• Seth and I went to Porto, Portugal, where I was supposed to present at an academic conference.  My panel was cancelled at the last minute, which was really upsetting, but we did get to drink Port, be in town for the festive holiday of St John, Porto’s patron saint, and discover that Portugese vegetarian cuisine = seitan.  So much seitan.
• Then I went back to working on my thesis.  It involved sitting in my hot apartment and writing, editing, editing, editing…
• Then my parents and sister came for a visit.  We spent a few days in Switzerland, then went to Provence.  For their Sunday in Switzerland, we went on an awesome bike ride from Kerzers to Avenches, with a lunch stop in Murten, which turns out to be perhaps the coolest old town in Switzerland we’ve been to.  I would highly recommend this route.  Provence was sure different in July than during Christmas.  We were in Avignon during the annual theater festival, and discovered that the off-festival looked way cooler than the official one, but we didn’t actually go see any shows.  Provence was sunny, hot, crowded, and tasty.  When we got back to Switzerland for my parents to fly home out of Geneva, my mom’s handbag was stolen from her on the sidewalk in front of the hotel.  That was fun, especially that part when I had to file a report in French at the police station.  Photos from the week are on flickr.
• Shortly after that, I turned in my master’s thesis, a whole day early, and then Seth and I hastily prepared for a month and a half in the US in the un-air-conditioned heat.  It involved dragging a suitcase full of books to multiple libraries in Geneva and packing up most of our apartment into our basement storage space so we could sublet it.
• Once at my parents’ in NJ, my adviser emailed that there were pages missing from the printed copies of my thesis.  Great.  He was happy to grade it with the pdf, but I was told I had just a few days to get new copies to my school for the library archives.  So commenced several days of early morning phone calls to Switzerland.  Thankfully, I got another printer to print it in time and a very good person to pick it up and drop it off at school for me.  Phew.  Nothing like experiencing a little piece of Switzerland while in the US.

So, as I said, we’re back in the US, land of cars,advertisements, smiles, processed food, and laundry machines galore.  We decided to pack all of our wedding planning into this summer so that we don’t have to deal with major details from Switzerland and don’t have to come back every month.  It has been a whirlwhind of photographers, registering, florists, dresses, stationary, rings, rabbis, musicians, and more.  It is terrifying to spend this much money on ANYTHING, although I guess my parents spent more on my education.  Also, we have discovered that the wedding complex is still profoundly anti-feminist.  I think Seth is going to blog more about wedding planning and how difficult it is for the groom to be involved, even when he wants to be.  Other than the difficulties of familial negotiations, Seth consistently being pushed aside, and navigating the moral gray zone in which much of the wedding industry resides, it’s not been bad.  I am nervous about finding shoes, mostly.

**complain**

Anyway, if you are trying to avoid the World Cup in this fine country, here are some tips?

1. Don’t live in a town with representatives from many nations.  If you do, head to the most isolated Alpine valley you can for the affected time period.
2. Keep your windows closed.  You never know when an important team to your neighbors might win.
3. Don’t take buses.  They have notices that their routes might be disturbed because of the World Cup.  I’m not sure how buses and the Cup are related.
4. Stay outta the street.  You might get flattened by people more intent on alerting their neighbors to the new World Cup status than on saving gas money.
5. Don’t talk to anyone other than Americans or students currently taking exams or finishing theses.  Everyone else will launch into a discussion of soccer.

Wait.  I hear buzzing and honking.  What just happened?  The Internet tubes tell me that Portugal just beat Korea.  Are our neighbors cheering for Portugal?  For Brazil beating Côte d’Ivoire?  In preparation for the upcoming match of Switzerland v. Chile?  Oh no, we’re going to Portugal on Wednesday…

Adar, Seth, and I agonized over where to go (using this helpful listing).  Adar called a bunch of places, found out about pesticide use, opening hours, and prices, and after we checked each place on sbb to see if we could get there by public transport, we settled on Fraises de Bussy.  They have an adorable pdf ad, the owner (Stéphane) was nice on the phone, the price was right (5 chf/kilo), picking was “non-stop” (no lunch break in a field!), and no pesticides used!  This was a much more casual, smaller, lawless, place, I think, than the type Swisstory’s Jessica blogged about.

