KNIE Circus

(Jack is on my shoulders; we brought Tim along). The KNIE is the self-proclaimed Swiss National Circus, named after a Swiss-German family running the one-ring tent show for umpteen generations with roots down to the 1700s. The Big Tent is a big deal here, with more circuses per capita than just about any other country in Europe. Add the numerous street fairs, and you have an unusual amount of access to entertainment with ties to the middle ages. Similar to popular theater in Japan, like the Kabuki; just minus the literary content and add live animals. Vaudeville or medicine shows maybe. What non-Swiss like us trip over is the utter lack of commercial trappings or media pizazz or novelistic storylines: just gawk and awe.
I was struck by the routines in which animals acted like humans; humans like animals; and isolated transvestism (again, like Kabuki, or Milton Berle, Flip Wilson, etc) - still not sure what to make of the clown, but he played a mean dueling saxophone with his partner and Michael immediately noticed "his" high heels. My favorite was either the disco-juggler, whose entire routine was done with a non-stop, pulsating disco beat, or the zebras (difficult to train, I understand), whose stripes (I noticed for the first time) were going vertical in the front torso, and horizontal in the back - with circular spirals in the tail.
Post-circus entertainment of our own: invited some students up for a fondue.
Continuing my shopping thread: last Saturday, I hit the motherlode: Alligro.
Warehouse shopping - all food-related items. Makes you wanna go out and buy a freezer. SAMPLES! Because of the generosity of the hotel director, I have a business membership card and get special discounts and parking privileges. I'm definitely going back and dissect the possibilities later, but this may make beef a possibility. The last time beef was affordable here was during the first outbreak of British mad-cow disease and butchers were unloading meat by the ton! No such luck this year, I'm afraid.

Fall Activities

Almost been 2 months since arriving, and fall is here. The wines are being pressed and local villages have better than usual festivities, celebrating their new status as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Wine is cheap here, compared to CA (not counting Trader Joe's 2 Buck Chuck). We are growing to like it more, but I feel the way about the grape the way Europeans used to feel about American coffee: a diluted, weaker brew. Our coffeemaker in Japan actually had an "American" setting. So, coming from the California wines I've been used to, these vintages are lighter - a different kind of beverage altogether.
We finally got into mountain territory last weekend, exploring nearby Gruyeres (yummy cheese that comes in degrees of saltiness - splurge and use it on your pizza for a fantastic treat!), Chateau D'Oex, and Gstaad (winter hangout for older generation of celebs like Elizabeth Taylor). We stopped by this beautiful little churchyard and wandered through the cemetary and adjacent playground.
The reason for the trip was a church weekend. That's Michael hanging from a tree. It's a predominantly UK expat church, with maybe one other American family. Reminded us of gatherings in Japan and among Swiss, where, if I may stereotype and generalize, people seemed to have been better at group behavior, not excluding anyone? I don't know. My experience at parties (at our home or elsewhere) is that it can be awkward, as people find whom to "glom" onto, but rarely will the roomful of people fall easily into enjoyable group company, unless it's around a TV or surrounding a particularly entertaining, commanding individual. But the weekend was more like parties in Japan where people seem to have a common denominator, socially speaking, to fall back on, allowing them to enjoy being a group. Just my observation. I can also confirm that American colloquialisms, as I had heard, have indeed become much more common among UK English-speakers.
Outside the dining area. There was some televised rugby game people seemed attuned to that went right past me. I'm not a sports guy at all, but European rugby and soccer seem more fan crazy than American football, as national games go.

So far, hotel living has its advantages: the supply room. Shelves of paper towels, toilet paper, soaps, etc basically gives me a Costco-esque experience - minus the food sampling. And then there's breakfast. We usually eat upstairs by ourselves, getting Michael ready for school, but I'll make a bread run, nabbing freshly baked bread delivered by a bakery. The restaurant for dinners, Tues-Thurs, is about a 20 min walk through the old town. Classes are going well for now. Michael is picking up more French words everyday it seems, and having an office so near where I live has been nice. Michael and Jack run down the hall to my office to announce lunch, and Carolyn enjoys the reprieve from driving kids everywhere. She is, however, walking a LOT.

Trains

The films of Yasujiro Ozu gave me a new appreciation for trains, as he studied their impact on Japanese society, simultaneously creating new experiences and institutions, while destroying existing ones. Trains are a metaphor for modernity in movies that, amazingly to me, allow virtually no nostalgia.

