La pendaison de la crémaillère

Although I've been living in my new apartment since mid-October, it wasn't until a couple weeks ago that I finally felt ready to throw a proper housewarming party. In French, a housewarming party is a Pendaison de la crémaillère, which translates to something like "hanging of the trammel." According to the internet, a trammel is a thing that you put in your fireplace which can be adjusted to hold a pot at different heights. Presumably, in the past, one could only truly say that they had moved into a new home when they had put this very important piece of cooking apparatus in the new fireplace. At any rate, nowadays I don't think anyone has any idea what a crémaillère is or why you would be hanging it, but the phrase survives.

So, despite the fact that my apartment is pretty tiny, I decided to invite everyone I know in Switzerland (aka my labmates, my boss, and the administrative assistant) to my home for an evening of merrymaking. Upon being invited, many of my labmates asked if there was something they could bring to the party. Of course, I suggested that they just bring a desire to enjoy themselves and maybe something to drink, but many felt that wasn't enough. They suggested that it was traditional that people should bring some sort of item to help me setup my new apartment. Of course, I didn't invite anyone over until I had essentially everything I needed to be properly setup, so I couldn't think of anything for people to bring.

Fortunately, I had been to a pendaison in Grenoble when I went to visit Loren a couple of months ago, so I stole an idea from there. I gave all my friends blank note cards and asked them to fill them out however they pleased and then bring them to the party so that I could make a big collage. Although not everyone completed their task, I got enough creative responses that I was able to make something cool out of it. So, with no further ado:

Fig. 1: The collage.

If you click on the picture, you can see a full-size version which gives you a lot more detail. Most of the cards are pretty self-explanatory, but here are some brief explanations.

The top middle piece was made by my labmate Marc, who apparently remembers me complaining once or twice about just how awful the Swiss apartment management companies (régies) are. The various pictures and logos are all of different régies in the area, and the bulls eye will come in handy if I ever have to apply for another apartment again (god forbid). The top right piece was made by my administrative assistant and is absolutely awesome. In case you are wondering, the photo she used is the "mugshot" that EPFL took of me for my ID. I always have great ID photos. The bottom center is a group of postcards that one of my labmates, Bernard, bought for me as an example of "typically Swiss humor." Translations:

• Top left: (Store name: "The strike of the foot in the ass") The shop of Mr. Jeannot, the last buttkicker in Paris. Small businesses of times long ago.
• Top right: The end of the lake. The ancients believed that the lake was flat, like the earth and that if you went to the edge, you would fall into the emptiness
• Bottem left: Hunting, fishing, and tradition. A memorable flan hunting party.
• Bottom right: Mrs. Bemolle's class of hyperactives.

I think the other parts of the collage are pretty self-explanatory. Now, as soon as I can figure out how to drill a hole in my walls (they are stone or something really hard) I will put this up on my wall. In the meantime, it's just sort of sitting on top of my bookcase.

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In other news, I've been working really hard lately on my French. I guess I realized that I just haven't made the progress I was hoping to make up to this point and that if I was going to get any better I would have to be proactive about things. Towards that end, me and my officemate Jens -- still German -- have instituted "French Thursdays." The idea is that we get together for dinner and then maybe watch a French movie, or play a game, or something, the whole time speaking in French. Last Thursday it was my turn to host and we were fortunate to have one of our labmates, Mirjana, join us as well. To work on our French (Mirjana is much better than Jens and I, but she humored us by going along with our plans), we played a little bit of Taboo Junior -- in French.

Fig. 2: The Taboo Junior game, en français. Exciting french vocabulary lesson: the hourglass timer is called a "sablier" from the word "sable" for sand.

If you have never played Taboo before, here's how it works: a word is written on the top of a card and below it is a list of "taboo" words. The idea is for you to get your teammates to guess the word at the top without saying any of the words on the list. Of course, the words listed below are chosen to make the whole process as difficult as possible, so it really forces you to be creative. I remember one time giving the clue, "these things were put there by aliens," which, as Matt guessed correctly after about half a second, is a great way to describe "the pyramids" without saying "Egypt," "pharoahs," "built," or a couple other useful words. Although I can't claim to be the Taboo expert that my friend Monzy is, I would like to think that I am pretty good so I was definitely looking forward to playing.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of things about Taboo Junior that make it somewhat less than fun. First, there is the fact that there are only two taboo words, not four or five like in the normal version. Looking over the cards, it looks like they just picked two words out of the four or five on the normal card without any real thought. As an example, one of the cards visible in the picture is cochon -- pig. The two words you can't say are "pink" and "corkscrew." Of course, you can say "animal" and "oink" and "pork" and lots of other words, so for the most part, we didn't find the "taboo words" very constraining at all. Still, they were frequently helpful in giving us clues as to what the "guess word" was when we didn't know what it meant. Also, the "categories" are things like animals, school items, household items, and clothing. As useful as these are for helping build vocabulary, they don't really require a lot of creativity. It is definitely more difficult and more interesting to try to define adjectives, adverbs, phrases, etc. Still, it was a lot of fun and I look forward to playing again.

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I heard through the grapevine that little Alexander wanted to see more photos of his Unkie Paul and less photos of police reports and windex bottles, so this is for him. I went to Grenoble this weekend to visit Loren and since the weather was so nice on Saturday, we had no choice but to go skiing. Here I am on the ski lift, looking sharp.