We took a little local train up from Morges, on which you have to request a stop.  We stepped out into fields, and followed signs to the strawberry picking.  Then…the heavens opened.  Within seconds, we were drenched.  Only Seth’s high-tech rain jacket was sufficient protection, and that only went to his hips.  We sprinted towards the farm, Adar wheeling her vegetable cart at top speed.  A kind man stopped his car and asked if we’d like him to take us somewhere, but we turned down the offer and aimed for the tent-covered stand in the distance.  A few seconds later, the three of us ran under the tent, soaking, dripping wet.  Once we caught our breath, and in my case, wiped the drops off my glasses with a dryish patch of shirt, we laughed about how silly it was that we’d come and it started to pour.  Stéphane thought we were hilarious.

We stood under the tent, laughing and chatting with Stéphane. We took turns pushing the tent up to release the pooling water, took some photos, and since we were already wet, Seth and I ventured into the fields for a few minutes to grab at least a few fresh strawberries.  They were tasty.  Since the rain didn’t seem like it was letting up any time soon, Stéphane decided to just go home for the day, and he offered us a ride back to Lausanne plus two kilos of strawberries he had picked this morning.  We took him up on the offer.

As we drove away, a couple showed up to pick.  Stéphane graciously offered that they could help themselves in the fields.  They went out with their umbrellas.

Tonight: 2 kilos (well, a bit less…we’ve been eating them) of strawberries worth of baked goodies.  Yummm.

The concert features a yodleuse.  She is super cool.  She yodels, she dances ballet, she plays accordion, she speaks French with an awesome Swiss-German accent, and it turns out she can also conduct choirs should the need arise.  Also, she uses a pitch pipe; the only one I’ve ever seen in Switzerland…she had to explain to our conductor how to use it.  Probably the best part about being in this concert, at least as an American, is getting to be on stage with her and listen to her.

So, needless to say, our performance will be very Swiss.  Not traditional, but full of references to the traditional.  There is a percussionist on stage who has a full set of instruments meant to resemble Swiss sounds, like cowbells, hooves, and churchbells.  Oh, there are also a few choirs.  I think a lot must be lost on me, but it is still pretty exciting.

All of this is to say, if you are reading this, and you are in Switzerland, you should be buying your tickets now.

In other news, Seth just got a job.  Yay Seth!  He’ll be working at the World Health Organization, doing statistics and data analysis for a project on micronutrients.  Double commute to Geneva, here we come.  Anyone have an apartment to offer us in Geneva or near the gare in Lausanne?

And in Estavayer-le-Lac, a lovely medieval town on the banks of Lac Neuchatel, things were looking a little froggy this weekend.

It took me a year of living in Switzerland before I found out from a fellow chorister munching away on a carac during a bus ride that there was fudgy chocolate hidden under that bright green exterior. The frog design makes them particularly cute at this bakery.

We went to the Caves Ouvertes in Valais (caves ouvertes=open wine cellars) with Adar and Horesh, buying plenty of wine from grape varieties I’ve seen only in Valais.  We were able to decide where to go by simply picking a village (Chamoson) off the map provided by the official web site that looked like it had  dense collection of vineyards, there turned out to be welcome tables and a free little shuttle around the town, it was busy but not crowded, there was as much free wine and raclette as we could down, and everyone was friendly.  What an odd setup for Switzerland; it was great.  I highly recommend it.

Building on such success, we decided we would go to the Caves Ouvertes in Vaud this past weekend.  Rather than choosing the Lavaux as our destination, we went for something more unusual and aimed for the  Bonvillars region alongside Lac Neuchâtel.  This was much less organized than our day in Valais…there were signs in the towns that announced the existence of caves ouvertes that weekend, but no signs, shuttles, or people directing visitors to said caves, and the vineyards weren’t especially evident from the road.  Fortunately, we’d decided to turn this into a bike expedition as well, making use of the second bike we’ve recently acquired.  We took the bikes on the train to Yverdon-les-Bains and planned our trip using the incredibly helpful veloland website.  As it turns out,  Lac Neuchâtel has flat, non-trafficky paths and roads alongside much of the lake, so it was gorgeous and easy going until we climbed into the hills towards the vineyards and my bike refused to switch into its lower gears.  Eventually, we found a winemaker in Concise who was happy to let us try and buy some wines, and we sipped away and munched on bread before turning around and heading back to Yverdon.  Given that I haven’t bike in a year, my legs were really sore, and I was too tired to do any work that night. But now I feel better and am hoping that maybe this weekend we can combine a bike ride and strawberry picking adventure as a break from studying human rights law (final exam next week…).