The country trains I took in Italy back in the '80s were not long passenger cars with doors at the ends, but a series of individual compartments designed like stage coaches. You opened separate doors to directly get on and off the platform. These early trains, like the early light bulb, mimicked the former, preindustrial forms (horsedrawn stage coach, candlelight) in their new guises.
Today was a holiday, so we took a train to La Tour de Peilz, where our first apt was located. Michael and Carolyn showed me their secret way to school - narrow gardens tucked next to villas - which took us to the station, as well. M an J were so excited to ride an actual train, calling out "choo choo" the entire way.
Grape harvest is next week. This beautiful region of vineyards will be Switzerland's next UNESCO World Heritage site.
La Tour has this geranium tree - metal wiring creates a skirt for the flowers.
Ran into Jack by the lake, who is going to Florida this week for a vacation.

Other matters. I guess we've pretty much settled on All Saints in Vevey. I've been impressed both at the lack of personal affect and the focus on scriptural text in their spirited worship. The rhetorical level, the poetry whether in prayer or song, is significantly higher than what we're used to in what is now called "contemporary" worship.

We have internet, figuing out shopping, daily routines...we're slowly getting comfortable. Amused by trashy BBC shows in the evening - I mean, trashy.

One Week Down!

I helped out these 3 - Alex, Cory, & Jeff - by dropping them near the Autoroute onramp, where they would hitch their way to Paris or Interlaken or somewhere. These students are around the age I was when I first came to Switzerland and are doing things I never did - like hitchhike to Paris. I hunkered down in existential crisis mode reading philosophy and theology, but that was another time and another exchange rate.

(The autoroute, btw, isn't what it used to be. Speed limits watched, hidden cameras abound.)

We got through week one at this start-up. I took personal triumph in solving a hi-tech obstacle, since wireless in this cement behemoth isn't so reliable on the 5th floor - I got a long ethernet cable and hooked it into the port of an office next door and slid it under the 1/4" gap under our doors! Voila.

We crowded almost all of the students to our apt last Sunday evening. We plan to regularly have them over, but imagine the crowd will thin as soon as they get the travel-stuff figured out. Michael helped Carolyn make banana bread today for tomorrow's gathering, and it was a little challenging adapting measurements and ingredients. Swiss flour is more like our cake or pastry flour, so the results are pretty delicate. Brown sugar is not the coarse, dark variety either. You can generally buy a wider range of products like coarser whole wheat breads, but not the ingredients to make them. That seems unchanged. The newly emerged Asian food shelf reminds me of what you'd find at Von's or Safeway's; hoisin sauce to sushi-kits. I enjoy asking store clerks where items are (even if I know) just for French practice and Japanese is no longer the first response that comes to mind when I'm out and about.

Purchased some of the last household items today, so office and home are pretty complete now. Since we only have 42 students and I'm teaching the same two courses both terms, my classes are nice and small - around 13. My clever plan of using online course materials and email a lot will be tested this week, since getting online is challenging.
We went to this huge wooded area north of the city today. I was struck by the geometric, Mondrian-like design of this equipment. The big play equipment is similar in function to that back home, although more uniquely designed for a specific area or to realize someone's idea. The equipment we saw in Guangzhou focused on developing careful balance - lots of play where, with one wrong move, you'd come tumbling down, like an aerial performer.

We are settling into a pattern, I guess, as Carolyn sees how much she can do - how far she can walk - before picking-up Michael from school. Jack has started at a nearby preschool for a couple hours of play. The teacher speaks English, which is nice, since Jack is just verbalizing sentences and we don't want to confuse him. We do want Michael to be confused. He is comfortable at school and wanted to stay later to play with his "friends."

Pepperdine Abroad & Other Details = Big Post

Had our first teachers' meeting last week - an earnest group with a lofty mission, despite my reality check pep talk. (Ironic, because the students also got such a talk by staff back in Malibu.) There is a large pool of talented academics who've settled in Switzerland for whom this is an ideal gig. In a somewhat colonial fashion, Pepperdine maintains academic bubbles around the world, which sophomores can use as a platform for travel and friendship, checking-off general education requirements along the way to not fall behind their graduating schedule. Different to most college programs that send students abroad as juniors, PU sends them as sophomores, thus serving broader core, rather than major, requirements. A wonderful opportunity for all involved.Chris and Jack in pre-boat entertainment.
Captain Jack.
Mik (sp) and Cecily and Michael, who is really enjoying activities with the students. We took a boatride from Ouchy to Montreux on Saturday.

A lot - or little - can happen to individuals abroad, students or otherwise. 19th century diaries by English women cruising the Nile and other destinations suggest that they had never actually left England. My own sense is that, given the easy and cheap availability of the internet and telephone, the kind of growth that is associated with making a break - confronting the foreign - occurs less often than before, since individuals can carry culture with them. Maybe similar to the way luxury cars reproduce the easy chair and living room, making it harder to experience wind and road.

