Switzerland's Charming Towns

Although the cost of everything in Switzerland often made it a bit difficult to fully enjoy everything, I have to say that there are so many beautiful and charming towns in that small country that it's hard not to like it. Unlike its neighbors, Switzerland avoided the incredible destruction of WW2 bombs, so a lot of towns still have 13th century houses, winding narrow roads, and old cathedrals and churches.

okay, I confess--this photo is actually in Freiburg, Germany, but it was on the way to Switzerland!

Our first stop was Bern. Its Altstadt lies on a hill surrounded by the River Aare, with most buildings made primarily of greyish-green stone and arcades in the front. (I'll admit, I pictures Hampton Beach when I first heard 'arcades', but this just means that the sidewalks are covered.)

Although we found the stone a bit drab in the grey, rainy days we were there, the views from the bridges are remarkable. It was so romantic to stand on the bridges and watch the warm lights slowly blink on all over the city.

my photos do not do this view justice!

We also got to see some of the famous Bernese bears (apparently, the rest of them were visiting China at the time), which live in a good-sized enclosure on the steep bank of the Aare.

we didn't translate this fully, but basically they discourage feeding the bears,
letting your dog play with the bears, and playing with the bears yourself.
All the signs were in 5 languages; English was last.

Bern is also the town of the $100 a night hostel where you have to rent bath towels, but I try not to dwell on this and remember the fun parts ;)

Cheese, Chocolate, & Ridiculously Expensive Tacos: Food in Switzerland

A good portion of our diet in Switzerland included cheese and chocolate. We didn't try any gourmet chocolate, but even the bars from the grocery store were very good.

We ate one of my favorite meals on the train  from Basel to Interlaken at the start of our true vacation. At the grocery store we bought 2 special types of cheese plus delicious butter bread. The Tête de Moine cheese is served in delicate rosettes, while the Gruyere was served as simple rolls. The Gruyere was pretty stinky, but tasted good; our favorite, though, was the Tete de Moine--delicious!

We grabbed most of our meals at the grocery store not because we were always in a hurry, but because everything in Switzerland is ridiculously expensive and overpriced. A small combo meal at McDonald's was 15 CHF ($16)! And these are typical prices at a regular sit-down restaurant:

not joking, you could not get a sit-down mean for less than $25/plate

However, we did splurge on one traditional meal of cheese fondue and rösti (potato hash with onions, bacon, and cheese). The cheese fondue was very interesting--you dip bread in a mix of Gruyere and Emmental (aka, Swiss) cheese plus spices (nutmeg, cloves) and kirsch (cherry brandy). Both dishes were very hearty, and I could imagine peasants cooking them up in the cold winter months.

i love the edelweiss plate and the straw chicken :)

We ate our traditional Swiss meal at a really fun restaurant in Interlaken, a bit off the beaten path and thus not touristy at all. Our waitress was also the owner and had a really charming Swiss accent when she spoke English.

In addition to cheese, bread, and chocolate, J also sampled local beers in each town we visited. By far, his favorite was the Rugenbräu Weissbier found in the Interlaken region. We especially enjoyed sharing a small Maß (aka, beer stein)while soaking in the view of the Eiger.

Look for more posts about our trip soon!

A Working Vacation: The Archives of Switzerland

desk view in the Basel Staatsarchiv

In late March, J and I embarked on a 10 day 'working vacation' to visit archives and libraries in Switzerland to collect information for his dissertation research. Some of it was scouting to find out what is available (since many archives have incomplete or nonexistent online catalogs, and even if they do sometimes you can only read the title and year) and some of it was to gather data that hasn't been digitized yet (i.e., tables in a printed book, not an Excel file).

Archives and libraries are closed on the weekend (some also on Mondays) and almost all of them are only open from 8 or 9 to 5 (sometimes with an hour lunch break), so we had extra time for vacation activities. It turns out that archive work is pretty tiring, but we really enjoyed working in such beautiful places. Later I'll get to telling about the vacation part, but in this post I wanted to share about the archives. Before we went, it sounded very mysterious and important to me!

First, some background: Switzerland is divided up into cantons and the cantons are further divided up into bezirks, which are comprised of gemeinde (municipalities). The cantons are pretty autonomous (they get to set a lot of their own policies), so the type and breadth of information collected by the cantons differs quite a lot. The cantonal libraries and archives also differ a lot in terms of accessibility, technology, policies, etc.

A typical day at the archives looks like this:

lots and lots of files,
requested through either paper or computerized systems

lots of picture-taking (where allowed)

there are 12 GB of pictures just
like this one on my laptop!

J was the brains, I was the brawn -- he found the useful documents,
and I either took pictures or transcribed the tables into Excel files

At the end of the day, everything looks like this because we had looked at so much text!