Weeks 13 and 14 - Neuchatel's Castle and Chilling around Town

Last weekend, we had dinner out with an out-of-town director from work and his wife. We ate at La Gondola, a Swiss/Italian restaurant, and then had drinks until the wee hours of the morning (like 1 am) at an outdoor table in the Place des Halles. Dinner was Friday night and Saturday morning was spent recovering from being out so late and drinking a little more than we're accustomed. Late Saturday morning, we went to the farmers' market in the Place des Halles to get goodies for a weekend of baking, which included leek galettes (free-form pies) and our favorite apple, onion, and gruyere tart. On Sunday, we played tourist and walked over to the Neuchatel castle (the current offices of the local/cantonal government) for a tour. The castle is really old, the first mention of the castle in area records was almost 1,000 years ago. However, most of the current castle structure is from around the 1400s. You can see that people were shorter then.

For French practice, we've tried to watch some of our DVDs either in French with English subtitles, or in English with French subtitles (or even in French with French subtitles). However, as the subtitles are usually an approximation of the dialogue, and not a word-for-word transcript, it's been debatable how useful this is. Though watching "Trouver Nemo" was fun; although M is certain that the fish were speaking Quebecois and not France French, while K was just lost.

However, K's French has improved. One morning, the apartment telephone rang ~7am, and K answered. The conversation was far from perfect (effectively, K commanded the caller to talk with the apartment concierge, vs asking the caller if they could plan with the concierge) but there seemed to be a generally successful information transfer. M has also been practicing her French. She has been using more French at work and finally took the French plunge at her first Neuchatel Photo-Club meeting. She was quite in over her head, but there were a couple people with good enough English skills to help, and everyone was kind enough to ignore the fact that she kept saying "camera" with a French accent and not using the actual French word for camera, " un appareil-photo."

Summer has arrived. Weather has been warm (shorts, t-shirts, and sandals), but also humid. After 5+ years West of the continental divide, and living in a semi-desert, it's strange to feel so much water in the air in June. Speaking of semi-desert, it has rained recently, when every Northern Cali resident knows that rain stops in April; silly Switzerland, rain is for WINTER.

This weekend, we strolled through town to see the activities associated with Festineuch, a multi-day outdoor music festival (for GAns, think Music Midtown). Tickets to the festival itself were expensive so we didn't actually go in the festival venue, but the rest of town on Saturday was full of street vendors and sidewalk sales. To replenish all the calories burned strolling downtown, we made our first fondue at home. It was delicious. Sunday, we hosted lunch with

the Coloradan family, which ended with a walk down to a local playground where the men-folk went wild on the playground equipment.

The next two weeks will be pretty busy. Next weekend, M flies to NJ for business and will get a chance to see her grandmother, her aunt and, hopefully, a few old friends. She'll get back on Friday morning with just enough time to recover for K's birthday weekend in Munich, Beer-cation 2010.

Lessons Learned:

1) Our cats are smart enough (and heavy enough) that they can jump on the door handles and open the doors, so that they can now open the doors in our apartment if they aren't locked. This was really annoying at 5:45 am Sunday morning. Door knobs = good. Door handles = bad.

2) Apparently, it's difficult to remember you can't bring your cell phone (or drink beer or martini's) in government legislature. This sign was posted outside of the room where the cantonal parliament sits in the Neuchatel castle.

3) Swiss frozen, giant pretzels rock!

4) Dijon mustard in Switzerland is surprisingly hot. It will totally overwhelm your sinuses.