The Neutral Zone

Zug, Switzerland - Dear readers, I write to you today about trains and train stations in Switzerland. These are two things Hannah and I have become very familiar with you in our brief time here. The Bahnhof Exception Switzerland closes down on Sunday. Department stores, grocery stores, pharmacies, and even most restaurants are closed. In posting their hours, many stores will simply put "ruhetag" (rest day) next to Sunday, where as other days they might be "geschlossen" (closed). Sunday is the day of rest here and that's taken rather seriously. To illustrate the point, the following things are outlawed  (in some municipalities)   or otherwise frowned upon on Sundays*: Recycling Mowing the lawn Doing the laundry Washing your car * This list is likely incomplete. But, for H and I the biggest challenge is the inability to engage in basic commerce on Sunday. Meal preparation is the primary concern, but discovering a scarcity of any basic household go...

Zug, Switzerland - We visited Bern last weekend and we went for a hike up the Zugerberg. Bern Bern is the fifth largest city in Switzerland with a population of 140,000. It is the de facto capital; the Swiss constitution intentionally has no official capital, making a facto capital an administrative impossibility. However, this is where many (though, not all) government institutions are located, such as the parliament and the federal council.  Bern, like so many Swiss cities, has a lovely old town that's very nice to stroll through. Cars are barred from driving on many of these cobblestone streets, but weirdly, trams are still permitted and they aren't particularly well separated from the pedestrians (see here ), so pedestrians will occasionally receive a horn to warn of impending bodily injury.  Bears feature prominently in Bern - mostly in the form of symbols and legends, but also live bears. Legend has it that the founder of the city, Berthold V, Duke of...

Zug, Switzerland - This is our last post about Prague. It's been a week since we returned and my memory is getting hazy now. If you're interested, in other posts we also describe the Prague Castle , Prague's Astronomical Clock , and miscellaneous other adventures in Prague . But so far, I neglected to tell you about the food in Prague, which is perhaps the best part. Hannah and I were blown away. The food is great and cheap! There are eight places I describe below, all meticulously researched and selected by H. What's remarkable is that five of these places were owned by the same restaurant group, Ambiente . This was not consciously planned. It seems that Ambiente's slick, modernist, and social media-focused marketing was tailor-made for the likes of H, who ate it up (pun intended). We very nearly spent the entire trip hopping between Ambiente franchises, blithely being sold new culinary experiences from the same corporate overlord none the wiser. We only suspecte...

Prague, Czech Republic - I’m going to run through the remainder of our Prague experience now in fairly short order, as we’re accumulating other experiences that you no doubt are eager to hear about and also, Prague is fading a bit in my memory. Before I dive into new stuff, I want to apologize for neglecting a few features of the clock in my previous post that are worth pointing out. These features are somewhat less dense than the various time keeping and astronomical functions addressed earlier. They include the “Walk of the Apostles” and the calendar dial. First, the apostles: Most people show up to see the astronomical clock specifically for this (so it’s a bit odd that I neglected to mention it). At the top of every hour, two doors open above the clock and the apostles appear in pairs. They march out, and then depart, making way for the next set of apostles. Below the apostles are four other figures, the most noticeable of which is a skeleton striking time on the hour and I gue...

Prague's Astronomical Clock (or Horolorgium, or Orloj) This is an incredibly old and complex instrument. First, old: installed in 1410, this is the oldest astronomical clock still operating. Second, complex: I’ll admit, as I stood staring at in the morning, I had absolutely no idea what time it was. The constellation of interweaving dials and arms was completely incomprehensible for me at the time (morning, without coffee). The complexity is due to the fact that this horolorgium (or astronomical clock, or orloj) is measuring several different things at once and each of these measures are built into one instrument in which all information radiates from a single central axis. This single central axis point is important because it means there’s an elaborate coordinated system of dials and arms arrayed on top of each other, meaning the information from this system is also arrayed on top of itself, and so you basically have a massive mess which would really be more useful if it were...

Prague, Czech Republic – This is actually my second take at this post. Blogger somehow deleted my first (nearly complete) draft. I’ll give you my best effort at reconstructing my thoughts, but mind, the first draft was Pulitzer-caliber stuff. So if this is anything less, you should just remember that lightening doesn’t strike twice, OK? Also, H and I did a lot of stuff in Prague and we shared a lot of profound insights and frankly, I’m not going to be able to get to all of it in this first writing. So, I’m going to limit the scope a bit and set the table here by describing the first thing we did. But, I think this first thing provides some good context for the people and the place, so subsequent posts (which I may or may not get to) will really benefit from this. Anyway: Prague castle. Prague castle sits atop a hill on the western side of the city. It is a large complex of structures, including churches, palaces, workshops, etc. ringed by a fortifying wall.   According to...