Weeks 21 and 22 - Da Vinci (Part 1) and Biking to Yverdon

After our whirlwind Austria (and Liechtenstein) trip, we took it easy the next two weekends. (Ok... to be honest, M wrote this sentence before this past Saturday's activities... more on that in a bit.)

Last weekend, we went to the Neuchâtel Museum of Natural History (Muséum d'histoire naturelle de Neuchâtel) to see the temporary Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit that closes August 1. The exhibit included posters of his drawings/sketches, as well as wooden replicas of some of his machines, many of which visitors were allowed to operate. Exhibited machines (remember fabricated from wood) included, but were not limited to, a bicycle, a piston, a water pump, a helicopter, a car, and a tank.

The overall impression from the exhibit was that Da Vinci was an amazingly intelligent, creative, and crazy guy. We'll hopefully get a chance to see more about Da Vinci during our Italy trip in the Fall.

In addition to the Da Vinci exhibit, there were also the taxidermical displays one would expect to find in a natural history museum. Being that Neuchâtel is on a lake, there was a very large bird exhibit, complete with push-button bird calls. Another highlight of the museum's permanent collection was the bug exhibit where you could examine specimens under a microscope.

During the week, we got an invitation from some co-workers to go biking along the lake. So, this Saturday morning, we met them in town by the lake with our bikes and started on a "leisurely" tour along the lake to the southwest. A month or so ago, we biked along the lake for a few kilometers, had lunch, and biked back. This weekend's outing, however, turned into a 40 km bike-ride to the city of Yverdon-Les-Bains at the other end of the lake as Neuchâtel. Portions of the ride are were pleasantly flat or downhill, but a good percentage of the ride involved biking up grimace-inducing, thigh-quivering hills. By the time we arrived in Yverdon, there was no way that K or M would bike the 40 km back; there was, in fact, only person in our group of six that was considering biking back by the time we arrived at our destination. After a picnic lunch by the lake in Yverdon, we caught the train back to Neuchâtel, with our bikes and all. Needless to say, we were filling a bit broken after the ride. Besides the obvious sore legs, M had a bruised butt despite her cushy bike seat with shocks, and K had a sore neck due to handle bar position on his road bike. On our tour, we were rewarded with beautiful views of the lake (although anyone attempting this ride should be forewarned that the ride does not hug the lake, but goes up the hillside for pretty vistas), and we may consider the ride again, but not until we've healed. Also, it may be a good idea to go on some more modest rides in between. Perhaps biking 4 times further than you've ever biked previously is a bit ambitious. Perhaps before we quit Switzerland, we will try to ride all the way around the lake.

Saturday night, we walked (or rather, limped) around Neuchâtel to wander through some of the festivities tied to Swiss National Day. Since Swiss National Day is actually on Sunday, some local towns were having fireworks shows Saturday night. We drove up to the Vue des Alpes and got to view two of the shows from above. Since we missed 4th of July fireworks this year, this felt like a real treat. Tonight (Sunday night) we have to decide if we will watch the fireworks over the lake from our apartment balcony or down at the lake edge.

Lessons learned:

1) Swiss National Day is August 1st to celebrate the initial alliance between the cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden in 1291, which signified the birth of Switzerland. The alliance was formed to fight against the Habsburgs, the leaders of the great Austrian empire.

2) K's maths (yeah...with an "s") skills have become a little distorted by his new-found language skills. Example, K says that he was in a work meeting where he spoke mostly in French. Now, normally, mostly means greater than 50% of the time. However, in this case mostly meant more than 25%. (But after K set off the alarm at work early Saturday morning, he spoke entirely [100%] in French to the nice security guard who came to investigate the alarm.)

Weeks 11 and 12-Around the Lake and Hike around Creux du Van

Despite two long weekends in a row, we haven't done a whole lot. Mostly, we've just hung out in Neuchâtel. Last weekend, we walked down to the lake and walked along the edge. We just on the west edge of town, to continue to follow the lake you have to go onto this grassy path next to a pebbly beach. It's very tranquil and very scenic.

