Weeks 15 and 16 - New Jersey / Münich

Last weekend, K was bach'ing it while M made her first trip "home" since moving to Switzerland. Saturday, he went over to a coworker’s place to watch the US v UK world cup game; good conversation, good fun. Sunday, K went to the annual meeting of a club that we joined, the NIC. Meanwhile, since she was in New Jersey for work, M took the opportunity to drive down to Delaware to visit her aunt and cousins and to see her grandmother's new digs. She was really glad that she had the opportunity to visit.

The rest of the week for K was spent at work; spouse out of the country = 14+ hour days, but he did find time to cook up a couple different curries.

M was prepared for her visit to the great U. S. of A. by emailed cultural tips and travel advisories sent by a travel company contracted by J&J. She was clued in to the fact that Americans are rather direct and that touching your index finger and thumb together in a circle and spreading out your other three fingers means "OK". Although she had received information like this before for her business trips to France and Japan, getting this kind of info for her home country was a trip (pun intended). Regardless, she was looking forward to some unique American experiences. During her week in the States, she got to have many typical U.S. experiences, which included but were not limited to:

• outlet shopping and buying pants for $20
• getting a $15 haircut at Great Clips
• shopping in Target at 9:30 at night
• drinking root beer
• eating a black bean burger with orange cheddar cheese and chipotle mayo (delicious!)
• maintaining her personal space bubble
• speaking exclusively English (which was rather hard when she'd been training herself to say "bonjour" and "merci" for three and a half months)
• eating a meal for less than $2.50 (seven layer burrito at Taco Bell...mmm)

M got back to Switzerland in the middle of Friday morning and prepped (i.e. napped) for the next adventure. This weekend, we went to Münich /München, Germany for Ken's birthday. It was supposed to be a 5 hour drive. With traffic, a disabled car on the autobahn, and inclement weather, it wound up taking 6+.

When we finally arrived at our hotel, we grabbed dinner in the restaurant adjoining the hotel to enjoy wurst, sauerkraut, spatzle and Münchener beer, Paulaner. There are 6 big breweries in Münich: Hofbrau, Augustiner, Spater, Lowenbrau, Hacker-Pschorr, and Paulaner. So, after Friday night, there was 1 down, 5 to go.

Saturday morning, we caught the subway/U-bahn into town. Some amazing architecture. We saw a fun parade, and debated its meaning (Was it a normal Saturday activity? Was it a paean to summer? Was it just an excuse to get dressed up, and carry weapons through town?) We saw the town open air market, some shops selling cute baby-sized lederhosen and dirndls (but lordy with grown-up prices), and then the rain started. We trecked aboot town. Caught some buses and trams (some going the wrong way, but as it wasn’t raining inside the public transit, it was judged an overall win). Eventually, we were wandering through the town’s English

Garden. Think Central Park but bigger (and sans the Shakespeare statues). Unfortunately, due to the rain, the Chinese tower beer garden was not open, but we did see the surfers.

That’s right. Surfers.

But München is land-locked, you say?

Which just makes it even more awesome. We’re walking through the park and we see a guy in a wetsuit. Which almost makes sense considering how soggy the city is.

When we notice a canal flowing by, we figured he was swimming in the canal. But, then we saw the standing wave in the canal, and a guy riding the wave. Apparently, the Eisbach (as the standing wave is known) has been around since the 1970s, but surfing was only recently legalized there. It's very dangerous (several people have drowned attempting to surf the Eisbach). But, as we can think of no other surfing within 6 hours of Neuchâtel, if we ever acquire surfing skills, we know where we’re going to catch a wave.

After much walking around town in the rain, we naturally had to make some stops to dry out. Luckily, we happened to wander by beer halls/beergartens vending the other 5 (of the big 6) breweries. Of course, we also tried more local cuisine (sausage, sauerkraut, meat, meat, meat...and apfelstrudel and apfel fritters for M), and it went very well with the local beer.

We also made a lengthy stop at the Deutches Museum. The advert tagline was "It'll make you wish you did pursue that career in Engineering". This place was pretty astounding. Ships, planes, electromagnetism experiments, steam engines, waterwheels, a mining exhibit that has to be experienced (M swears they need to install a panic button in the mining exhibit), musical instruments, etc. One could definitely spend multiple days in this museum and still not experience everything (we didn't even get up to the 3rd or 4th floors, or visit the observatory).

We finished the night at the Oktoberfest-famous Hofbrauhaus. Simply inspiring. A very large room, filled with people (and this was not a special weekend), a band, and lots and lots of beer steins in various states of being filled and quaffed. After quite some trouble finding a seat, we then had our third or fourth (or fifth?) meal of the day, along with some very large containers of beer. Caught the subway back to the hotel and crashed.

On Sunday, we saw the Schloss Nymphenburg, the Summer palace/party house of the Bavarian kings and electors/electresses. Baroque/rococo ornamentation dominated (think Mike Tyson fighting a 12year old, 85 pound street punk domination). These folks had lots of money, but debatably less sense. However, the results are definitely worth gawking at. Highlights of the palace grounds included intricately carved and gilded royal carriages and the "rustic" hunting lodge with the Hall of Mirrors and hunting dog bunk room.

We returned home Sunday night.

Lessons learned:

1. You need a plug converter when you bring your European laptop to the US (obvious but still kind of funny to me).

2. The Bavarian court was insanely rich and wasn't afraid to show it.

3. Make sure you get the highway vignette (sticker) when driving in Austria. A vignette good for 10 days is almost 8 euros; the fine for not having a sticker starts at 110 euros.

4. In Bavaria, the bread basket at restaurants is filled with giant pretzels as well as rolls. Your server is keeping count, and what you consume will wind up on the bill.

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.