Fig. 3: I got my stunna shades on.

That about brings everyone up to date. Sorry for the huge delay between blog posts, I just haven't had much time or energy to write anything. I think the next post will probably be work-related, but after that I am short of ideas. Anyone have anything they want to know? Any questions about Swiss people?

Winter Smorgasbord

Lots of old news to cover, what with me not writing an actual update in like a month, so away we go.

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Way, way back -- before Christmas break -- I took the train to beautiful Grenoble to visit my friend Loren, who works there as a lab monkey, like me. Although Loren has made it into Switzerland (successfully) two times, this was my first trip to France to visit him. I had heard lots of talk about how awesome the city, so I was pretty excited about checking it out.

To most French people, Grenoble = the Alps. Located smack dab in-between three massive sets of mountains, Grenoble is known for its mountainy beauty. On the mountains to the north is La Bastille, a huge prison complex that was begun in the middle ages. Loren and I -- trying to recreate everything we knew about French history -- decided to storm the bastille. It wasn't the same bastille, but it was close enough.

Fig. 1: La Bastille, in Grenoble. Pretty much the ultimate snowball fort.

Grenoble hosted the winter olympics many years ago, and thus is left with a huge amount of "futuristic" looking stuff. Or, at least it was "futuristic" back in 1968.

Fig. 2: "Les Bulles" have been bringing a taste of the future to the citizens of Grenoble for 40 years. Like the Jetsons, really.

I also took this picture of a cafe that clearly had some sort of connection to the family. Immediately after I took this, though, the woman inside came out and started yelling at me. She said it was "Forbidden!" to take photos without permission. I told her she was "crazy!", she kept insisting it was "Forbidden!", I reminded her that was "Ridiculous!" A stalemate reached, she went back to the cafe. Loren followed her and took four or five more photos with his camera, but the excitement was over. What a weird experience.

Fig. 3: The forbidden photo. I'm not sure why they would forbid anyone taking a photo of their crummy cafe, but French people are a constant mystery.

One last shot of Grenoble, this one emphasizing its natural beauty.

Fig. 4: Would a rose in front of someone else smell as sweet?

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During Christmas, I went back to SD and saw the whole family and whatnot. What can I say, it was incredible. I had an unbelievable time seeing everybody and all I could wish for was that it was longer. Even though I was home for nearly two weeks, for a variety of reasons I barely got to spend time with anyone. Oh well. At least I did get to spend some time with the Neph, who -- by the way -- is ADORABLE. Want proof? Here's a pic I took of us on the Mini-Railroad in front of the world famous San Diego Zoo. Alexander loved riding the choo-choo and especially enjoyed going through the tunnel.

Fig. 5: I have NO IDEA who that crazy person behind us is.

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So, here's a weird story. Flying back to La Suisse, I went from LAX to London to Zurich. From LAX to London, I was seated next to an extremely stoned Australian guy who spent the whole trip sucking down those fake plastic "cigarettes" and chugging Courvoisier and Cokes (or Cro-vo-sser and Coke, as he said it). Anyway, it was miserable and I was happy to land, somewhere, anywhere. I wandered around the London airport for a bit, then headed to my gate for Zurich. As soon as the gate agent has looked at my ticket, I hear this voice say "What a coincidence!" I look up and it is none other than Andrei Garcia.

Andrei (a.k.a. "Drei2K") is a good frend from the McCullough basement crew at Stanford, and also holds the distinguished claim of being the person who took over the wheels of the Science Bus when I bailed. He was visiting his mother in Ireland, who had been working on a Fullbright scholarship. They were on their way to Salzburg for a vacation and it was just a bizarre coinicidence that we ended up on the same flight to Zurich. Fortunately, Andrei's mom let me switch tickets with her and Andrei and I had to whole flight to talk and share gossip. Here's an interesting piece of gossip: nearly everyone I know from Stanford has not left. Stanford people: what is wrong with you? Leave!!! (Not you young ones, you can stay).

Fig. 6: Me and Drei. Yes, we are dressed identically. No, that is not on purpose.

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OK. One final thing. Once I got back to Switzerland, I was greeted at the Zurich airport by Christine and Patrick. We hung out in Zurich, came back to Lausanne for New Year's, and then set off for Eastern Switzerland for an exciting adventure. We went to Bergün, near Chur, to go Schlitteln! What is Schlitteln? Why, sledding, of course! But not just normal sledding on some small hill, no. The road between Preda and Bergün is closed off and you can sled the entire length. To get to the top, you just take the train. Crazy! Anyway, the sled run is something like 4km long and takes about 15 minutes, I'd guess, to go from top to bottom. With rented sleds, you can end up going pretty darn fast, which seems dangerous but really isn't due to the snow all around. The only real danger comes from other sledders, many of whom decided that stopping in the middle of the run was a good idea. At any rate, it was lots of fun, and one of the most scenically beautiful places I have ever seen. I took lots of pictures (no action shots, unfortunately -- maybe Patrick has some he could send to me) so, here they are!

Fig. 7: Me, Christine, and my sled. There's a reason I'm covered with snow and Christine isn't: she's a much better sledder.

Fig. 8: How's that for scenic beauty?

Fig. 9: Christine with some sort of shaggy animal.

Fig. 10: Downtown Bergün. That is an actual horse-driven sleigh coming toward the camera. For real.