How was it?

It's still going on, I believe...

I just came back home a half an hour ago.

First time I've been there. From what I've heard, it used to have just about everything except absinthe. The new swiss laws has definately changed that - lots of La Bleue, they even distilled it on the street during the day.

A more thorough report will follow - -

Sounds very nice!

Pics to follow in a day or two.

Boveresse June 2005

Day 1 – Thursday

Rendezvous with Peter and Ted at Gare de Lyon. Breakfast at station café. Ted orders a chocolate pastry. Waiter brings him a cup of hot chocolate by mistake instead. Ted asks for his pastry. Waiter shrugs and indicates that even if he cared enough to change the order, which he doesn’t, altering the bill is a huge hassle. Ted points out it was the waiter’s fault. Waiter says French equivalent of “bite me”. Welcome to France!

On the TGV. Next to us a group of 3 girls from Michigan, just starting out on their post-high school Europe trip right of passage. Introduce ourselves. Lots of giggling.

Animated discussion on the hidden delights of Michigan. It has sand dunes apparently. Also ice fishing. One of the girls in her broad Michigan accent, asks Ted if he’s ever been sledding. Ted pretends to mishear her, as saying “slutting”. Why yes, says Ted, as a matter of fact I go slutting all the time. I love to go slutting. And you?

General hilarity.

Arrive at Neuchatel. Steve Rosat is waiting to meet us at the station – as before, he’s put himself at our disposal as our guide, chauffeur and host in the Val de Travers. Drive into Neuchatel – a prosperous, immaculate Swiss town, with wonderful sandstone coloured buildings. As we enter the business district we see painted on the wall, in huge letters: WHILE YOU AT SCHOOL, WE FUCK YA MUM. More hilarity – why “ya mum”? Perhaps graffiti author is Jamaican. Visualize concerned Swiss schoolchildren rushing home to save their mother from a little Caribbean lovin’. “Fuck ya mum” is immediately adopted as one of the two catchphrases of the trip (the other, courtesy of Dr O, is reserved for any occasion when the Jade absinthes get even the mildest praise: WELL, IF YOU’D JUST TAKE TED’S DICK OUT OF YOUR MOUTH FOR A MINUTE…)

Lunch at the Hotel Peyrou – a superb restaurant in the heart of Neuchatel, run by an Australian chef. The clientele is an odd mixture of solid local burghers, and Euro-trash - the men wearing mainly lime-green linen. the woman with expensive nose jewellery.

From Neuchatel on to Couvet. Check in at the Hotel de l’Aigle. Steve tells me he reserved the best room for me, known as the “Betty” suite.

Walk over to Steve’s apartment nearby to view the lots for his forthcoming sale. Some beautiful must-have things, all eye-wateringly expensive. Start to feel less guilty about imposing on his hospitality during our stay.

In the late afternoon Steve takes us to Le Creux-du-Van, a half hour drive away, high in the mountains overlooking the Val de Travers. On the way there we pass through mysterious mist shrouded pine forests, alternating with fields of alpine flowers. Truly the home of La Fee Verte. At the top of the mountain gentiane grows everywhere. Le Creux is a huge precipice, hundreds of feat high, looking over vast forests below. Quite spectacularly beautiful. We take photos in the nearby meadow. Feel the urge to start whirling around like Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music. Peter and Ted advise strongly against it.

Nearby is a small smoke stained chalet, serving, according to Steve, the best fondue in Switzerland. We enter, and our greeted with most un-Swiss like enthusiasm by the owner, a woman in her forties. It takes a minute to realize that she is blind drunk. She’s an alcoholic, whispers Steve under his breath, quite unnecessarily. The ceiling of the restaurant is hung with hundreds of smoked sausages, prepared on the spot. We take a table in an upstairs room, the walls carved with the initials of hundreds of visitors, and eat a platter of Bundnerfleisch, a type of air dried beef similar to bressola. It’s delicious. I take a photo for Kallisti’s brother’s meat-porn site. The fondue which follows, served with crusty bread baked in the chalet’s wood oven, is even better. We wash it down with beer, cider and a very dubious local wine.

Back down the winding mountain track at breakneck speed, but we’re too pissed to care. To Steve’s apartment for a nightcap – a 1929 SA port I’d brought with. We phone our Hotel, and find out that Jack Turner, a writer for the New Yorker working on an article on absinthe, has arrived. We buzz his room – he’s tired, exhausted from the long journey, and needs to get some sleep. He’ll see us in the morning. Of course we understand, we say sympathetically. Then we walk over to the Hotel, drag him out of bed, and bring him over to Steve’s place. More port, some pre-ban Pernod, some Tarragona.

Stagger back well after midnight.


More to follow.

I'll put up a proper webpage with pics later this week, but here are some to start with:


Entrance to Neuchatel....

View from Le Creux-du-Van.

Ted, your corresspondent, Peter at Le Creux-du-Van. Notice the gentiane in the field.

So you guys really do know how to have a good time!!

Nice.

Wonderful pictures. Those valleys cals for some good mountainbiking action inbetween an absinthe or two... or three... or...

QUOTE

Michigan. It has sand dunes apparently

No goddamn "apparently" about it. The dunes along Lake Michigan are higher than any hills in probably half the fifty states. It ain't no Val de Travers, but we like it fine, thank you.

Here. I realize it's not in a foreign country, and it doesn't have Ted Breaux in it, but the Michigan girls have reason for SOME pride even if they were slutting (didn't work for that girl in Aruba, though).

Michisinthe ©

Anyway, wasn't there one of those hen parties the same weekend?

Where are those pictures? Shopping carts full of empty bottles and such.