Now I’m supposed to be at the end of my stay in Jerusalem. But I have the flu. So I’m trying to figure out exactly what to do with myself, and also I’m thinking, what better time to update the blog?

It’s pretty amazing how in Israel, I have more close friends than in Pittsburgh. I guess this isn’t shocking, since I don’t spend enough time in Pittsburgh to form relationships, but it is interesting how so many of my friends are always passing through Jerusalem. Hands down, this is the best feature of my trip here. Friends, why do you never happen to be passing through Pittsburgh (I speak to everyone but Alex E. and Hannah Sarah, here, and Tal gets a special shout-out since she came intentionally)? If you take a road trip westward from the Northeast, you’ve gotta go by… so take a road trip to Chicago and we’ll feed you really amazing perogies and show you nice flowers.

Archival research is not easy to conduct here. The archives are like a labyrinth, in one case, all in Hebrew (including their finding aids and unique software package which is not exactly user-friendly), in the other case, in a hodgepodge of cultural and linguistic styles (Yiddish and French were useful here!). Despite having 5 weeks here, I basically only started actually getting to the point of viewing files I needed in week 4. This was WITH an excellent research assistant who I’ve been paying out of my own living stipend. If I had actually known what would be here, that it would easily compete with the collections of the Center for Jewish History in NY, I would have swapped to spend a few weeks in NYC now and the upcoming summer in J-lem. But truly, there is amazing stuff held here, and it is not secret it is just…rather inaccessible. While here, I went to talk given by an American professor I really admire on the history of Jewish archives–and she explained how both competing ideologies about what the Jews are and where there cultural resources should be, combined with the trauma of the Holocaust, means that pretty much anyone working in Jewish history is bound to travel the world like a luftmentsh, in search of pieces of collections that have been scattered across the globe. Oh well.

Yesterday was election day, which for me, meant a day to sleep. People keep asking me about it, but I’m reading the same sources as you–Haaretz in English, NYTimes, and +972 Magazine. Fascinating results. I have no special insights from being on-site, other than having heard some racist rants and being assaulted by mini-rallies/pamphleteers all over the place for the last few weeks which I did not understand in the least.

Seth is back in Pittsburgh and tells me it is about 8 degrees Fahrenheit there. I hear from Boston that it is even colder. Given this information, I am trying to decide if my wish for central heating and insulated walls (which are entirely lacking in Israel) would top the coldness of the exterior. I am nearly always freezing in Jerusalem because 50 degrees inside is chilly, even if it is fine outside. The week of the famed winter storm (which involved several days of heavy rain and wind before finally dumping a few inches of very wet, slushy snow) was particularly bad, with the archives closed, transportation pretty much non-functional, and being stuck crowded around a couple space heaters in a freezing apartment with drafty windows rattling.

Oh, and how can I forget? While Seth’s parents were also in this slice of the Middle East, we took a short family trip to Petra and Wadi Ram by crossing into Jordan at Eilat. That was amazing. At some point I’ll put photos on flickr. Visiting Petra was a little like visiting a Roman city, except pink, and except largely carved rather than built. It really is a whole city, and not just the one facade that is always shown in photos. There was an equally stunning facade all the way near the top of a mountain which took about an hour of stair-climbing. Wadi Ram was also pretty amazing, looking somewhat like Sedona, Arizona, except less developed and without any desert shrubbery. Basically, like Mars.

Last but not least, I just got myself a Macbook Air, which I am still struggling to use properly. I needed a new computer, and I wanted to be able to get Devonthink, which is a program historians seem to rave about when it comes to research management. Workflow wise, I am planning to also manage references in either Sente or Bookends and write the dissertation in Scrivener. If any fellow historians reading this would like to discuss digital workflow, please let me know.

So that’s the report from the icebox under the sun and the inside of the archives. Next time…in Pittsburgh? DC? Ann Arbor? New York? You’ll just have to wait to find out.

