Week 9

Last weekend, we were planning to go to Gruyères to see the castle there, sample the local cheese (Gruyère, of course), and also visit a local chocolate factory. However, as previously mentioned, we learned that the weekend we were planning to go that the entire area surrounding Gruyères was being shut down to automobile traffic. So instead, we hung around Neuchâtel on Saturday, and it was absolutely gorgeous. Everybody was out enjoying the good weather, and everything seemed to be in bloom. While we were in town, we saw that the local military bands were having a "march-off". The bands rotated around the town, stopping in large spaces to perform a few songs (which included "The Bear Necessities" and "Copa Cabana") before moving on to the next location. It was a lot of fun. The streets were crowded with tables of people enjoying lunch or a drink in the fresh air. It was completely picturesque, and it almost felt like we were on some Euopean vacation.

On Sunday, still jonesing for a castle visit, we decided to go to the town of Pontarlier about an hour from Neuchâtel just past the French border. We visited an awesome castle (the Chateau de Joux, www.chateaudejoux.com) in the little town of La Cluse-et-Mijoux. It was built in the 11th century and was in perpetual construction through the 1800s. The highlights of the castle included a spiral staircase that could induce vertigo in just about anyone and a well (un puits) dug from within an underground chamber. The well is about 13 feet in diameter and almost 500 feet deep; to demonstrate how deep the well was, the guide poured a glass of water into the well from the top, and there was at least 10 seconds between when we saw the pour and we heard the splash of water. It was really neat. After the castle tour, we had lunch in and walked around Pontarlier. (Ken would like to take the opportunity to mock Margaret's decisions to visit the local area museums, which appear to curate anything that they can link to the area whether it is actually interesting or not.)

At the end of the week, we learned that our registration in Neuchâtel had finally been finalized and that we needed to go pay the reregistration fee. While we were out, we were also able to change our address for the car registration to Neuchâtel. This meant that we could finally give proof of our address in Neuchâtel so we can get the parking sticker to put on our car to park in front of our apartment. Of course, they couldn't give the sticker to us in person. Swiss efficiency dictates that it be sent to us in the mail.

This past weekend was not as nice as the previous one. It was gray and rainy, and the temperature dropped considerably. There wasn't much going on in town anyway because almost everything was closed for Labor Day. We did have a pleasant weekend lounging about in the apartment, however.

Lessons Learned:
1) Frozen green beans and green peas swap rankings in Switzerland. Although I detest the rubbery frozen green beans in the US (unless they are cut French style), the frozen green beans here are delicious. They're tender and quite flavorful. Unfortunately, however, the usually sweet, tender morsels of the US frozen peas are starchy, hard bits here. The cheap bag of frozen peas has each pea coated with butter or margarine making for a greasy, starchy unpleasantness.

2) A falafel wrap to-go is great lunch to eat while running between city bureaucratic offices. Mmmm...falafel....