Week 3 / Grindelwald

In week 3, work at the plant continued. Ken asserted his engineering manager authority (pronounced authori-TIE), and Margaret wreaked havoc in her quality role, ripping apart documentation to make sure it was right.

In other news, Margaret looked at three apartments on Tuesday; the result is that Ken and Margaret have decided to go with the apartment found in week 2 that had not yet been taken. Therefore, Friday afternoon was spent by Margaret taking the rental contract to the rental agency to be signed and attempting to open a security deposit "account". Unlike in the US, the deposit is not paid directly to the landlord but is kept in a sort of escrow account in the bank; at the end of your rental if no damages are found, the money, supposedly with interest, is returned to you. We discovered, however, that our Swiss "bank" is not really a bank; it's the Post office with some banking-like services. Therefore, the Post does not offer security deposit accounts. So we had to find a bank that would allow us to set up a security deposit even though we aren't customers. Margaret found that the local cantonal bank would set up the security deposit without another account but that the funds had to be available in cash and could not be transferred online. As Ken had put the pin numbers for the Post account in a "safe place," Margaret couldn't find them and was unable to get the money withdrawn. The business of setting up the security deposit will have to wait until next week.

After a hectic Friday afternoon, Margaret wandered over to the Cafe du Cerf, a local Irish pub that has many international patrons, while Ken had a round of drinks with the site management on the other side of Neuchâtel. She managed to get herself invited to sit with an American, a Canadian, and an Australian all whom are enrolled in the FIFA sports management program, whose semester in Neuchâtel is just starting. Despite the fact that she knows diddley about sports, she managed to have a really nice time talking with them.

On Saturday, we decided we had to go skiing/boarding before we lost our chance for this season. So, Ken loaded up our gear, and we went off to the mountain of Mannlichen above the town of Grindelwald. Grindelwald, in the canton of Bern, is about an hour and 45 minute drive from Neuchatel. The scenery, particularly as we entered the mountain regions, was beautiful. We passed through the town of Interlaken and made a note to come back and visit. The ski resorts don't quite hit you over the head with signage like they do in Lake Tahoe, so we had a little bit of trouble finding exactly where we needed to be. After we bought our lift tickets and received our two complimentary Ricola lozenges (true story), we took a cable car up the mountain to where the pistes/slopes were. The cable car ride was very scenic and took about 20/25 minutes. We had a pretty good day of skiing and snowboarding, though Margaret was done early and Ken sprained his ankle. After skiing we went into the town of Grindelwald to get a drink and try the two regional specialties: rösti and raclette. Although many Atlantans believe that hash browns originate from the great institution of Waffle House, the Swiss have their own take on the great potato dish: rösti. Traditionally, rösti are served mixed with bacon or sausage, but our rösti were vegetarian; they were mixed with veggies like cauliflower, carrots, and greenbeans. They were good, but somewhat greasy. To balance our Swiss hash browns, we had raclette, which, as shown in the picture, is a plate of melted cheese with pickles, onions, and boiled potatoes. After our meal, we couldn't help but wonder why the Swiss don't all weigh 300 pounds.

This week's lessons:

1) Cumin versus cumin-You might think that if two things look exactly the same but are in fact quite different that you might name them differently to avoid confusing the two. If you were French, however, naming them differently would be ridiculous. It turns out that caraway seeds, those tasty little bits in rye bread, are called cumin in French. Cumin is, however, the omnipresent spice found in many Indian, Mexican, and Middle Eastern dishes, and cumin seeds look very similar to caraway seeds. We did not discover this lingual fact until after we made an Indian dal soup with our cumin seeds; the soup actually tasted really good but was not quite what we had intended.
2) They don't groom pistes in Switzerland. This fact can make for some hazardous skiing/boarding.
3) Besides falafel and kebabs, good ethnic food can be found in Switzerland; it just might not be where you'd expect to find it. We had really good red curry in the Irish pub.