Seth and I will be in Switzerland in mid December on our way to Jerusalem, and I will return on the way back in late January, so expect to see some Swiss posts, maybe even one by Seth, then.

I am compelled to write, for two reasons:

1. This month-long adventure in Cincinnati, remarkably, feels a little like our adventure in Switzerland. It’s all about work, in both cases, but on the side, exploring a completely new place. This city has much to recommend it…for one, it is gorgeous. Who knew? Including the University of Cincinnati campus, which is across the streets. It certainly helps that it is sunnier than Pittsburgh, the trees are tinged crimson and yellow, the food has been very vegetarian friendly and good so far, EVERYONE has been so nice, and it is an innovative center of Reform Judaism. I have never felt particularly curious or happy about Pittsburgh; I think it has to do with my utter lack of relationship to it, the cloudy skies, its lack of good connections to the closest major cities besides individual car travel, and the fact that I know I have to live there for a long time. This is unfortunate, because Pittsburgh does have plenty of things going for it overall and we are so fortunate with our housing, and there is even a good local bagel place, but I don’t know, I just can’t get into Pittsburgh, at least not yet.
2. There is one other fellow here with me, Rachel. For this, I am fortunate. She and I are both history PhD students working on American Jewish work in European Jewish communities, so we have a lot to talk about. (Typically, I am surrounded by people who haven’t a clue what I do or how I do it). It is nice to finally be able to compare notes! She has been traveling to archives for over a year, non-stop, including in Warsaw, Krakow, Prague, London, New York, and now here. I have had a chance to both reflect on the fact that I am supposed to be defending a dissertation less than two years from now, and that it will be a degree coming from a school in Switzerland. So, I am starting to panic, and also, I remain completely at a loss for what comes after PhD. What does an American academy, or otherwise institution/organization/museum/whatever, do with an American who got a doctorate from Switzerland? I’ll let you know in a couple years…

P.S. I have continued to update our flickr account with photos of summer, Pittsburgh, nephews, Ruben, etc., even if I do not often post here.

P.P.S. I am wondering if any of you dear readers would be interested in reading a blog about what it is like to be a history PhD student. I read some good history student blogs lately and feel inspired. Like this one. Alternatively, you can just go read that and already know what it is like to be a history PhD student.

• I went on a hunt for a mushroom brush.  My friend Quinnie knows what I’m talking about! They are these cute little brushes that look like a mushroom to be used for scrubbing mushrooms clean.  They also come in potato, and I think carrot, form. I have regretted since we left that we gave away our mushroom brush instead of taking it back to the States. Switzerland apparently takes seasonality to a new level—when I finally found someone in Migros (amazing! friendly!) to ask about mushroom brushes, I was informed that she knew exactly what I was talking about, but that they were not in season. But…doesn’t mushroom season happen in spring and fall? Anyone?
• Ran into one of of my favorite professors at the Nyon train station that I thought I wouldn’t have time to see!  This place is so small!
• On Monday night, I had dinner at Natalie’s in Renens, our old haunt. We talked late, and I was deciding whether or not I should take the train to Nyon for the night in Alex’s empty apartment, or sleep at Natalie’s. Good thing I chose to sleep at Natalie’s, because at the exact same time I would have gone to the station, there was a big fire there! When I went in the morning, however, I didn’t even notice that a big section of the station was charred…
• Hm. Everyone is still white in all advertisements. But, whoa, so few advertisements, mostly for cultural activities or political referendums. Refreshing. Speaking of political ads, there is a vote coming up on childcare in Geneva, so there are lots of posters of babies, or, in one case, of a couple in bed working on baby production (it says, “Make love…we’ll take care of the rest. YES to the initiative on babyhood, NO to the counter project.”).  Then there is another ad floating around for milk, with a mama cow on a bike with several bike trailers carrying baby cows…that’s the kind of product ads that exist in this country.
• For the first time when I was visiting archives at the UN, I was apprehended by UN Security.  They said (in French), “excuse me, but why are you in this staircase?”  I answered, “Well, because if I took a different way to the library I’d have to go down a big hill and then climb all the way back up to the top of the building where the League of Nations archives are.” They said, “True,” looked at me hard, and then walked away.
• Apparently, if you have a car in the countryside, you can buy insurance against these small, cute martens who chew the wires in the hood.  This has actually happened to someone I know TWICE in just a few years!