During this past week, we met up with a new (one week new) expat couple who will be living in the Neuchâtel area. Jenny and Luke just moved out from Colorado, and they have a two-year-old with them. We're hoping they might turn out to be dinner/game night buddies. We met at the Cafe du Cerf and then walked along the lake until the two-year-old had had enough. (In all fairness, the family had spent the day apartment hunting, and the little guy had gotten neither a proper nap nor lunch that day.)

This past weekend, we got in the European spirit and actually exercised outside. On Sunday, we biked down to the lake and, as before, headed west. We biked several kilometers but eventually found the cycling path headed away from the lake. We decided to turn around and stopped for a picnic lunch near one of the many little marinas along the lake.

On Monday (it being a long weekend due to Whit Monday), we met up with an

American couple from work, Drew and Tonya, and drove over to Creux du Van, a hugely impressive geologic feature. The rocky, circular cliff was created by water erosion from a local glacier; there is about a 150 m (almost 500 ft) fall from the edge. We did a "short" hike up to the ridge and then walked along the ridge. It was gorgeous, but it certainly wasn't someplace you'd go to be alone; it was crawling with people. After exploring the ridge, we hiked back down to the car which was parked pretty close to a little restaurant with a patio. We enjoyed the rest of the afternoon snacking and drinking our beer/tea/cider and chatting.

In addition to out-and-about activities, Ken has put the Bolton brewery back in "bidness." After almost two months in CH, we were settled enough to try this hobby here. Plus, K was really getting tired of the crappy Swiss beer. Of course, restarting the hobby has not been trivial. In CA, M had purchased a new gas stove, so it was no problem to boil 5gal (US gallons, not Imperial gallons) of wort (malty, hoppy, watery goodness) on the giant, Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor's More Power grunt, gas burner. However, the CH stove is much smaller than the CA stove, so there was some uncertainty whether the CH electric stove could do it.

Test 1: Place 5 gal beer pot on the CH stove. Would it fit? Yes and No. Yes: The pot is not bigger than the entire stove-top, so it does fit on the stove. No: The pot is much bigger than even the largest burner, so we'll only be able to heat part of the pot bottom.
Test 2: Put 5 gal of water on the stove to boil, without a lid (worst case test). Would it boil? Not even close. After 3 hours the water was hot but definitely not boiling.
At this point, K began investigating outdoor propane burners (used in the US to heat turkey fryers), but M insisted on another test. She muttered something about boys with their toys...
Test 3: Put 3.5gal of water on the stove to boil, with a lid (less water than I'd prefer to use, but we have a friend in CA who homebrews with a ~3.5gal pot with perfectly acceptable results). Would it boil? Oh it boiled alright. It is definitely homebrewing time!

Now, we needed ingredients. All of the Swiss homebrew stores we could find seemed to be in the German-speaking part of the country (which could be as close as 15 minutes away, but these stores are all near Zurich, the other end of the country, so about 3 hours away by car), so this became a web-based effort. After, reviewing (and translating) many webpages, K felt he understood things enough to place an order. After a few days, the box arrived in the mail, and everything was recognizable.

Two weekends ago, K boiled up Swiss batch number 1. And he had his first Swiss boil-over (hoppy, malty, watery mess all over the stove). Everthing went fine, fermentation started fine and bubbled away.

The next challenge was to package the beer. In CA, K used kegs, with a CO2 rig to dispense the beer. After some research, CO2 cylinders are available in CH, but the cylinders have a different outlet thread pattern, so K's US CO2 regulator was useless....Useless until we found that we could simply replace the nut that connects the regulator to the tank. We picked up a CO2 cylinder last weekend, and the CO2 cylinder nut arrived from the UK this weekend. Et voila! The first Swiss Bolton homebrew batch is kegged and pressurized.