Other details: cooler morning dress for their 10 min walk to Montriand School. Michael loves wearing his traffic banner.

I love the way windows and door hinge from the side AND the bottom.
Michael with Addie, Diane, Michael, & Chris at the first dinner. The schedule is M-Th classes. We have dinner T-W-Th at St Gery, a trendy restaurant that has been nicely reviewed here.
Mr Bustamonte, director and part owner of the hotel. A real character who could do stand-up - he reminds of Manuel of Fawlty Towers, but that was another hotel. Given the pioneering stage of things and the complex ownership agreement with the director whose apt we've taken over, lines are definitely blurry. We're used to grey zones, housesitting for 3 years now as renter/friend/faculty, but this one is definitely unique. Eg: the owner asked me to help make the rounds, filling-in as a security worker to secure windows and doors at night!

Being near the station, the owner also being a pastor, and La Croisee offering the cheapest rooms in town all create the grey zone we now inhabit, welcoming the occasional unexpected guest. There was a elderly woman day one, asking for money, and the 3 policemen on day 3 evicting an unwelcomed stranger who was asleep and drunk in another guest's bed (always remember to lock your door).

The city itself has been floating in the margins, flirting with an experimental, unorthodox drug policy, thereby attracting Europeans in search of an unregulated good time. There was a referendum (voted down) in the last election to create a free shooting-up heroin zone ("needle park"). The city has been making heroin available and not prosecuting, believing that decriminalizing would also prevent crime, as well as lower the drug overdose rate; recent research suggests neither.
Students were surprised at graffiti marring historical sites. This began in the early '80s and it's been impossible to stop. I remember one fashionable shop getting creative by incorporating graffiti in their show window display. The "writing" seems less menacing than before, but there are disaffected youth in Swiss society who don't fit in anywhere. Italian graffiti seemed playful where the Swiss version felt angry somehow.

Also, Michael came home from school saying, "America is a bad country" which was annoying. Another family we know has encountered this numerous times in their tiny mountain village. Not sure what to do with it at this point, but I suspect he picked it up from classmates. Michael has never been one to cast blame, and this was no exception, as he warded off my prying, refusing to go into it.
This election poster by the Swiss People's Party (has the majority seats in Parliament) isn't anti-American, but more anti-refugee. There is sympathy for the movement by a lot of sensible people we know, since much of the increase in crime has been traced to refugees, but hope for a solution other than racism. Reminds us of the Japan we knew, where a shop owner or realtor could tell you directly he wouldn't serve you because he didn't like foreigners! Our racism usually disallows such honesty, so people mistreat each other while labelling it something else - conduct epitomized by the university, which has baptized this as a model for professional behavior.

Hotel La Croisee

We are in the hotel! Moving has been a subtheme of our lives, but happy to report that this 5th floor apartment is a winner. It's a 1/2 penthouse now, and will be more like 2/3 come December. Comfortable - the boys (and we) finally have rooms to breathe. The view is the most redeeming feature, so here are 4 pics - two from each balcony that virtually wraparound the apt.
It's definitely city central and it feels great to be in a dense, urban space where human traffic can overlap and build familiarity.
Hazy days but there are clear peaks in the distance.
Michael's school is a 15 min walk - downhill - and can be seen as the building with the steeple backgrounded by foliage on the far right. We are near the train station, which we can wax romantically about: the social conventions of old industrial modernity (movie houses, etc).
Now the interior. It's pretty roomy but I was really struck by this shower fixture which has multiple heads that shoot out - kind of a stand-up jacuzzi. This is paired by another nozzle on the opposite end of an all granite bathroom.
There was a flea market along the water in Vevey over the weekend, run by antique shops and would-bes (children selling their old toys). I got ripped-off by one dart gun, but good deals otherwise.

Michael has been consuming these popsicles that, once done, double as a pump squirt gun.
Returned to All Saints and ran into Susan Macaulay, who was visiting from Cambridge. It's an interesting collage of folks who have either returned or remained in this area, since I left - kinda like a collegetown of major proportions. I was also intrigued to learn how some Swiss drive to France to shop at French versions of WalMart, where the prices are much cheaper and the stores much bigger (there is an 800 gm limit of meat per person) - the idea that people go to France for an American-style shopping experience is really entertaining. The biggest supermarkets here are like grand convenience stores. We don't need an entire aisle of cereal, but a healthy medium would be nice? All Saints is still our happy medium, in terms of church. The chaplain, Clive, invited us over for lunch and their daughter Rebecca and Michael became fast friends. Jack fell into a pond.

Jack also landed on the wooden dining room floor off a box today and got another goose egg right where his stiches were. He ran into the coffee table last week. We promise to bring him back alive!