My conference went well.  I flew back through Dublin, which, as it turns out, has a full US Customs on site, meaning I did the whole agriculture and passport inspection thing in Dublin and landed in domestic arrivals upon reaching Boston Logan.  How convenient, given the wedding I was rushing toward.

Now, we’re in New York (mostly) for the summer!

Events and observations so far, since Friday’s landing:

• I got myself from a landed airplane through customs and my bag from the belt and onto a train in less than 30 minutes. I love Geneva Cointrin!
• There are thermal baths in Geneva! Who knew? They were pretty nice!
• Geneva continues to mess with my mind by changing the whole public transit system and train station around. Gah.
• Fresh peas! Fresh fava beans!  Asparagus galore! The best tasting strawberries ever! Cheese! I miss these markets!!!
• I found a coton de tulear wandering outside the thermal baths in Geneva, with a collar but no owner or tags.  She was just like Ruben, and came running over to be pet when I called to her. Then I freaked out and called the ASPCA, then animal control, and was continually re-directed because of the lack of things being open on a Saturday, until I was finally told automatically to “take the lost dog to the local police station.” That would require knowing where the police station was.  Instead, I picked up the Ruben doppelganger (albeit with a terrible haircut) and marched her around the nearby park until I found a bichon-frise owner who thought she recognized the dog and promised to care for her until Monday when things re-opened.
• I stayed a night at a friend’s parents’ house in Lausanne.  Their kitchen comes equipped with a built-in steamer.  I was like, “What is that?!”  She said, “What, I always assumed all kitchens in America had them! You don’t recognize it?”  Um, nope. I think it is something along these lines.
• A confiserie/chocolatier in Nyon was selling chocolates that looked like iPhones.  They were remarkably accurate, but brown instead of black and not as shiny.  They had a batch of them created to be children’s party favors, with each child getting an “iPhone” with his/her name on it.

Yep. I am not in Pittsburgh anymore.

I will also happen to be back for my Swiss choir’s first of many celebrations of its 10 years of existence.  Please consider supporting the choir by attending the banquet on Saturday, February 18th.  See http://cjlausanne.ch/concerts.php for details about the banquet (“repas de soutien”) and upcoming anniversary concerts.

And, please watch this adorable, joyous little film they made for the occasion on YouTube, Hosanna, CJL a 10 Ans:

If you are wondering, I am not in a choir in Pittsburgh.  I leave it too often for research to commit to a choir’s rehearsals.  However, I am finding activities to do and still singing.  Seth is working really hard as a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University. Here’s us in Pittsburgh:

This is the Red Cross (it has a simple mnenomic—the cross is red):

Your weekly column called “Diagnosis” is about … Swiss medicine?

(read more about the relationship between the two symbols on Wikipedia)

Update: I guess I’m a little late on this. Apparently the editors at the Times magazine don’t pay attention to facebook comments?

