A museum to avoid, and other notes

I worry sometimes that this blog is getting off-track, thus, with this post I hope to return it to its original purpose: making fun of weird stuff in Switzerland. That is what the people want, and that is what they shall have.

As mentioned in the previous post, the weather here is finally starting to change. A couple of Sundays ago, in fact, it hit the blistering heights of 55 degrees. What could I do but take to the sidewalks of Lausanne and soak in the city. First off, I'll say this for the people of Lausanne: they know how to take advantage of good weather. Morally broken by months of abysmal, depressing, seasonal-affective-disorder-causing weather, they heroically emerge from their caves at the first hint of a sunny day, heavy coats left at home in favor of slightly less heavy coats. And how do they greet the spring? Why, how else?

Fig. 1: As ski season ends, petanque season begins.

Although more of French thing, petanque is fairly popular in Switzerland. Well-maintained petanque courts are located around the city and people of all ages seem to enjoy the activity. Although I was forced to leave my petanque kit at home, what with it weighing like 20 pounds, I am optimistic that I'll talk some of my labmates into playing sometime. One of them must own a set. Notably, there are more petanque courts than basketball courts in Lausanne (as far as I can tell). I think it's safe to say that the Vaudois are not big basketball players.

Nearby the petanque courts pictured above are the ruins of Lousana -- the first Roman settlement in the area. Located in what is now Vidy (a neighborhood of Lausanne), there are still numerous archealogical remains. I am a huge "Roman ruins" buff, so I finally got down to Vidy to see both the ruins and the Musée Romain Lausanne-Vidy, which houses all the artifacts that have been uncovered.

Fig. 2: The ancient city of Lousana. This building (like most of ancient and current Lausanne) probably housed an apartment management company.

Although fairly extensive -- the ruins cover a couple football fields worth of space -- the archealogical remains are not particularly impressive. As with most remains of this style, it's mostly a bunch of low walls and foundations of buildings. Unfortunately, time has not been very kind to Lousana and it's pretty clear that most of the "remains" are, at the minimum, heavily improved with modern morter and stones. Still, there are some nice "viewing spots" where you can look through a little peephole through a painted reconstruction (on glass) projected onto the current remains. The whole site, although not particularly exciting, is still fairly nice and relaxing.

The museum, on the other hand, is hard to enjoy. Currently, they are having an exhibit called T'as trouvé? (You've got it?). Instead of actually showing you interesting artifacts and explanations, they have arranged the museum into a series of rooms, each with its own "historical puzzle." Now, I love history and I love puzzles so going into this, I thought "hey, this is right up my alley!" Oh, how wrong I was.

The basic problem was that there was nothing "historical" or "educational" about the puzzles. Instead of learning something about the objects, or figuring out something about historical trends, the ancient items served as little more than props for your typical back-of-Highlights-magazine type puzzle. For example, the "puzzle" in one room consisted of two sequences of objects and another box with assorted items inside. The idea was to look at the two sequences and determine which objects in the box completed the sequences. What were the sequences? Did they have to do with the evolution of different techniques, i.e. stone age, bronze age, etc? Did they have do do with different historical eras of Roman history? Try to figure them out.

Fig. 3: (part of) The first sequence. All you need to know to solve this is that the first items are needles, the second are handles from amphoras, the third is a bowl, slightly off-camera is a bronze arm of a small statue, and continuing past that are a compass (like for seafaring), a nail, and then a die (like for a game of chance). The "solution" to this puzzle was a set of ancient false teeth. Why?

Fig. 4: The second sequence. I honestly never figured this one out, but I think it has something to do with the materials that each of the pieces are made of. Some of those little things are made of bone, and the piece at the extreme left is made of bronze, I think. Good luck.

Probably my biggest obstacle in this whole thing was my poor French. Many of the puzzles invovled some amount of word play or at the least a fairly extensive vocabulary. By the end, though, my biggest obstacle was the fact that I just didn't care anymore. In theory, you had to solve all of the puzzles in order to prodcue a numeric code which you could use to open the door at the end which led you to ... the entrance, but I found that an equally satisfying solution was to just walk backwards and forget about the whole puzzle nonsense.

Unfortunately, the exhibit will be gone by May 3, so if you were planning on visiting me and you wanted to hit your head against the wall for a couple hours, you'll have to hurry.

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Finally, I went to the supermarket the other day and saw some goofy stuff that inspired me to break out my cellphone and take some pictures. So, in no particular order:

Fig. 5: As a San Diegan, I consider myself to be somewhat of an expert on mexi-american foodstuffs. This is something I have never, ever seen. And, yes, of course I bought some. It tastes pretty much like ketchup.

Fig. 6: This is one of 6 displays of chocolate easter bunnies in the supermarket. Six. That's only counting the displays with bunnies -- there is plenty more chocolate in the store, as well. I think it's safe to say that Swiss people are looking forward to Easter.

Fig. 7: This package of guinea pig (dwarf rabbit, in French) food is just all kinds of awesome. First, the kid. Second, it says "feel cool." Are you supposed to feel cool because you serve this to your guinea pig or is the guinea pig supposed to feel cool? And finally, it looks like the kid is wearing a shirt that says "I love Rat(?)". We can only assume that the full text says "I love Ratt." San Diego, represent!