, which is a dance club across the street.

The gig (an all-request dueling piano show) is mostly similar to what it was the last several times I played here, but playing with Mark made it extra fun, 'cuz he's fearless and doesn't care if the audience doesn't understand English, he's still going to play around with them, and they love it. The Swiss are still timid about participating and sing along with us very much, but there are a cadre of Brits and Americans who come to the show regularly and kinda get things going. The most frequent request the first weekend was Coldplay's The Scientist, and then Michael Jackson, Madonna and Jason Mraz close behind, with lots of Hotel California and Great Balls of Fire, like always. Then someone requested Rage Against the Machine with a large tip on it, so I sang it, and it got a great reaction, so guess what gets requested every night now. Same thing with My Humps...songs about sex sell everywhere, I guess! Most of my Swiss friends showed up to the show on the first Thursday, so it was great to see everyone again.