By the way, the winegrowers all seem to be saying that the 2009 vintage, while still young, will be incredible given a few more months, as the grapes were exceptionally sweet and healthy last fall, so stock up!

There’s a storefront that I often pass in Renens with a big picture of a pumpkin labeled “ludothèque.” I never gave it much thought, though I guess I would have concluded it was just a store that had closed down some past Halloween. (Jackie thought it was a daycare with a pumpkin theme). Not so! Natalie recently explained what a ludothèque is:

A toy library is a library from which toys, puzzles, and games are lent out, functioning like a lending library. Toy libraries offer play sessions for families and a wide range of toys appropriate for children at different stages in their development. Toy libraries provide children with new toys every week or two, saving parents money and keeping children from getting bored. Popular in the French-speaking world, toy libraries are called ludothèques.

Great idea, right? From what I can gather it’s a very common thing in France, Switzerland, and Quebec (where it’s called a joujouthèque!) It’s obviously good for the environment, and if libraries are already lending CDs and DVDs to big people, why not games, toys, and puzzles for the little ones? It was so great an idea, I decided it needed a Wikipedia page in order to popularize it outside of the Francophonie. So I went ahead and created a page for it, originally calling them “Toybraries” in English (based on the first one I found in the US, Toybrary, because it sort of approximates the construction of ludotheque as “ludo” = play and thèque from bibliothèque. Ludobrary sounds kind of weird I guess. Playbrary?). Eventually after doing research and turning up federations in the US, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand—all linked on the Wikipedia page, of course—I settled on the blander “Toy library.” The blockquote description above is from Wikipedia, or in other words, I just wrote it.

Of course what’s now needed on the Wikipedia page is a history section. Toy libraries have existed since at least 1935, according to a master’s thesis from 1995 by Julia E. Moore of Kent State University [PDF], when one was set up in Los Angeles. The idea apparently reemerged in the 60s and 70s with Head Start and other legislation. Interesting! Well, it’s back to real work for me (sorting photos from the weekend?) Hopefully a committed Wikipedia-er will pick up where I left off and summarize the 46 page thesis in a section called history, which I’ve just added.

P.S. By the way there’s a Swiss association online. They’re called Ludotheken in German.

I just returned to Switzerland from a week and a half in the United States. Returning to the US was a re-experience of the reverse culture shock of last summer. I got lost in the supermarket, felt motion sick in every car, habitually checked for signs telling me when the T was expected to arrive, couldn’t figure out how to use the change in my wallet, and lamented the long-distance produce. I was like a foreigner with a deceptively American accent. But it was lovely to feel surrounded by friends and familiar places. And to be able to go to the supermarket in pajamas without anyone giving me strange looks.

Back to the Judt piece. Going to the US really makes me re-evaluate Switzerland. I know I complain a lot about Switzerland, and Judt gets it all right. The blandness. The people who would tell you to keep your feet off the seat. The overwhelming expense. The “recidivist chauvinism” as demonstrated by the minaret ban. The difference is, he likes it. He likes that there is nothing to do, that everything is clean and colorful, that it is still surprisingly unchanged and rural, that the trains are the main attraction, the natural beauty, the shared responsibility for public goods. According to him, Switzerland is “the happiest place in the world.”

The truth is, I like many of these characteristics, too. In the US, I pine for the train network, the food from the local farms, the safety, the concern of each person for the public good, the view across the lake to the Alps. When Seth and I return to the US, we will seriously miss a lot about this place. Yet, it is so hard for me to explain what is good about Switzerland to Americans, and so much easier to talk about the frustrations and absurdity of daily life and the hypocrisy and conservatism of much that is Swiss. It is quite difficult to talk about what it is like for us to live here, both in discussions with Swiss and with Americans. Swiss hate to be criticized as only an outsider can criticize, and Americans can’t believe we’re not on a permanent vacation in a Swedish-speaking ski resort. And I think Kathy does a magnificent job discussing the myth of Swiss happiness (read both part I, part II). Switzerland is not paradise, and I cannot see past its problems as, apparently, can Judt. Like everywhere else, there is the good and there is the bad. It is mixed.

Thanks, Judy, for sending me the article.

• Engagement

• Scotland
• Leukerbad (and remember, despite appearances, we’re not on a permanent vacation!)