• This perfectly wonderful professor gave a guest lecture during the PhD seminar on religion and politics in European history, a subject which interests me greatly.  It would have been really good, had not a middle-aged, communist-obsessed, anti-Semitic conspiracy-theorist managed to find out about it and show up.  His comments and questions seemed to betray an informed, but confusing, alternative world view…until he suddenly started going on about Jews controlling 150% of the intelligentsia and state department of the US before WWII and using that “fact” to explain historical outcomes.  The professors in the room shut it down effectively enough, but it did not feel good to be The American Jew who went to an Ivy League in the room at that moment.
• On the tram ride back to the station, I watched as Geneva transport officials harassed a black women with two kids in a stroller on the tram for not having the right combination of tickets to be riding on the tram.  They might have done it to anyone, but it was still painful.  Then, once in the train station, a Swiss man yelled at me for “taking up the whole platform with my dog.”  More precisely, Ruben was walking a few feet away and the leash made it more difficult for this man to rush past me.  Nothing like the Swiss to correct your questionably-incorrect behavior in public.
• I went with Ruben to the dog park to discover it was full of puppies!  Actually, the current class of the same puppy school we attended, and one of the puppies in it is one of Ruben’s new best friends.  I wanted to let Ruben play, since after all, that is why I went to the dog park, but I was sharply reprimanded by the teacher who told me that I am letting Ruben get away with too much and he has lost his obedience since he took the class.  Not true, Seth and I have been continually working with him, we just refuse to scream at him and punish him, but I don’t like to be scolded that I have not been taking proper pains to train my dog or doing it effectively.
• Seth and I took Ruben back to the park after dinner, where he sniffed around and studiously ignored the big dogs who were ignoring him.  In came another dog, pooped before our and his owner’s eyes, and the owner didn’t even pretend to picking it up.  Well, thank you sir, for leaving that poop for me to step in and then have to figure out how to clean off my shoes in my tiny apartment.  I am just not Swiss enough to tell him off for his offense.

On the other hand, my, has the weather been gorgeous.  And how frightening does a move to Pittsburgh seem, now that is just three months away.  This week, we sent notice to our landlord that we’ll be ending our lease.  In a few weeks, my parents will head to Pittsburgh to check out housing options for us.  There’s so much I want to do before we leave, including:

1. Go biking in the countryside at least a few times.  Hopefully Seth can work it out so as to take along Ruben in his carrier on his back.
2. Eat fondue.  I think we might have missed our chance with this winter specialty, but we haven’t had any since Michelle visited in February, I think.
3. Go swimming with Ruben in the lake.
4. Go to Cave Ouvertes (open wine tastings) in new villages.
5. Take the Glacier Express and spend some time in Graubuenden.
6. Explore something in a surrounding country at least once more…trying to make this happen for spring break in two weeks.  Northern Italy for a long weekend?
7. Go strawberry picking again.
8. Buy Seth some last items of good-fitting clothing.

Anything else that should be on that list, readers?  Not that I’ll even manage to complete what I’ve already written, given incredible quantities of school work, moving logistics, wedding logistics, and the like…

Happy Pesakh!

On Sunday, we went for a walk along the Venoges river with Ruben, and came across giant patches of it. We thought about stopping to pick bunches for dinner (or, now that I think about it, to dry and save for later) but instead we decided to continue on our way, assuming we’d have the chance to get some on our way back.

Ruben is really quite good off-leash, generally sticking near us as we walk, never running too far off, and responding to come almost all of the time. This was the first time we tried walking with him off-leash on a path affording many opportunities for veering off to the water. As we walked, Ruben tempted fate a few times, scooting himself close to the edge of the river, dipping his toes in, but coming running when we called him, at least sooner or later.

After 10 or 15 minutes of this he made a full speed approach, slightly downhill, towards the river. As we called him, and he continued on his merry way, he reached the edge, a foot or two above the water, and next thing we knew, he was in the river. As Jackie called to him I think he quickly turned around—the river wasn’t very deep there—but then he couldn’t climb out because it was too steep. But he did have solid footing, so when Jackie reached him and bent down to grab him, he extended his paws, and was saved.

Back on land, Ruben was sopping wet but totally unfazed, while we were still trying to figure out if we’d just narrowly averted catastrophe or if we had a natural swimmer on our hands. A few steps away we checked out an opening in the forested area around the river, which revealed stunning open fields:

Ruben and Jackie happily frolicked in the sun. Thanks to my phone’s map we realized we were only a mile or so from EPFL, so made our way through the fields, through a small village near EPFL, and to the metro. Quite a nice tour, except we never made it back to the forest for bear garlic! We do, however, still have 3 big bunches in the refrigerator that we bought at the market. Time to make pesto.

