curi·ous {Old French curios} Drawn to investigate, prick up the ears, ponder for the sake of pondering. Enticed by mysteriously labeled bottles.
vo·luptu·ary {Late Latin volupturius} A lass devoted to the pursuit of pleasure. An unabashed epicurean, hedonist, libertine, sensualist, lotus-eater.
Across the lake from our canton and town of Neuchatel, is the canton of Fribourg and the town of Estavayer le Lac. We’ve long coveted their golden late afternoon light, and so we finally toodled over to see if the real town lived up to our fantasy. It was pretty lovely: charming architecture, live Bossa [...]
A few weeks after we first moved to Switzerland we made a little sojourn to Chaumont, to ride the funiculaire and take in the view. Crossing the suspension bridge to the lookout tower a sudden fear of heights gripped me in the most inexplicable way, and I had to turn back.
This weekend I returned [...]
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View from the prison tower, the oldest building in Neuchâtel, with foundations from the 10th century.
In 1688 Swiss doctor Johannes Hofer introduced the term nostalgia for the condition also known as mal du Suisse (Swiss illness) or Schweizerheimweh (Swiss homesickness), because of its frequent occurrence in Swiss [...]
sign of spring #1: this pie-faced man with pretzels for ears and sandwich feet.
Utterly remiss. I mean it’s April and I’ve yet to write Spain posts from New Years Eve. Criminy. My excuse is, well, my website was hacked, for one. I designed and built the first version of it myself and can code [...]
When I was a kid my mom, Karen, made cupcakes to bring to my class on my birthday. She also sewed many gifts, requiring she stay up until into the wee hours to complete them after the work day at her theater. Easter baskets and Christmas stockings often had dolls tucked inside–a hand-painted Punch (of [...]
Only Alfonso’s godmother Sylvia could successfully implore him to pose with the local butcher’s pig. She was in town to fete him, for his second birthday en Suisse. We took a boat ride–only our second time on the lake we call ours in the sixty-three weeks we’ve lived here. I ’spose it’s no different than [...]
Generally we drive, but for this trip to Zurich we took the train. Maybe the ride was my favorite part. I used to ride Amtrak several times a month for work, from New York to Philly or Washington. A lady can do her best thinking on a train.
I was thinking what if I were [...]
How does one achieve eternal bliss? By saying dada. How does one become famous? By saying dada. With a noble gesture and delicate propriety. Till one goes crazy. Till one loses consciousness. How can one get rid of everything that smacks of journalism, worms, everything nice and right, blinkered, moralistic, europeanised, enervated? By saying dada.
Dada [...]
Alfonso has been dreaming of some solid winter boots, and he certainly got some, and me too. The 11th generation German company Meindl makes a boot they christened Perfekt, which is, you know, hard to argue with. Except with red laces they’d be even more perfekt.
I’ve read they take a year to break in, and [...]
The last days of the year have had a dark and snowy mood. Theatrical. I’ll back-date the honeymoon posts (as this blog serves as something like a journal for me), but this will be the last proper post for 2008. I close with some recent photographs…
p/s balancing the spooky mood are the utterly insane german [...]