Usually, these are taken with Jackie’s nice, big digital SLR camera. But sometimes they’re taken with my not-so-nice, small digital camera. The big camera is big, so it only goes with us when we’re planning ahead—vacations, day trips, shopping at the market—so it’s rare that the other camera gets use, other than by Jackie for photographing documents from the 1930′s in the League of Nations archives at the United Nations in Geneva. But every once in awhile the little camera captures something, and it takes us awhile to get it on the computer and find it amongst Jackie’s research. So while organizing photos today (a productive use of my time when I should otherwise be doing research or looking for a job) I came across these…

This one may need to make an appearance on one of the waterfowl themed banners on my website.

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On a TGV train (look at the “please turn off your cell phones” icon and then Jackie’s pose carefully).

Apparently, at the Purim party in Lausanne, many people did not recognize Jackie without her glasses. And many Swiss people wondered if Adar really was pregnant. Umm…

This was taken with the big SLR and the one on the left was my entry to the New York Times Lens Blog’s project to get lots of people to take a picture at the same moment all over the world. Which saturation do you like more?

Books: Jackie is only allowed to check out 15 books total from all of the libraries to which she has access, including the library at her school and the cantonal libraries in Geneva and Vaud. This is a major problem, seeing as she is doing a master’s (now PhD!) in history. So she spends a lot of times shlepping books back and forth to Geneva and strategizing about which books she needs when. Recently, she found out that two books on ancient Egypt had mysteriously appeared as checked out on her account from the cantonal library of Geneva. Needless to say, these were not books she had actually checked out—but how was she going to explain this? And more importantly, since Switzerland is not big on central sources of information, who was she going to explain this to? The short version of the story is that after calling the library, being transferred around a fair amount, finally talking to someone and explaining, she was told that they would look into it. 30 minutes later, she refreshed her account online, et voila! The books had vanished. Jackie 1, Switzerland 0.

Flat tire: I got a nice new (used) bicycle two weeks ago, which I’ve been riding to school on days that it’s not unseasonably cold and windy and rainy (so not this week). After class last week I noticed that my front tire was totally flat. Shoot! I considered taking it on the metro and then walking it back home, or leaving it and returning with tools and supplies (which I would obtain…somewhere?) or taking it on a bus to the bike shop I bought it at. But I vaguely knew that there’s a bike repair place on the EPFL campus (Le Point vélo) . I looked it up, and despite it being past the hours it’s listed as open, I headed over there with my bike. This was a dubious proposition in Switzerland, where I’ve been yelled at for coming into a bakery 5 minutes after closing (after I backed out of it quickly, they locked the door behind me.) But there were a couple very helpful guys working there, who said they’d be happy to help if they could, despite it being closed. Turns out I do not know (m)any bike words in French. It also turns out I do not know how to check for a leak or detach my inner tube and replace it with a totally new one. But I managed, with some help. And twenty minutes later, my hands covered in bike grease, we had determined that the hole was not worth repairing, and we had replaced my inner tube. They only charged me for the inner tube, generously claiming that I was the one who had done the work, not them. Seth 1, Switzerland 0.

Late trains: many months ago Jackie took a train back from Paris which was severely delayed. They gave the passengers claim forms to fill out and hypothetically this was supposed to entitle them to some amount of money. Jackie dutifully filled hers out, sent it off to the French company, and weeks later received a reply that, in fact, this was the responsibility of the Swiss train company, SBB, since the train was going to Switzerland and Jackie had bought her ticket from SBB. Or something. The letter said that her request had been transferred to SBB, and we assumed that was the last we’d hear of it. And then last week a letter arrived with a voucher for 36 CHF from SBB to be used on any train ticket. Wow. Jackie 2, Switzerland 0.

Laundry: Last Monday was our laundry day and after two succsesful loads one of the electronic cards that we use to activate the machines totally stopped working. The other was low on funds. But the one that stopped working was supposed to have a credit of 14 CHF on it. The machine claimed it was broken. So I reinserted it, more gently this time as the super had instructed me. Still broken. More gently, but with a little pressure? Broken. After 20 minutes of this, the machine finally read the card. But there was only 1 franc on it! I tried to transfer this franc to my other card (because combined it would have been enough) and in the process … lost it. Now the card works when inserted into the machine every single time (go figure) but it has 0 francs on it. I called Yuliy, who lives in a house in which there is unlimited (even during lunch?) laundry, told him about my laundry emergency, and biked over to use his laundry machine. Point for Switzerland.

Final score: Us: 3, Switzerland: 1 (+ 10000000000).