One year and 5 weeks - Visitors!

Mary and Jack touring Neuchâtel

Last weekend, we had our second set of visitors arrive in Switzerland.  We picked up Mary and Jack, friends from California, at the Geneva airport last Saturday night and had a dinner at Les Brasseurs (the local brewpub).

Sunday, we gave them a mini-tour of the canton.  We walked down the hill and then back up to the chateau and the collegiale.  Then we strolled through town past Neuchatel's famous painted fountains.  We walked along the lake and enjoyed the views and played on the dangerous playground equipment.   In the late afternoon, we drove up to the Creux du Van for a short hike.  The weather wasn't great; it was cloudy and rainy which meant that it was quite muddy.  But we enjoyed our walk, especially when we got to see the chamois mountain goats.  There were two adult females and two yearling goats.  The goats were primarily interested in eating grass at the cliff edge and seemed unconcerned with our presence; they let us come within only a couple meters from them.   It was wonderful to be able to watch them from such a close vantage point.  Sunday night, we had fondue at home.

Monday morning we tried to visit an absinthe distillery in the Val de Travers but had neglected to see that we needed to book in advance.  We did, however, have a nice drive through the hills and valley.  Next, we took our visitors to Gruyères where we visited the fromagerie and the Nestle/Cailler chocolate factory.  We decided to skip the castle this time but did drive up to the town of Gruyères to souvenir shop and to walk along the old ramparts.  This time at the chocolate factory we arrived early enough that we were able to take advantage of the chocolate tasting at the end of the tour.  M was the only one that powered through all the samples, but, needless to say, she had a belly-ache later.  After returning to Neuchâtel in the evening, we headed up to the local peak, Chaumont, and the observation tower, to look over the valley de les trois-Lacs.

Luzern, L to R: Mary & Jack at Verkehrshaus, Swans in front of the
Hofkirche, Kapellbrücke & Wasserturm

Tuesday, we went to Luzern (Lucerne in French).  We started the day with a trip to the Verkehrshaus, also known as the Swiss Transport Museum.  Though the entrance fee was steep, the museum was pretty amazing especially for four inquisitive engineers (though M is slightly less inquisitive than the other 3).  The museum was comprised of multiple buildings, each filled with a mode of transport: trains, cars, boats, and aircraft.  It had cut-aways of a train and a steamer boat, a car crash-test demonstration, flight simulators, a giant photo map of Switzerland, and a courtyard with razor scooters to play with.  It wasn't quite as awesome as the Deutsches Museum in Munich, but it was close. After the museum, we parked in the city and walked to the lake.  We then threaded back and forth over the Reuss River on the series of bridges, one of which was the Kapellbrücke, or Chapel Bridge, originally built in the 1300s and restored after a fire in 1993.  Next to the bridge is the Wasserturm, or Water tower, dating from the 1200s.  The town is quite pretty, particularly with Mount Pilatus towering over the lake, but Luzern is also full of tourists.  We stopped at an English pub by the river and enjoyed the late afternoon.

Geneva, T to B: CERN building,
Yvette and Sean

Wednesday, we headed to Geneva, but first stopped for a tour at CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherce Nucléaire, or the European Organization for Nuclear Research).  Things got rather technical in talking about particle colliders, and, well, M got kinda bored.  (In her defense, there was a group of Dutch teenagers that wouldn't shut up making it pretty hard to follow the technical explanations.) K, Mary, and Jack were enthralled.

  In the afternoon, we met up with Sean and Yvette, more friends from California, now currently living in Wisconsin, who had arrived for a day in Switzerland to accompany Mary and Jack to Italy on the next leg of their journey.  After we had everyone in tow, we walked around the city a bit to see the Flower Clock and the Ile Rousseau.  We were also able to see the Jet d'Eau this time, which had been off during our last visit.  Since we didn't have enough room in the car for 6 people, we split up.  The girls took the train back to Neuchatel, and the guys drove.  The final meal of the visit was another fondue.  There was lots of fun conversation and laughter so it was with reluctance that we turned in close to midnight.

Thursday morning, we bid "adieu" to the gang at the Neuchatel train station as they caught their train to Italy.  Then, we headed to work for a short week.

This Saturday, we had a somewhat unexpected guest.  We learned midweek that a friend from California, Joseph, now living in Chicago, was in Zurich for business.  We invited him to Neuchâtel and gave him a tour of the town.  The weather was wonderful (t-shirt weather), and we walked by the lake and through the market which was full with people out enjoying the sunshine and warm temperatures.  In the late afternoon, we decided to head up to Creux du Van for the second time in a week.  Though we saw no chamois this time, the view was awesome.  The skies were blue, and we could see the Alps behind us, as well as part of Ile St. Pierre in Lac de Bienne.  We got back to Neuchatel just in time for Joseph to catch the 7:30 train back to Zurich and for us to get ready for a colleague's birthday party.   We had an interesting time at the party.  M primarily stuck with the English and Spanish speakers, but K chatted up some of the francophone guests.