I always thought the ski resorts must be like Switzerland Disneyland.  I thought they were for tourists only.  Yet, I am always surprised by how authentically Swiss they feel.  First, the same shops are there that are everywhere else, including the obligatory Migros and Coop.  Granted, the supermarkets are open later and there is a glut of expensive sports stores, but there are also dairy shops and butcher shops, lots of bakeries, and lots of restaurants serving Swiss food.  I largely think the resort bakeries and restaurants are far superior to their city counterparts, which seems odd given that that the resorts are not exactly rural villages where one would expect to find authentic, home-style cooking or ingredients.  I have also come to realize that these resorts have some stable population as well, and not everyone who lives in them works in the tourist industry.  The apartment building where we stayed in Zermatt (thanks, Alex!) has full-time residents and a shared laundry room resembling the one in Renens (which, I can’t believe I’m saying, I pine for now).  I’m also always surprised to hear that most people around are speaking the language of the place where the resort is located, and all the signs are in that language.  So if they are tourists, they are local-ish ones.

These resorts basically feature the essential Switzerland packed into a tiny little city in the mountains, where everyone is clomping about in ski boots and eating incredible amounts of cheese, and where everything is slightly more convenient and expensive than in the cities below.  They seem far less fake to me than I would have imagined.  I’ve been in mountain villages and countryside villages, and they are basically quieter, smaller versions with one bakery and one restaurant and a Migros with shorter hours than in the cities.  On the other hand, I imagine coming on a visit to Switzerland and ONLY staying at one of these resorts.  As many people do.  And I just know that despite that surprising resort semi-authenticity, they are barely catching a glimpse of Switzerland, and they have nothing for comparison to determine what was fake and what was Swiss.  They are missing the quiet, the inconvenience, the timely transportation, the vegetable markets, the rolling fields of cows and sunflowers, the vineyards clinging to the foothills, the realization that almost all stores are chains, the lakes, the bureaucracy, the universal tidiness that is not just for the eyes of visitors.  They are missing the small places, where there is nothing in particular to see or do other than observe and have a glass of wine made on the premises.  And if all they are doing is rushing down the slopes, they might be missing even more.

When people back home expect that the slopes are the only Switzerland I’ve seen, and then berate me for never skiing, because that’s all anyone they know who has been to Switzerland has ever seen and done, it makes me sad.  I know I’m missing something by not skiing, but I feel proud of how much I have tried to learn about and see this place and live as part of it.  There is so much more to Switzerland than skiing, cheese, and chocolate.  And the resorts are better seen on foot, anyway.

Here’s Zermatt (note the Matterhorn theme):

And here’s some recent scenes from regular life:

I decided I already culled my photos enough to be able to just share a few from the last month and a half on the blog.  Instead, peruse our flickr set, starting when the photos get snowy.  Don’t let that fool you into thinking it is always that snowy–it is only rarely so in Lausanne (but almost always so high in the mountains).  Ruben, obviously, has become quite the Alpine dog.

Other than that, what news is there, really, besides the protests in Egypt?

Here’s some:

• On gun control in Switzerland.  And you thought this place was super peaceful—that’s only because of all the guns!!!  There’s a big vote here on this in a couple weeks, and the scary sheep are out again in force on billboards all over the country (as they were with the minaret vote and the deport foreign criminals vote).
• February is Jewish Disability Awareness Month (the third annual, in the US and promoted mainly by the Reform Movement).  I didn’t know this existed until I read this URJ blog post, but I’m glad it does.  One rarely hears discussions of inclusion and access in Jewish settings, where debates over gender and sexuality still dominate the conversations of those who want to make Judaism egalitarian.  Visit the Religious Action Center‘s page to figure out how you can contribute to disability rights through a Jewish lens.

Ok, back to the books and the BBC.