Sunday, we took the bikes out to enjoy the gorgeous weather.  We decided to go easy, so we made it a relatively short bike ride to La Tène.  Everybody else in Neuchatel seemed to think that being outside was an excellent idea too, and all the grassy areas we passed were brimming with people grilling, sun bathing or playing volleyball.

Lessons learned:
1)  So figured out why we haven't gotten our residence permits.  Apparently, the commune was missing some paperwork from our company that justifies why they need to employ us, non-EU/Swiss citizens.  And apparently, the commune had asked the law firm that had handled the paperwork for our original application to provide this paperwork.  The law firm ignored the requests, so the commune threatened our company that if they didn't get the paperwork in 10 days, we'd be deported.  Fortunately, it appears that HR was able to clear things up so that we will not be kicked out of the country.  However, we won't be convinced that everything is alright until we get our new permits.
2) CERN was founded in 1954 and straddles the French/Swiss border.

Week 10 - Cheese- and Chocolate-Stravaganza

This past week was alright, although Margaret was feeling a bit under the weather. Fortunately, she was able to make enough of a recovery so that we could finally go to Gruyère.

The day started with cheese making at the Maison du Gruyère, a working cheese factory where they make up to 48 enormous wheels of cheese per day. We got to see them boil the milk, add the renet, and pour the concotion into cheese molds roughly 2 feet in diameter. After most of the whey (the liquidy part) drains out, they place an identification number on the top of the cheese and put a disk on top of the curds to compress them. After they're compressed, the wheels of cheese are put in a salt water bath to soak for about a day. After the salt water soaking, the long and tedious part takes place. The cheese is aged in a cellar smelling of ammonia for 6-15+ months on, depending on how smelly and flavorful you want your cheese. The cheese is not left completely by itself, however; every now and then it is pulled down from its aging spot and is scrubbed with more salt water, which encourages the formation of the cheese rind. (This is performed by a robot, so Ken was pretty jazzed)

After an hour and a half of ogling giant wheels of cheese, the only proper thing to do was to go get some of the melty stuff for lunch in the cheese's name-sake town, Gruyères (yep...the town has an "s" on the end; the cheese and region known as La Gruyère do not). We headed to one of the many establishments (practically any place that serves food) in Gruyères to get the local dish. As anticipated, it was cheesy heaven. Somehow, the locals manage to make it really creamy, not clumpy like when we make it; they say the secret is in the Gruyère cheese which melts smoothly. We had it served with pieces of bread and boiled potatoes (though apparently, Margaret was not eating the potatoes correctly according to our waitress...the french explanation on how to properly eat the fondue and potatoes went over our heads...regardless, it was delicious!).

After gorging ourselves on molten cheese and following with an ice cream/ meringue/Gruyère cream dessert, we trudged up the hill to the famous castle of Gruyères. The castle itself was neat, but the best part was the grounds and the view of the surrounding countryside. It was particularly fun listening to the bells tied around the necks of the cows which rang gently through the hills.

The day ended with a trip to the Cailler/Nestlé Chocolate Centre of Excellence in Broc. The Broc facility includes a factory, a chocolate research and development center, a chocolate museum, and, of course, a chocolate store. The museum was quite interesting and included a rather theatrical interpretive tour of the origins of Nestlé/Cailler chocolate. (Not recommended for people with a heart condition.) The end of the museum tour included an introduction to the raw materials of chocolate and a view of one of the plants assembly lines (complete with a tasty sample, "hot" off of the assembly line).

After a day full of cheese and chocolate, we had a nice meal of hummus, bread, and a banana, and turned in rather early.

Sunday was much more leisurely than Saturday but included a walk to the Neuchatel botanical garden, which was having a special event which included a plant sale. Margaret bought a tomato plant and some basil with hopes of being able to have a small fraction of the produce she grew with minimal effort in California. Her baby step goal is to keep it alive at least for the next week.

Lessons Learned:

1) Switzerland is in a unique situation when it comes to road signage. Whereas in the US, we can just say "Slippery" or "Bridge out" or "High wind area", it's much more difficult for this Swiss who have three official languages. Therefore, the Swiss rely heavily on pictographs to try to convey their messages. Unfortunately, sometimes it comes across a little like an episode of "Lassie"..."What is it, Lassie? You say Timmy's playing with a windsock?...What the **** are you trying to say, Lassie?!?"

One of the first questionable traffic signs we observed was the windsock sign. A Google search on traffic windsocks shows that traffic windsocks are not unique to Switzerland or Europe. Regardless, this is the first time either of us had encountered a wind sock sign. (For those who don't know, this sign indicates that the area you are about to drive through is susceptible to gusts of wind. If the actual windsock that follows this sign is billowing out, you should slow down.)

Other examples of Swiss traffic signs can be found at http://www.astra.admin.ch/dienstleistungen/00127/00634/index.html?lang=fr . I have included some favorite ones below:

a)House planted too close to tree

b)Emergency outdoor space heaters

c)French horns forbidden in this area

d) Ultrasonic canon firing range nearby


2) Swiss teens can be jerks just as big as U.S. teens can be. (Only, being bilingual seems to make them think they are cooler.) This is a bad combination when paired with an irritated American woman trying to get shopping done before the stores close in 10 minutes.